The Oscars weren’t very kind to the Irish on Sunday night.  Michael Fassbender lost out on a Best Supporting Actor statue to Jared Leto – no shock there – and U2 came up empty in the Best Original Song category, losing to the composers for the animated film Frozen.

That decision definitely comes as at least a mild surprise.  U2 penned the deeply personal song “Ordinary Love” for the film Mandela as a tribute to their friend and recently deceased political hero.  That’s the kind of back story Oscar voters usually jump all over, but Mandela didn’t excite the critics or the ticket buying public, so the family friendly, popular Frozen came up trumps.

The four band members were accompanied by their better halves, and were unwittingly part of one of the funniest photo bombs of the night when actor Benedict Cumberbatch made a huge leap behind while the guys and their mates were posing on the red carpet.

Oscar nominee Leo DiCaprio was thrilled to see Bono, so much so that he had the Irish rocker pose for a pic with his mom.  And Ellen DeGeneres partook in a three way kissy-face photo with Bono and her wife Portia de Rossi at the after-party hosted by Vanity Fair.  

Fassbender, nominated for his excellent work in 12 Years a Slave, was accompanied by the perfect date – his Co. Antrim-born mother Adele.  He flew into LA a couple of days before the Oscars for the Independent Spirit Awards – his date for that was sister Catherine, a researcher at UC Davis — and given the buzz surrounding his super-hot career it won’t be long before he’s onstage accepting honors.

“I got a chance to hang out with him [Fassbender] also and he is fantastic. He is someone that you or I would love to bump into if you were out of an evening. He’s just great fun,” Bono says of his fellow Irishman.