An award-winning standup comedian is being sued by her estranged husband for allegedly defaming him in her show.
The lawsuit, described by a leading lawyer as a test case, relates to a show by Louise Beamont (stage name Reay). Hard Mode was billed as as a “provocative show [that] explores censorship and surveillance”; though one critic described it as being “at its core … about a very recent and raw heartbreak”.
Thomas Reay is also suing his wife for breach of privacy and data protection, is seeking £30,000 in damages plus legal costs and wants an injunction to prevent her publishing statements about him, she said.
Beamont, 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.
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.”
Beamont said that she removed the material from subsequent performances at the Edinburgh fringe last summer – without admitting liability – when she received the first complaint from her husband but a writ was subsequently issued
Beamont, who refused to comment beyond a post on her gofundme page for legal reasons, wrote: “As standup 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.”
She launched the crowdfunding page on Friday and by Monday had raised just under £3,000 of the £10,000 goal.
The case could have significant implications for comedians, who often use personal material in their shows. The comedian and writer Sarah Millican made her name in standup with material about her divorce.
Last year’s Edinburgh fringe saw separate standup shows by ex-couple Sara Pascoe and John Robins about their break-up, with Robins’s performances earning him the award for best show (shared with Hannah Gadsby).
Mark Stephens, a libel lawyer at Howard Kennedy, said 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.
He said: “There’s a long history of British juries – before they were abolished [in defamation cases] – not finding in favour of claimants when it’s a joke. This will be the first time [the issue comes] before a judge. It’s going to be a test of whether the British judiciary understands a joke – I mean that seriously.
“It’s a test case for the judge to see whether they will follow the same route as juries used to take, which was to throw libel cases which were based on humour out on their ear. Judges have traditionally had something of a humourless side.”
In a statement, Taylor Hampton, solicitors for Thomas Reay, denied the case raised issues of free speech and said the offending material had caused their client enormous distress. “Beamont repeatedly performed a comedy show which identified our client verbally and in still and moving images, contained private information about him and his relationship with Ms Beamont, and made very serious and inflammatory allegations of wrongdoing against him,” it said.
“These allegations included the entirely false suggestion that our client’s relationship with Ms Beamont was an abusive one.”