Have you ever felt there is something about the Edge, that though he struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and flies to Ibiza for his birthday, he’d be just as happy hanging with the lads at a cosmology symposium? And as he poses, often awkwardly, for photographs, is he not thinking: ‘Why am I here?’

So it was, the frivolity over, that last Friday the Edge gathered with other top brains to discuss the future of the universe and celebrate super-scientist Stephen Hawkin’s birthday. If you missed the birthday boy