Original subtitles

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,

and I started a website that was FrenchCorrection.net.

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.

They were saying, you know, give us the website, give us the t-shirts.

That's not theirs. I paid for that.

They wanted everything as if it was theirs

even though it didn't say

"French Connection" or, um, "F.C.U.K."

I could understand if it said F.C.U.K.

or French Connection.

I don't see trademark infringement

in the designs of the t-shirts,

but I can see a far better argument

for trademark infringement in relation

to the name of the website itself.

French Correction is, you know,

is... is a mick take of "French Connection,"

so whatever you do as a mick take

is gonna be seen as slightly close to that, um, other brand.

It was nothing to try and take their business away from them,

um, their multimillion-pound business

being taken away by me

is absolutely ridiculous.

This is a letter from a lawyers called Davenport Lyons.

Davenport Lyons were a large London law firm,

um, who would have offices in many countries.

116 offices.

They would have hundreds, if not, thousands of lawyers...

4,500 people.

...uh, almost infinite resources.

Um, a very well known, big city law firm.

But I noticed in their letter the French Connection's lawyers

all 4,500 in 116 offices

had made a terrible mistake,

which for a comedian was comedy gold.

It said, "Our client's advertising budget for the UK alone exceeds

3.5 pounds per annum."

I do remember our conversation and I said,

"Dave it's obviously 3.5 million pounds not 3.50.

So I phoned my lawyer and said,

"Look. Let's write back and say

my advertising budget is twice as much as theirs.

Who are they? Why are they writing me?

I've never heard of them."

Probably the words I were to use would've been something like,

"Don't make a daft point."

But Dave's always looking for the comedy angle.

My lawyer said, "No."

I thought that they'd been totally unreasonable,

ridiculously heavy-handed.

I didn't think I'd done anything wrong.

It was supposed to be a mick take. That was it.

I didn't see any confusion

and they had a lot of money,

every letter was costing money, and at some point,

I was beginning to run out of money.

So I had to decide what I was gonna do.

Dave was a more or less penniless comedian...

Stand-up comedian...

Uh, quite funny, but no cash.

French Connection, multimillion pound business,

uh, to all intense and purposes, uh,

they have endless resources.

The can bury you in paper.

Not a fair fight.

Because I'd made them and I owned them.

And if, uh, I'd rather burn them

than have them get something for free.

What Dave did was he effectively discontinued

used of the website FrenchCorrection.net.

Um, French Connection appeared to be satisfied with that,

um, and that was the end of it.

All right, so, um,

the first brochure comes through the door..

I'd better say French Connection brochure.

So the first French Connection poster comes through the door...

What did I say? Poster.

No. What a load of rubbish.

So the French Connection...

Okay, so...

I'm ready. All right.

So I started to investigate French Connection.

Basically, I'd go into their shops,

and I'd go and have a look what the hell they were selling.

I signed up to their newsletter...

Their email newsletter...

I signed up to the, um, brochure.

I wanted to know who the hell was telling me

to give them things for free

and really using bullying tactics,

and what sort of people were they?

And what were they producing?

I was studying the enemy as I saw them.

And when the first brochure turned up

and I had a look through, I couldn't believe my eyes.

Because I saw a t-shirt

that had a logo on that looked exactly like the Ford Logo

with the F.C.U.K. in the Ford writing

in a big oval shape.

And I was like, "Hang on a minute.

They're saying the me

that I'm copying an idea of theirs

when they are copying other people's designs.

So just to make sure, I asked a few people what logo

they thought this t-shirt was,

and all of them said it was Ford.

So out of the kindness of my heart

I phone Ford

and told them of this terrible infringement that was going on.

And Ford were like, "Yeah, that is our logo in the t-shirt.

And I said, "Well, are you gonna have it withdrawn?"

And they said, "Well,

French Connection were quite a cool company

so the logo had a bit of kudos being, you know, F.C.U.K.,

and it might actually help Ford."

Until I said,

"It looks to me like it's saying, 'Fuck Ford, drive a Mercedes.'"

Then they suddenly realized in their heads that oh my God.

It says fuck. Yeah, fuck Ford.

