Monday 23 May 2022 12:07 PM Former Radio 1 DJ Rob Da Bank sued for £650,000 for 'failing to pay back loan ... trends now

Bestival boss 'Rob Da Bank' is being sued for over £650,000 after being accused of taking out massive loans to prop up the ailing festival and not paying them back.

The former Radio One DJ, real name Robert Gorham, ran the annual event - which featured stars from Stevie Wonder to Elton John and Snoop Dogg - after founding it in 2004.

But a court heard it was 'not well-managed' and even before its eventual demise after the 2018 event had frequently been on the verge of disaster, with repeated cash crises.

The 2018 festival, headlined by MIA and London Grammar, almost had to be cancelled because he was unable to pay for portable toilets and was only saved by a last-minute £249,000 cash injection.

And he is now being sued by ticket seller, TicketLine Network Ltd, which says it personally loaned Mr Gorham about £1million to keep it going, but he then refused to pay back about £650,000.

The company says it loaned the money directly to Mr Gorham and a co-director to 'save the day,' because they were not confident their money was safe if loaned to the Bestival company.

The co-director, John Hughes, has accepted the loans were made to the pair of them and that they have to be repaid - but Mr Gorham is fighting the claim in a ten-day trial at Central London County Court.

He claims he never agreed to a personal loan and should not have to pay it back.

Bestival was an annual music festival, which began in 2004 on the Isle of Wight and later moved to Lulworth Castle, Dorset, featuring some of the world's top musical artists.

It was founded by Mr Gorham, who at the same time presented several regular shows on BBC Radio One and had filled in for John Peel, hosting his programme for weeks after his death in 2004.

The festival eventually collapsed after the cancellation of the 2019 event, with the company behind it 'collapsing into insolvency,' the court heard this week.

Outlining the case against Mr Gorham, TicketLine's barrister Paul Burton said the Bestival Group of businesses had suffered 'numerous cashflow emergencies.'

'The contemporaneous documents reveal 'crisis-management', as the business lurched from one near miss to another,' he told Judge Alan Johns QC.

'A good example of this is....on the first day of a three-day festival the group lacked the funds even to pay for basic amenities.

'But for the injection of £249,000 from TicketLine, the whole event would have been cancelled.'

The barrister said TicketLine often advanced cash to event organisers to run festivals, then profited by taking a cut from the ticket sales.

But he said it had been 'well

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