Even before Sunday's sold-out Madison Square Garden show, the lads in the Irish rock band U2
were feeling sprightly. At the 50th-birthday party for their manager, Paul McGuinness, on Saturday,
the group presented McGuinness, a riding enthusiast, with a state-of-the-art saddle, which they
planned to present to him, appropriately, on a horse.

But when the Thoroughbred was led into Chelsea's Park restaurant, the steed "did an about-face
and started walking in [bleep]first. Everyone sitting nearby jumped out of their seats and started
running in the opposite direction," one witness told us. Interscope honcho Jimmy Iovine, MTV's Judy McGrath,
VH1 president John Sykes, Dreamworks president Johnny Barbers, Chris Blackwell and Christy Turlington
were all on hand for the horsing around.

Turlington, who will be escorted down the aisle by Bono at her upcoming wedding to actor Ed Burns,
was backstage at Madison Square Garden Sunday. Also visiting before the show were Chris Rock
and his wife, Malaak Compton, and Winona Ryder with Jimmy Fallon.

Among the group's most unlikely fans is writer Salman Rushdie, who already has seen the group
three times this year. "In the age of choreographed, instrument-less little-boy and little-girl bands,
it's exhilarating to watch a great grown-up quartet do the fine, simple things so well," Rushdie wrote
in a first-person piece about his relationship with U2 that appeared in Britain's Sunday Times.