Rather than it being good for Ford,

they realized it was bad for Ford,

and that's when they decided

that they were definitely gonna withdrawal it.

Within a week, every single t-shirt

that had the Ford Logo on

was withdrawn from French Connection's shops.

Every single brochure

with the Ford Logo t-shirt picture in was withdrawn.

So I was like, "Oh, great.

I've managed to get one withdrawn."

I was feeling, you know, a bit better about myself

that I've managed to get a bit of revenge

for the hypocrisy that was going on.

But then the next brochure turned up,

and I couldn't believe what I saw.

It was a picture that clearly had

a person with a t-shirt,

and it had the Pepsi Logo on it

with "fcuk" in it.

And I was like, "Oh my God.

I just can't believe that they've told me

not to do something that they are unbelievably blatantly doing,

not just once, but now twice."

So out of the kindness of my heart I phoned Pepsi

and told them of this terrible infringement.

And they didn't need telling "Fuck Pepsi, drink Coke,"

'cause they have enough people who've accidentally

drinking Coke instead of Pepsi as it is.

And they had that t-shirt withdrawn within a week.

Well, I felt a sense of achievement

that I'd got the Pepsi one withdrawn as well,

and it was, you know, I was thinking, "This is great,

but I've got to get on with my own life."

I've done so much work getting this withdrawn

that I'm hardly doing any comedy, I'm not doing anything else.

But then the next brochure turned up.

A t-shirt that was infringing

clearly on the Mars brand.

So out of the kindness of my heart

I phone Mars and they say,

"It's not a fuck a day, it's a Mars a day."

And they had it withdrawn straightaway.

They were actually furious about it.

Yeah, um, it went... It started with

"Cnut Attitude," um, because, uh,

cnut.com was already taken,

and I just thought "Attitude"... Having a bit of a attitude...

Was, was a good word.

But then I discovered that people can spell "attitude."

So there was a huge problem.

I studied history at university,

and was sort of doing 11th Century English history,

um, was reading these old text where

King Cnute was spelled C.N.U.T.

It was Neil that really started it.

He said, "Look.

You realize that there is a king called King Cnute?

I was just sharing with him

sort of what I'd spent three years at university learning.

And I just thought, you know, maybe, originally,

not enough people knew about it

to make it so people could find my website,

but, in fact,

quite a lot of people do know about King Cnute.

And we thought it was a lot cooler

that there really was a person that was a King of England

and that would be another sort of selling point.

So I then changed to "King Cnut."

We were taught that his named was spelt C.A.N.U.T.E.

But, in fact, the original spelling was C.N.U.T.

The C.A.N.U.T.E. is the phonetic spelling,

which means is how we say "Canute."

That's how we pronounce it.

But I recon that they changed his name

from C.N.U.T. to C.A.N.U.T.E.

because everybody kept calling him King Cun...

King Cnute, um, was known probably in his own lifetime

and certainly very soon afterwards,

as the Emperor of the North.

He was the King of England

from 1016 until 1035.

He was also King of Denmark and King of Norway.

Um, he was king of small parts of Sweden.

He has the King of Scotland

submitted to him as an Overlord.

Am also Kings of Ireland and he owned the Shetlands,

Orkneys, and um,

certainly, had some influence in Iceland as well.

By all accounts, a wise and calm and politically very astute leader

who really, um,

gave England a solid basis

and really helped her to establish

as a strong political and economic force in Europe.

The story that a lot of people know about King Cnute

is the idea of him turning back the waves

and what happened,

if we are to believe the stories,

is that Cnute set his throne on the shoreline

as the tide was coming in.

People believe that this was 'cause he said he was a King

and he could turn back the waves.

In fact, it was completely the reverse.

What it actually was was that Cnute was telling his subjects

"Even though I'm a King, God is above us all."

And indeed the tide came in and lapped around his feet.

We don't know what was wrong with Cnute.

Um, there was no evidence, but there appears to have been

no suggestion as there were with other deaths

of any wrong doing.

Um, he appears to have died peaceably.

I'm Joanna Courtney.

I'm a Novelist, and I'm a, I suppose,

a passionate Anglo-saxonist.

I thought,

well, maybe this was one that might not mind

because Durex are basically about f-cuking.

