Legal blitz on catchphrase posters

Religious groups have been forced to stop using catchphrases from Little Britain and Catherine Tate to try to persuade youngsters into church.

Posters featuring such lines as ‘Yeah but no but yeah’ and ‘Am I bovvered?’ have been withdrawn after lawyers took action to stop the breach of copyright.

Solicitors acting for Matt Lucas and David Walliams have already pounced on the evangelical organisation marketing and distributing a series of four posters. Lawyers for Catherine Tate and merchandising firm Granada Ventures, which owns the marketing rights for Little Britain, said they would also be pursuing the matter.

Christian Publishing and Outreach was selling a pack of four posters carrying the catchphrases for £25 a set, saying they were ‘the ideal way to reach out to today's youth’.

Each featured the comedy line, followed by a quotation from the Bible.

So beneath ‘Am I bovvered?’ ran a less-catchy passage from the Gospel of Matthew saying: ‘Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, about what you put on. Is life not more than food and the body more than clothing?’

And under ‘Yeah but no but yeah’, the poster stated: ‘Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have’.

The other two catchphrases used were ‘Yeah, I know’ and ‘How very dare you!’

A spokesman for the CPO, which sells posters to around 20,000 British churches, admitted to Scotland On Sunday that they had not asked permission to use the phrases.

He added: ‘We can confirm that we have been contacted by legal representatives from Little Britain. As such we will be making no further comment on this issue at this time.’

Published: 9 Sep 2007