I saw it more as semi-good-natured ribbing. Bush zinged Geldof, so Geldof one-upped him. Not really a big deal. (Though that article did kind of blow my mind the first time I read it. First it was Bono hangin' with Bush, and now Bob Geldof? Lobbying for charity makes for strange bedfellows, I guess.)

Looking up Bob Geldof in wikipedia (because this post reminded me of how I have the hots for him), I learned this interesting fact: "Geldof is entitled to use the post-nominal letters "KBE", but as he is not a citizen of a Commonwealth realm, he is precluded from using the title "Sir". Regardless, the nickname 'Sir Bob' has stuck, and even media reports will frequently (but erroneously) refer to him as 'Sir Bob Geldof' as if that were his correct title."

i use to love him. i even got his abominable post Live Aid album and wanted to make the songs better.

I've definitely heard this story before with other names.

Straight from the horse's arsemouth...

Supposedly, the originals were Humphrey Bogart and Ilka Chase.

Bogie: I enjoyed your book immensely. Who wrote it for you?

Chase: I'm glad you liked it. Who read it to you?

In some versions, the accoster is "another actress". In even more versions, it's "one actress to another", sort of a variation of the dumb blonde genre, instead of a classic of crossed swords.

Anyway, nobody knows who Ilka Chase is anymore (mainly Broadway, but best known film probably Now, Voyager). She was, in fact, a prolific author, and her mother was editor of Vogue.

Oddly, I haven't found a single instance where Bogart is included but Chase isn't. Usually these things coalesce around a well-known name.

Oh, wow, in her 1948 book Free Admission, she says it was cooked up by a Warner Brothers publicity man and planted in the press.

... you can give an unpopular picture is limited. Yet publicity men are ingenious, and I remember a gentleman at Warners who cooked up a witticism which he credited to me and which received considerable attention in the press, though I never knew I had said it till the day he showed it to me in a column. He had pinned the story on Humphrey Bogart, not wanting — understandably, I thought — to implicate a contract female star. Mr. Bogart was supposed to have seen me one day on the set and to have said, "Say, Ilka, I liked Past Imperfect a lot. Who wrote it for you?" To which I retorted, quick as a flash, "Dear Bogey, I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Who read it to you?"

It pleases me to think that had Mr. Bogart ever made the remark I would have thought up that cute comeback, but actually the ... [all I could glean from the evil snippet view]

Ah, the studio system. Good times.