The High Court heard nanny Joy Fahy list what she reckoned her celebrityemployers owed her - and what she allegedly owed the Department of Social Welfare, writes Frank McNally
You have to be prepared for anything when you're a nanny to the stars. But for Joy Fahy, suing the Cranberries' lead singer and manager for breach of contract and false imprisonment, it must still have been a torrid afternoon in court no 14 yesterday.
It began gently enough, as the 34-year-old was led through the last of her evidence against Dolores O'Riordan and her husband Don Burton about the employment that ended so bitterly at their Canadian home in July 1999.
She sobbed as she spoke of how she had never had a chance to say goodbye to the couple's "adorable little boy", referred to in evidence as "Baby T".
She frowned as she recalled her concerns for the child's safety when his parents were drinking, especially on one occasion when - she claims - Mr Burton took the baby jet-skiing on the lake beside the house while also holding a can of beer.
She described Ms O'Riordan's allegedly erratic behaviour, "ironing upstairs" constantly, "sometimes the same things", while her husband drank downstairs with his friends. And she described a catalogue of designer clothes damaged in return or missing since her position with the couple was terminated: a Dolce & Gabbana jacket, a Versace blouse, a Giorgio Armani jumper - the list went on (see panel). "I like nice things," she admitted. "I work very hard to buy them." Nice things were also a feature of her latest employment, working for supermodel Elle "The Body" Macpherson in London. The court heard that during her first days in the job, Ms Fahy had worked for "very nice underwear" rather than money.
But this detail emerged under questioning from defence counsel Bill Shipsey, and by then the tone of the exchanges had changed dramatically.
When, early in his cross-examination, Mr Shipsey asked the witness to agree with him that she would never make a claim for anything to which she was not entitled, there was the unmistakeable sound in court of a trap being baited.Later in the afternoon, he reminded her that according to information supplied by her solicitors last week, her work with Ms Macpherson began in March 2003, after she finished with her previous employers, U2 drummer Larry Mullen and his wife Anne Acheson.
But notwithstanding Mr Shipsey's insistence that she had volunteered this date herself, Ms Fahy now struggled to recall when exactly the contract began, or when the employment with Ms Macpherson became full-time. And pressing home the point, the lawyer suggested that her vagueness on the issue dated from her discovery on Thursday that the defence would be calling a witness from the Department of Social Welfare.
Ms Fahy did not flinch as he revealed how she started claiming unemployment benefit here in April 2003. She merely conceded that "a mistake has been made", and would be rectified. But when he suggested she owed the department more than €3,000, she admitted surprise: "Oh, God. OK, I'll have a bill. I didn't realise it was that amount."
Apart from two occasions when she lost her composure - both at the memory of Baby T, Ms Fahy was a calm witness. She faced the judge directly, avoiding any eye contact with counsel, and - even when under severe pressure from counsel - addressed all her answers to the judge.
The defendants betrayed little emotion either. Sitting behind the lawyers, the musical couple cut sober figures in dark suits, the only hints of a rock-star lifestyle being the faint floral pattern in Mr Burton's dark suit, his earrings, and the Celtic cross tattoo on Ms O'Riordan's shoulder which showed when she removed her pinstripe jacket in the overheated courtroom.
She smiled wryly at the mention of her ironing, and beamed at her mother Eileen, sitting alongside, when their employer-employee relationship was mentioned in evidence. Mr Burton's mother was also in court, once emitting a faint gasp at something said by the nanny, with whom - the court heard - she used to play bingo.
Ms Fahy's difficulties were not confined to social welfare; the confusion of life with a rock band on tour also featured. Going through the diary on which she relies for many of the details of her employment with the Cranberry couple, Mr Shipsey exposed a series of apparent discrepancies, concerning dates and, in one case, places.
Of an entry that recorded her accompanying the couple from Los Angeles to Atlanta in May 1999, counsel said his clients would argue they travelled to Phoenix, Arizona instead. Ms Fahy suggested she might have mixed up two states with A-names. "Atlanta's a city" said Mr Shipsey, drily. "Yes, that shows my geography of the states of America," said Ms Fahy, without a pause and still looking straight at the judge.