Bono meets Mike Pence: it was hard to watch this very awkward bromance

Bono likes to paint his political expediency as the millionaire rockstar-activist's equivalent of getting your gums deep cleaned. It's not much fun, but sometimes you've just got to pull on your big Messiah pants, and get on with it.

“Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work,” he once moaned in a Guardian interview.

It may be true that sometimes you have to shake hands with the devil to get stuff done – and presumably that's what Bono thought he was at, during last weekend's awkward get-together with the US vice president Mike Pence, at the Munich Security Conference.

But watching the video of the two busily bromancing, just months after Bono described Trump as “the worst idea ever to happen to America”, prompted a couple of questions.

You might have to shake hands with the devil, but do you need to make it look like you’re enjoying it quite so much? Was “amazing” really the word you intended to use to describe the first month of the Trump-Pence White House?

And: why on earth did you lavish praise on Pence for voting in favour of a 14-year-old bill to tackle HIV in Africa, when much more recently, he cut funds Planned Parenthood services in his own state, one of the factors that led to a HIV outbreak there?

The exchange went down predictably well on Twitter, where fans of Bono can be almost as hard to come by as fans of the 45th administration.

But to be fair to Bono, last weekend’s awkward meeting with Pence was not a planned one. Maybe he simply didn’t have time to refresh his memory on why the Veep isn’t just any old bigot.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and imagine that it was one of those awkward moments with which we can all identify: you find yourself trapped in conversation with someone you don’t really know, and desperately trawl your memory for some relevant biographical detail to pin to them.

So you start blathering on about how busy they must be (Pence is the “second busiest man on earth”, Bono gushed; the busiest, presumably, being flat out watching Fox and tweeting insults about the media).

And then a flash of inspiration hits you. “HIV,” you think. “He did something about HIV…”

Before you know it, you’re congratulating him on voting in favour of a ancient bill to tackle HIV in Africa, when what you really mean to say is: “How could you shut down Planned Parenthood, and then sit idly by dithering about the morality of needle exchanges, while 20 people in your own state were diagnosed with HIV every single week in 2015?”

Bono, it could happen to the best of us.

But just in case you happen to bump into Pence again, and find yourself stuck for something intelligent to say, here are a few conversation starters.

• "So, Mike, are your still in favour of diverting taxpayer dollars to conversion therapy (a suite of barbaric practices aimed at 'turning gay people straight', including but not limited to inducing nausea, electroshock therapy and exorcism)?"
• "Since there won't be any gay people left in America when you're done converting them, I'm presuming you won't now need to press ahead with legalizing discrimination against the LGBTQ community?"
• "Deadly. And you can scrap your planned abolition of equal marriage rights too?"
• "Let me get this straight. Since you don't believe condoms work, and plan to send women's reproductive rights to the 'ash heap of history', how exactly will you stop the spread of STDs and unwanted pregnancy?"
• "Dude, now I have you. Remind me again of your idiotic views on abortion/guns/immigration/the environment/smoking."

As we said, Bono, just a few pointers in case you ever find yourself gurning away unhiply at Pence again.