Children set to star at Waters gig

A group of primary school children from inner city Dublin will get to share the stage tonight with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters in front of a sellout crowd at the O2.

The 14 pupils from St Joseph's co-education school in East Wall will join Waters on stage for Another Brick in the Wall, which contains the celebrated chorus: "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom, teacher leave those kids alone".

The irony has not been lost on the pupils, who were chosen because they are involved in a Glee club in the school.

“We are taking the fun side of it, we haven’t gone into the meaning of it,” said teacher Jennifer Savage. “They think the line ‘hey teacher leave those kids alone’ is very funny.”

The children were selected by lottery and have been practicing to a soundtrack of the DVD sent from a concert that Waters performed in Canada.

Waters will perform Pink Floyd's 1980 album The Wall in its entirety over two nights starting tonight as part of his world tour.

It is one of the most ambitious tours ever taken to the O2 and will feature as its centrepiece, a 75m ong wall that is used for projections such as cartoonist Gerald Scarfe’s celebrated marching hammers. The wall will gradually be demolished as the performance continues.

The tour was in the top 10 worldwide last year grossing $90 million (€64 million) alone in the United States. Pink Floyd were once one of the biggest bands in the world and The Wall along with Dark Side of the Moon two of the best selling albums of all time, but the pupils had no idea who Roger Waters was when the idea was first mooted. "Then they went home to their parents and came back very excited," Ms Savage recalled.

On Tuesday night, it will be the turn of children from the inner-city Musical Youth Foundation, a charity that provides musical tuition to children who might not be able to afford it otherwise.

The Musical Youth Foundation pupils are from St Agatha’s Hall in Dunne Street, Dublin 1, and St Andrew’s Hall in Pearse Street and are all aged between 10 and 15.

Roger Waters’s management approached the founder and chief executive of the project, Chris Maher, about the pupils joining him on stage.

Mr Maher said: “Unlike Jedward who are entertainment, this is real music. Our students know Pink Floyd music, and they are thrilled to become part of this show,” he said.

He felt confident that the pupils would not take the song’s celebrated refrain to heart. “We’re all about education here. We believe passionately in the ability of a musical education to benefit students in so many ways,” he said.