Peter Rowan (The boy on the U2 album cover)

Well, the Army has certainly come over all Jesuitical, eh?

What are you talking about?

Its new recruitment poster with the "give me the boy until he is seven and I'll give you the man" theme.

No, no, no. It's nothing to do with the Army. You must be deaf. It's the cover of U2's just released album - The Best of 1980 to 1990. You can't turn on the radio at the moment without hearing one of the uber group's belting anthems.

Who's the boy?

Probably the first waif-boy model, a young Dublin lad called Peter Rowan who was catapulted into the public eye at the tender age of five when he made it onto the cover of their first single. He was an adorable, doe-eyed eight-year-old in 1980 when he donned that army helmet for the War album.

That must have been a lively casting session?

Where this sort of thing is concerned, it's a case of who you know. And anyway, the U2ers are a close-knit crowd so it wasn't a question of getting a miscellaneous gaggle of Macaulay Culkin types to try on a tin hat. Peter is the photogenic younger brother of Bono's old northside mate Guggi.

Guggi Rowan?

No, just Guggi. He's an artist now, but back then he was a Virgin Prune and let's face it, it's hard to have street cred when your name is Derek, so he became Guggi. Dereks everywhere will doubtless understand.

You can see his work adorning several walls in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin.

See what I mean about close-knit?

So how did the original Boy fare after his 15 minutes?

Well, hardly 15 minutes, if his picture is being used again nearly two decades later. But young Peter's brush with rock music didn't encourage him to take to his parents' garage and form a band. The now grown-up Peter is a busy and highly respected commercial photographer working in Dublin. He's married and plays golf in his spare time. What he never plays is the very tempting "I was the boy on the War album" card. In fact, he's extremely reluctant to talk about it all.

Still though, the new album is on its way to becoming the biggest selling Irish album of all time, so surely Peter will be coining it?

Doubt it. Legend has it he was paid for the photo session all those years ago with Mars bars. That's rock 'n ' roll for you.