Comic's U-turn over gag theft claims

Scottish-based stand-up Mac Star has been left with egg on his face after accusing Dara O’Briain of stealing his material on Have I Got News For You?

A week after making the claims, Star has been forced to admit that he WASN’T the first to write the joke he accused O’Briain of pilfering.

Star had threatened legal action over the gag, which imagined Hitler and Churchill playing rock, scissors, paper – with Churchill’s V-sign, representing scissors, defeating Hitler’s Nazi salute (paper) every time.

He threatened legal action, saying he had been using the joke for more than two years, and demanding “an apology and some form of compensation for the blatant disregard of performers’ rights” from O’Briain’s agents Off The Kerb, even though the presenter’s script is created by a team of writers.

O’Briain, right, hit back at the claims of gag theft, saying that it is inevitable that more than one comic can originate the same joke independently. "It's bad luck for him, and a shame he's lost a very good joke,” he said. “But this sort of thing is going to happen, and he shouldn't be slinging accusations of plagiarism around.”

However, Tasmanian-born Star was insistent that he was a victim of a concerted effort by English-based writers traveling to Scotland to pinch jokes. “It seems writers are coming north of the border to watch comedy and if they like the material, they think ‘well no one knows this guy down south" and just lift it,” he said.

But since details of Star’s actions were published on Chortle, users of the site’s forum have unearthed more examples of similar jokes being written independently. Other sightings of the same idea include:

• On a Beatles Internet newsgroup in 1996
• In the set of Brighton-based comic Stephen Grant, who used it in his Edinburgh show last year
• In a humour magazine called Mustard
• On Chris Morris’s Radio 1 show about 12 years ago in a sketch parodying wartime news reports.

Now Star has written an apologetic e-mail to Off The Kerb admitting his mistake.

“Due to further events of the Hitler paper rock scissors gag and evidence published on the forums of Chortle.co.uk. I feel I need to make a formal appology [sic] to all parties involved,” he wrote.

“Although I first thought of the gag a few years ago, it would seem that it has been in use for some time in various guises.”

“A larger slice of humble pie will no doubt be heading my way and I will relish every last bite of it.”

Star also acknowledges that he could be hoist by his own petard – that the first person to have come up with the gag could make the same claims against him as he made against O’Briain.

“I do now need to find out the people who wrote the original joke and say sorry for laying claim to it,” he admitted.

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Published: 23 May 2005