The more people f-cuk, the more... sell.

Um, but I thought I phone everybody else,

so I might as well phone them.

I got hold of Durex and they said,

"Were about family planning not fucking."

They were absolutely furious.

They were actually one of the the ones

that were really the most angry

about having their trademark infringed.

So they immediately took action,

and they were very appreciative

that I brought it to their attention.

Had t-shirts with...

Or...

Why French Connection wanted to be connected with KFC

I wasn't sure, because one's quite a smelly food, greasy food,

and the other one is a t-shirt.

But, you know, they obviously thought it was funny.

So I found out that Kentucky Fried Chicken's head office

was in New York.

Uh, when I finally got through I asked for the top person...

I was gonna say Ronald McDonald.

When I finally got through

I asked for the top person, Colonel Sanders,

and they said that he was dead.

So they put me through

to another area within the company

and they answered the phone Pepsi Cola and I was like,

"Um, I'm sorry, I've phoned the wrong people."

And they were like, "Why? Who are you trying to get hold of?"

And I said, "Kentucky Fried Chicken."

They said, "Yeah, we own Kentucky Fried Chicken."

And I was like, "You won't believe what has happened."

And they were absolutely livid.

They were like, "I can't believe that French Connection

have infringed on another one of our brands."

And they took action immediately.

To phone a company, first of all,

you have to find out where their head office is.

Then you find the number.

You get through to the receptionist,

you explain to the receptionist what is going on.

So then you get passed on to maybe marketing

and they go, "Oh, what's this about?"

And you have to explain the whole story again.

And they go, "Right, okay."

They're not really getting the gist of it.

Then they'll put me through

to maybe the public relations, um, or press.

And then finally you'll find someone

that is actually responsible

for the logo and the design and protection.

The person wanted to hear what I had to say.

They then, I have to send them a picture of the t-shirt,

um, so I'd email them a picture from the brochure.

Nike headquarters. How can I help you?

Hello, um, I was wondering if I could speak to

the trademark department?

The trademark...? Yeah.

And do you have a name for me?

Um, as in my name or the name of the person I need to speak to?

Yeah.

Um, I... I don't know the person I need to speak to,

but my name is Dave Griffiths.

Is that, is that helpful?

Okay. There are so many people here

that it's really difficult... Right.

Can you tell me it's about what short?

Right, well, there's been a definite infringement

of the trademark of Nike. Yeah.

And do you know a company called French Connection?

Uh, no. It's Clothing company,

Okay, I know that, of course.

And they have the joke F.C.U.K.

Okay. Okay. And you know what that looks like?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm a comedian

and I have another company and instead of F.C.U.K.

Yeah. I have C.N.U.T.

Now does that mean anything to you?

Does it? No.

It doesn't mean anything to you?

No, what is it? It's a rude word.

It's a very rude word. I can't actually explain it.

But in English it's like one word ruder than if I,

excuse my French, fuck.

It's actually a ruder word.

Right, but you said, C.N.U.T. Yes.

That's nothing. That means nothing, no.

Okay. But if you change the letters

and have C.U.N.T.

Oh.

Yeah, there was a lot of, uh,

word going round on the circuit...

On the comedy circuit... People were like going,

"Oh my God.

Dave's managing to get the better of a major corporation."

It was quite a, uh, buzz topic,

I suppose at the time,

and whenever anybody saw me, comedians that were going,

"How's it going with your

fight against French Connection?"

And I got an article in the Daily Mirror.

I also got an article in The Times "Getting Shirty."

And the great thing about The Times was that they started phoning

people like Pepsi and Mars and Ford

and making sure that they were with, you know,

withdrawing the t-shirts.

And what The Times did as well,

they spoke to a certain company

who were not best pleased with me.

Which is one of my favorite quotes.

The were beginning to find out and know that it was me

that was doing this.

Pick it up. I'm sorry.

No, it's all right.

I remember being filmed, actually, once...

Whilst we were training in the Inland revenue.

My name is Andrew Carter.

Some years ago now,

I did briefly have an online t-shirt business,

um, and I had a bit of an altercation with French Connection.

Right about that time, um, bumped into Dave Griffiths in the Internet.

