Stylist threatened to sue U2 twice before

A FORMER employee of U2 threatened to sue them twice before her current defamation case against the band.

Dublin Circuit Civil Court heard that Lola Cashman, a stylist hired by the band to work on their image during the 1987 Joshua Tree tour, had left their employment under a cloud shortly after the tour ended.

She first threatened action after deductions were made from her final wage packet for disputed expenses claims for car hire and use of the mini-bar in the Shelbourne Hotel which were considered unrelated to her work.

She later threatened defamation proceedings when her use of the tour manager’s credit card to pay for airline tickets for herself and a boyfriend was called into question.

U2 have taken Ms Cashman to court to seek the return of memorabilia she tried to put up for sale through Christie’s auction house in 2001.

The band insist they never gave away items from their stage wardrobe as they were kept for the band archive, and wrote to Christie’s to ask that the auction be put on hold.

That letter is the subject of a defamation case Ms Cashman is taking against the band in London where she is claiming damages for several years of lost work as a result of the letter.

She told the court yesterday she was “incredibly frightened” when she learned of the letter and rejected suggestions that her claim was extortionate.

Counsel for U2, Paul Sreenan SC, suggested Ms Cashman was “reinventing history.” The court saw 20 seconds of video footage shot on the tour which showed Bono in a hat shop, buying a stetson and saying he would wear it on stage that night.

It was a different stetson to the one that became Bono’s trademark but Mr Sreenan says it showed Ms Cashman had less input into the band’s image than she claimed.

Ms Cashman replied: “Just because Bono had a stetson on his head does not create an iconic image,” she said.

As the band’s stylist, she had access to their dressing room, which she described as their inner sanctum.

“When I am dressing Bono and he’s about to go on stage the room’s quiet and there’s only me and Bono in the room,” she said.

She told the court that it was on quiet moments like these when she was given gifts such as earrings and trousers and that that was why no member of the U2 crew had seen her receiving them.

Mr Sreenan asked why Ms Cashman had not mentioned receiving the disputed items in the book she wrote about the band when she had referred to more trivial things such as Edge’s comb missing teeth and Larry Mullen’s food-stained T-shirts.

“I did not think it was a big deal. It was just memorabilia,” she said.

She also excluded from the book a description she gave to the court of Bono running around in his underpants after the last concert, the night she says he gave her his stetson.

Judge Matthew Deery reserved judgement in the case until next Tuesday.