King Cnut

At school I didn't really fit in that well.

And I saw at school

enormous injustices going on.

You know, there were people

that were academically brilliant,

who sort of had their own click.

There were people that were brilliant at sport,

and there were people that were cool.

And I didn't fit in to any of these,

and it was a really odd time for me trying to work out

what the hell?

And it was like Lord of the Flies.

You seemed to be bullied when you're in the first year

by the year above,

and when you were in the year above,

you bullied the person below.

And I couldn't understand this, and it just seemed so wrong.

But I kinda got by and was left alone and wasn't bullied

because I wore funny t-shirts all the time.

And everybody thought, "Ah, he's quite an amusing kid."

And this is one of my favorite t-shirts that I wore

which is "Ignore This Person."

And I wore this t-shirt for about five years,

and my father didn't stand on my left-hand side

for about five years.

Right here? Set.

Does the hoodie look all right and everything?

My name's Dave Griffith and I'm a stand-up comedian

and owner of King Cnut Clothing.

I was born on a Friday the 13th in June.

And I was born one minute to midnight

and the doctor asked my mother would she like the 14th

to be put on the birth certificate?

And my Mum said, "Don't be so ridiculous."

And I've had bad luck ever since.

They used to do the little plays...

Oh, yeah. ...these two.

At our grandparents house. Yes, do you remember?

Yeah. And, you know,

they've been doing a very serious little act...

Oh yeah, and David would come over...

And David would come in and spoil the whole thing.

No, go away. You're ruining our play. Yeah, that's right.

Hi, my name's Rosie, and I am David's big sister.

My name's Angela, and I'm Dave's mum.

And I'm Mandy, and I'm Dave's other sister,

also big.

No, no, no. Can I say that again?

And we used to tell him lots of stories about schooldays,

and he would end up, um,

adopting those stories for his own

and talking to other people as if he went to the same school

as us in the end, yeah, yeah.

But often when he adopted stories like that

he would, um, embellish them a little bit, shall we say...

Yeah... And make them his own, make them funnier,

um, but sometimes get caught telling the same stories

back to the original person who told him the story.

Which didn't always go down too well.

Yeah. That's my story.

Yeah. That happened to me.

My name's Guy Hammant,

and I know Dave from college days.

My name's Neil Bennett.

Dave is a very good friend

has been for over 20 years.

Um, and he's a great source of constant entertainment.

Is that right? Yes.

Past the test. Yeah.

Some people thought I was mad,

and some people thought, this is brilliant.

You're gonna do what you wanna do.

I wrote some stuff which I thought was quite funny.

Um, went to a pub that had an open mic night,

tried it there, did all right.

Um, I now look back at that material

and realize it was absolute crap,

but initially, um, you know,

you're up against other crap people,

so it seems quite good.

It was good crap in compared to the other crap.

It was okay.

I had an operation in Royal Parks about four months ago

just to have my sinus's done and started worrying

what has happened to the Royal Parks

'cause while I was in the ward

there was a sign on the wall it said,

"Thieves are operating in this area."

I was really worried...

I don't know what's happened to that place?

And then one day

I was traveling with a friend of mine, Neil Bennett,

and we were going across Fox Hill Bridge on the way to Newcastle

and I saw the first French Connection billboard.

It was massive. It said...

"French Connection F.C.U.K."

And I turned to Neil and I said,

"That'd be so much funnier if that was C.N.U.T."

And we both laughed like mad about it,

and then, uh, we just drove on to the gig

and about an hour later

Neil turned to me and he said,

"You know what? That's really good." I said, "What?"

Because I have so many things running through my head

and nothing's usually very good.

He went, "That C.N.U.T. thing is brilliant."

It is the first mick take,

that poster has only been up this week,

and you've done the best mick take that possibly could be done.

You've taken it to the next level.

I was like, "Really?" He said, "Yeah. You should get a t-shirt made of it."

No, I... I may well have been in the car.

Yeah, but, you know, this is like, 14, 15 years ago.

Um...

I don't remember things I said in the car last week.

So the next gig was my first ten minutes at The Comedy Store,

and I had a t-shirt made with

"CNUT French Correction."

And I came onto the stage and everybody started laughing,

everybody was clapping,

and the reaction was brilliant

and it was the best gig I ever had

for the first ten seconds

'cause the rest of the gig I died horribly,

but the t-shirts went really well.

One of the other comedians said,

"Oh, I'd really like one of those t-shirts.

I'll buy one from you." I said, "I'm not selling them.

I'll make you one and give it to you."

And then other people started asking,

"Where'd you get that t-shirt? Can I have one?

And I realized that maybe

I could start selling these t-shirts.

'Cause you don't make much as a comedian.

And I had some screen printed

and I started giving them out and selling them,

But then I received a letter to stop it.

"Dear Sirs. We act of behalf of French Connection Limited.

It has recently come to our clients attention

that you are operating a website advertising and selling t-shirts

such t-shirts feature the slogans

with the word place such as

cnut and wnaker

clearly influenced by our client's prominent trading name

and registered trademark fcuk."

Also, I had wnaker

'cause I thought that was the obvious second choice.

If not, everybody would want to wear cnut

and wnak

as the shorter version.

"Your purpose is clearly to take advantage

of our client's goodwill and reputation.

As a result, our client is suffering damage to its goodwill.

A loss of control over his reputation

and the erosion of strength of his own domain name.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully, Davenport Lyons."

I mean, your heart sinks

when you get one of those letters.

Oh my God. They're accusing me of stealing their idea.

They're accusing you, you know, accusing me of, um,

being some sort of criminal

and they're threatening to sue you.

I'm gonna have to get a lawyer to have a look at this

because I haven't got a clue what the hell is going on.

And it sounds so threatening.

I tried to be a rock star.

I went to live in London for a year and starved.

I still do have a band, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

We played on Saturday night.

It's probably the best band I've ever been in.

I was recommended by someone.

Um, he was a one-man band.

He was cheap. He was in Slough,

So it just seemed perfect.

My name is Duncan Thomson.

I'm one of the partners at Aston Bond Law Firm,

uh, and we're, uh, wonderful firm of solicitors.

Yeah, letters like that, um, are designed to be scary.

They're designed to make you stop doing

what the writer does not want you to carry on doing.

So they tend to be very formal

and they tend to setout, to begin with,

uh, the legal position,

then they setout the factual position,

then they'll say what they want you to do

within what period of time,

and then there'll be a consequence

if you fail to comply within the time limit.

And I was like,

"I haven't actually infringed on their trademark."

I've put C.N.U.T. I've used "French Correction."

It looks nothing like F.C.U.K. and French Connection.

But you have to remember that companies like French Connection

without their trademark,

without the goodwill and the brand, they're nothing.

They're just another clothing manufacturer and seller.

So they will fight tooth and nail,

as with any other well known household brand holder,

to protect the brand and protect the image.