And now I'm here being interviewed

as part of the film, I understand is being made

about what happened to him.

And then, The Family Cat, a band who was around

the time of Inspiral Carpets contacted me.

Uh, my name's Steve Jelbert.

In the early '90s I was a musician

in a band called The Family Cat,

uh, who were the first people to have the stupid idea

of putting the idea of putting the initials F.C.U.K. on a t-shirt

and selling it for money.

Um, and also, I got an email from someone called Phil Nugent

informing me of the fact that, um,

the Pepsi Logo T-shirts

had been withdrawn from their shop.

"Dear Dave"...

I mean, that's what he said originally.

All right.

I think it was probably Sparks because I'd read a story

about somebody who, he'd started running a line of t-shirts

that just said "No, I Don't Have A Fucking Loyalty Card,"

and he'd sold several hundred of these.

And I thought, "Oh, if you come up with the right slogan,

if you come up with the right logo,

maybe you could make a little bit of money.

It was never more than anything on the side.

I mean, um, never more than, you know,

half a dozen or a dozen t-shirts a week.

We kind of used the F.C.U.K. thing quite a lot.

It would be the catalog numbers, um, on the records.

It was a catalog number on our singles after awhile,

and, uh, you know, it was a backdrop to the target with the F.C.U.K. on it.

"I was in the states in September 2001

and French Connection was opening a Flagship store in San Francisco.

They bring out arrange of t-shirts

using the logos of Pepsi, Burger King, Mars and Durex.

It's not like they even had any intention

of trying to pass the logos off as similar.

The tags on the Pepsi T's read 'Pepsi Logo Tee.'"

Um, my bestseller for a short period of time

it was my F.C.E.K. design.

Which, um,

I would say that probably sold as many t-shirts

as all the other designs that I'd had put together.

Um, after it'd been selling quite well for several weeks,

um, I thought, well, perhaps I should try and trademark it.

Um, F.C.U.K is obviously a very terrible pun

on Family Cat UK.

It was our merch mans flatmate

who originally mentioned it, I think, at some point,

and, you know, suggested that we, you know, that we could, uh,

use this dreadful joke as some kind of, um,

signifier for the band.

"So I was surprised when I went into work one day

and was asked to remove all of that Pepsi Logo t-shirts from the shop floor

from the shelves in the stockroom,

anywhere they could be found, basically.

Our manager was livid.

He said something along the lines of...

'Get those f-cuking t-shirts out of this store.

I don't care if you f-cuking burn them. Just get rid of them."

So I submitted the trademark

to the trademark organization,

the government run patent and trademark office.

And then whilst I was waiting for that to go through,

um, out of the blue my mobile phone rang,

and it was somebody saying they were a lawyer

representing French Connection

and they had seen my application to register

"F.C.E.K." The Irish Connection as a trademark,

and they were going to oppose it.

I think it was Kev the drummer just said,

"Yeah, I see that French Connection ripped us off."

And it was just like... And we laughed...

Because, you know, I was just like

"Who the hell's gonna take such a stupid idea seriously?"

Yeah, but obviously they managed to market it

within an inch of its life.

"I did think this was something over an overreaction.

Until he'd told me that someone from Pepsi

had gone into one of their stores, mystery shopper style,

and asked for a Pepsi t-shirt.

Unfortunately, the member of staff he spoke to

had just come on shift

and had not been fully briefed as to the days events

and duly fetched one from the stockroom.

This little error apparently cost the store

somewhere in the region of 70,000 pounds.

And sure enough a few weeks later,

I got a letter from the patent and trademark's office

saying that my application had been opposed

and that it was going for a hearing.

We submitted the, uh, our case, um, for hearing

and a few weeks later,

uh, we received a letter

from the patents and trademark office

saying that I had been partially successful.

Uh, and bear it in mind, as I say,

I was selling a half a dozen t-shirts a week.

I just didn't have, you know,

the inclination or the money to take it forward

and I guess from that perspective,

French connection won.

We weren't, you know, upset,

but as it became kind of everywhere for a while,

and it just seemed to be this weak branding exercise.

But, yeah,

the Bad Hat split up by then,

which is why there was no point, you know,

there is no possibility of chasing after it.

