A stand-up comedian is being sued for defamation and breach of privacy over references to her estranged husband in an Edinburgh fringe show.
Louise Beamont (stage name Reay) is facing a demand for £30,000 damages - plus huge legal costs - for speaking about her break-up with Thomas Reay in her 2017 Edinburgh Fringe show Hard Mode. Ironically, “its main theme was censorship and free speech,” says the comedy website Chortle.
Beamont told the website: “He has a lot more money than me and he says that I accused him of abusing me in my show. And so he’s suing me, which in my opinion is simply an attempt to silence me.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“As stand-up comedians, I believe it’s the very definition of our job to talk about our lives and social issues. So this has become a free speech issue - and free speech means everything to me.”
And speaking about being served with defamation, privacy and data protection proceedings, Beamont said: “I cannot tell you how oppressive that feels.”
The 2015 Alternative New Comedian of the Year, said she would be bankrupted if she loses the case and has launched a crowdfunding page to raise money for her defence.
On the page she wrote: “[Hard Mode] was a 50-minute show about censorship and authoritarianism, asking the audience to imagine that the BBC had come into the control of the Chinese government.”
“During that show, I referred to my husband a couple of times – perhaps 2 minutes’ worth of reference in a 50-minute show. The main gist of those references was to tell the audience how sad I was that my marriage had broken down recently.”
Thomas Reay’s solicitors told The Guardian the show identified him, revealed private information and “made very serious and inflammatory allegations of wrongdoing against him” – causing enormous distress.
“These allegations included the entirely false suggestion that our client’s relationship with [Reay] was an abusive one.”
Mark Stephens, a libel lawyer at Howard Kennedy, told The Guardian defamation law had been beefed up to strengthen defences for the likes of comedians, academics and scientists in the UK but ultimately the case could rest on the judge’s sense of humour.
“It’s going to be a test of whether the British judiciary understands a joke,” libel expert Mark Stephens told The Guardian. “I mean that seriously.”
“Judges have traditionally had something of a humourless side,” he added.
-
Questions abound over the FAA’s management of BoeingTalking Points Some have called the agency’s actions underwhelming
-
Lou Berney’s 6 favorite books with powerful storytellingFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Dorothy B. Hughes, James McBride, and more
-
Robert Redford: the Hollywood icon who founded the Sundance Film FestivalFeature Redford’s most lasting influence may have been as the man who ‘invigorated American independent cinema’ through Sundance
-
Beano comics sent to Australiafeature And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
‘Secrecy over Tory MP accused of rape is damaging to democracy’Instant Opinion Your digest of analysis from the British and international press
-
The Week Unwrapped: Seeing stars, prescribing comedy and decriminalising drugspodcast What will the James Webb Telescope accomplish? Why is the NHS sending people to comedy courses? And are drugs laws about to change in the British capital?
-
The Week Unwrapped: Gene editing, joke theft and manifestingpodcast Are we on the verge of a new agricultural revolution? Why are comedians going to court? And what on earth is manifesting?
-
Sir Ken Dodd: five little-known facts about the comedy legend, who has died aged 90In Depth Stand-up and music-hall star was famed for charity work and the length of his shows
