Stand-up Harry Deansway has launched a legal action, claiming that Dave’s Live At The Moth Club ripped off his idea.

The comic says the programme – made by Steve Coogan’s Baby Cow Productions – is an infringement of his copyright on a similar web series, Shambles, released almost a decade ago.

And now he has issued an official High Court claim seeking unspecified damages to settle the case.

Both show mix stand-up sets with fictional elements featuring recurring behind-the-scenes characters who involved in the running of a comedy club.

Deansway says that he previously worked with Live At The Moth Club’s creator and executive producer, Rupert Majendie, on a live comedy nights called Pitchcock and Bentshoe in about 2008 and The Fix Presents in 2009. 

He also says Majendie, pictured above with Live At The Moth Club star Mark Heap,  also visited his Shambles night – at the Aces And Eights venue in Tufnell Park, North London – to film comic Nick Helm in 2014.

Deansway said: ‘It is extremely disappointing that Baby Cow should have copied my original work like this without so much as an acknowledgement. 

‘I’m a big fan of Steve Coogan, but I can’t help wondering how he would have felt if someone had copied one of his early characters when he was just starting out and then tried to allege that this was perfectly legal.’

Setting a TV series backstage at a live venue is not an original idea, and was the bedrock for programmes such as The Muppet Show and Packet Of Three – a 1992 Channel 4 comedy starring Frank Skinner, Jenny Eclair and Henry Normal. Normal co-founded Baby Cow with Coogan, but is no longer involved in the company.

However, Deansway claims the format of Shambles is an 'original dramatic work', which includes 'several clearly identifiable features, which, taken together, distinguish it from other shows of a similar type'.

Deansway has issued a formal High Court claim against Baby Cow via his lawyer Lawrence Abramson – media litigation partner at Keystone Law – claiming infringement of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

In the document, which Chortle has seen, it is claimed: 'Shambles is a sitcom series, centred around a live comedy night. The series is based on a novel new concept in that it blends fictional sitcom material focussed on a group of behind- the-scenes characters involved in running the comedy club, with scenes of live comedy with a real audience. The overall effect of this is to immerse the audience in the setting of a live comedy club.

'The series also offered a novel and innovative means of promoting and improving the profile of stand-up comics and a number of well-known comedians and television personalities have featured on the live performance segments of Shambles including Aisling Bea, Dan Schreiber, Alistair Green, John Kearns, Alex Edelman and Fin Taylor.'

It claims the similarities are: 

1. Live at the Moth Club has exactly the same setting as Shambles in a dilapidated comedy club;

2. Just like Shambles, Live at the Moth Club blends live performances in front of real audiences with fictional sitcom material featuring characters behind-the-scenes;

3. The same fly-on-the-wall documentary techniques are used in Live At The Moth Club as Shambles, including the use of handheld cameras, to lend the material realism but also contributing a dry humour to the series;

4.  The protagonist, Ellen Bryant, is a comedy night promoter, who like Harry in Shambles, struggles each night to put on a successful show;

5. The venue owner, George Lambert, a hapless character who just like Greg in Shambles, often inadvertently acts to frustrate the smooth operation of the comedy night;

6.  An intern character, Freddie, who like Joe or Toby in Shambles, also makes things difficult for the protagonist;

7. Two marketing and PR specialists, Zebedee and Cress, who like the agents and producers in Shambles, come up with surreal and bad ideas;

8.  The overall combination of these features giving rise to a sitcom with a markedly similar tone and feeling to the original Shamble

 The case also says the two shows share a number of specific plot similarities, namely:

1. A joke about an intern being forced to write material for one of the stand-ups. 
2. The club owner repeatedly being portrayed with tools in both series, to highlight the dilapidated state of the venue;
3. A joke that the lights do not work in the comedy club
4.  A joke about a headliner pulling out of the comedy act, midway through their performance.

Deansway  – real name Joshua Rinkoff – previously ran The Fix comedy magazine, which left him with a £30,000 debt, and was briefly comedy editor of The Guardian Guide. He subsequently ran the video site Raybot – which distributed the Shambles series.

In 2019, he raised £1,000 from crowdfunding to release a special. However the recording was a disaster and he threw the footage into a canal. Some of the backers set up their own fundraiser to seek a county-court judgement agains Deansway, claiming it was ‘an elaborate scheme to extort money from innocent comedy fans’.

Deansway then set up a second crowdfunder to refund the original backers, saying: ‘It goes without saying that I am absolutely devastated to have put my backers through this (well, some of them, some of them have been quite rude to me. And I’m actually glad I lost their money.)’

Shambles featured comedy circuit regulars such as John Kearns, Brian Gittins, Nat Luurtsema, Joz Norris, Jody Kamali and Cassie Atkinson, with its most-watched episode boasting 1,800 views.

Live At The Moth Club was filmed in Hackney, East London, and aired last December. Its stars included Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Cardinal Burns, Natasia Demetriou, Ellie White, Arnab Chanda and Jamie Demetriou.

It was last month nominated for a Broadcast Digital Awards, but no decision has yet been made on whether the show will return for a second series.

Chortle has approached Baby Cow and was told neither the company – now part of BBC Studios – nor Dave parent company UKTV comment on legal matters.

» Live At The Moth Club review