U2 turn down £12.5 million

U2 have turned down a £12.5 million offer for permission to use one of their songs in a television advert.

The band turned down the request to use Where The Streets Have No Name in an advert for fear of audiences forever associating the song with the commerical.

Ananova.com quotes Bono as saying: "We almost did. We sat down. I know from my work in Africa what £12.5 million could buy. It was very hard to walk away from £12.5 million.

"So we thought, `We'll give the money away.' But if we tell people we're giving the money away, it sounds pompous. So we'll just give it away, and take the hit. That's what we agreed.

"But if a show is a little off, and there's a hole, that's the one song we can guarantee that God will walk through the room as soon as we play it. So the idea that when we played it, people would go, `That's the such-and-such commercial,' we couldn't live with it.

"Had it been a cool thing, or didn't have a bad association, or it was a different song, we might've done it."