Here's the story....
With or without U2? Oh, no Bono Impostor turns heads in Hub
By Mark Shanahan, Globe Staff | March 11, 2007
Bono? Is that you?
An impostor of the U2 singer managed over the weekend to hoodwink several bystanders who could have sworn they saw the superstar singer eating breakfast in East Boston and stopping for a pint at the Beantown Pub on Tremont Street.
While it's true that a middle-aged man wearing wraparound shades and a black leather jacket ordered corned beef hash, eggs, and black coffee at Donna's in Orient Heights, it wasn't Bono, and photos of the ersatz entertainer confirm that. So who was it? The knave's name is Pavel Sfera, a bogus Bono whose back story is posted at
www.bonolookalike.com, and who was here to perform at a birthday party in Marblehead.
"Someone showed me the Herald, and I laughed," said the impersonator from Southern California, referring to a story in early editions of the Boston Herald reporting that Bono was "here in Hub!"
Word that Bono was roaming around Boston began circulating Friday after Sfera stopped for breakfast at Donna's. Claiming to be in the area for a function at Fidelity Investments, the Bono bluffer posed for pictures and chatted with the restaurant's owner, Donna Marquardo, about his charitable works in Africa.
"He was a very sweet and very nice gentleman," Marquardo said afterward. "He was one of the nicest men I've ever met."
Bono's friends and associates here were skeptical. Dave Kavanaugh, executive producer of Celtic Woman, the Irish song-and-dance show at the Wang Theatre, said he sent Bono a text message when he heard he might be in town. When his friend didn't immediately reply, Kavanaugh figured the rumor was wrong.
Sfera, who makes paid appearances at corporate functions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and baptisms, says he earns $1,000 "just to walk out the door." To the casual observer, he does look like Bono, albeit on a bad-hair day, and for a guy of Romanian descent, he does a decent Irish accent. Not surprisingly perhaps, Sfera also has a taste for Guinness.
"I just go with the flow. If I find really gullible people, I might take my picture with them," he said yesterday. "There's nothing scandalous about this. I love Bono."