I was very appreciative that he sent me that letter,

and I immediately wrote back in the email saying,

"Thank you very much" and, you know, "This is brilliant."

In the very strange moment, um, very surreal moment

from the phone call onwards and the letters

and the sudden realization

that on one side of the battle was French Connection

and a a very large firm of lawyers.

And on the other side of the battle

was me on my own.

We got to the point that after we split up

my father once said to me, "Your band nearly made it."

And I went, "Yeah, we did."

So close enough.

It was so clear to him that they were blatantly

just copying other peoples ideas.

I mean, including having the tag on the t-shirt

saying Pepsi Logo Tee.

I mean, that is just as blatant as you can get.

And what French Connection did next was unbelievable.

They stopped sending me my brochure.

The stopped sending me

the French Connection newsletter.

Rejection hurts.

One had been coming for several months,

the brochure would come through the door,

then the next month.

And I knew when the next one was coming out.

It just didn't arrive.

And then I realized

that no more emails were coming to me and I...

You get emails probably once every two weeks...

And there was none.

So I could tell immediately

that they'd taken me off their mailing list.

I remembered about the brochures not coming anymore.

I do remember that bit.

And I had to recruit my poor mother

to sign up for the French Connection brochure

and sign up for the email.

And I was living in Brixton at the time

so she was forwarding the email on

and sending me the brochure up there.

My mother was like, "What is all this on...

C.N.U.T... cnut stuff and F.C.U.K. fcu"...

And I was like, "Mum, Mum, Mum,

C.N.U.T., you remember King Cnute?

That's how it was spelled originally.

King of England 1016 tried to stop the"...

My Mum's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. King Cnute, that's right.

And what about F.C..." I said, "Mum, Mum,

that's an acronym for "French Connection UK."

She's like, "Oh, right."

And a month later she went, "Really looks like cunt and fuck."

♪ When we dance together in the pale moon light ♪

♪ There was something...

And that is Motorhead.

And I phoned Lemmy.

And Lemmy was absolutely furious.

He said, "I'm gonna smash in every French Connection window,

I'm gonna beat up every single director from French Connection."

And I was like, "My God.

This is almost getting out of control."

Perfect. Now let me, uh,

have you come back to reality.

First question. Yeah.

So you are...? Yeah.

And this was one of the best days of my life

because I have been one of the biggest AC/DC fans

ever since I was a kid.

And any band that makes millions from song titles like,

"Let Me Put My Love Into You," deserves every penny they get.

So I phoned AC/DC and they were absolutely livid.

I continue to just search for infringement.

I couldn't stop.

Once I got all them I just kept looking.

I kept looking in the brochure, I kept going into the shops.

Well, actually, I was going further and further

into getting things withdrawn.

Um, it was becoming a real obsession by this point.

And it didn't matter anymore whether it looked slightly like the brand.

I would, if it looked anything like it, I would phone them.

So IBM, phoned.

Coca Cola, phoned.

Dunkin' Donuts, phoned.

And if they didn't think that they were gonna want to withdraw the t-shirt,

I showed them the female version.

It's amazing how fast people that eat donuts all day move

when they saw a t-shirt like that.

And then, a weird combination of trademark infringement

which was the Wimpy Logo

and inside was the McDonald's Logo.

So I phoned both.

The irony of this whole story is that I'm actually

French Connection's best customer.

Because if I knew a t-shirt was gonna be withdrawn

I'd run into French Connection and buy a t-shirt.

I sometimes bought two or three of the same

if they're in different colors or they had a different...

Slightly different design.

They should be very pleased with my custom.

I've got them to where they are today.

And the worse thing about

having all these t-shirts out for the movie

is that, uh, I got to fold them all afterwards.

Can you do me a favor and introduce yourself one more time?

Uh, I'm Richard. I worked for French Connection

from mid '96 to late '98,

and I was their in house graphic designer.

Um, I'd been working, um, at a forecasting consultancy

in, um, in Islington.

There was one particular women's wear designer who I got along very well with

and she'd been working freelance for French Connection as well in house,

and they needed some graphics.

They were a successful high-street retailer.

They were the top-end of the market.

They'd gone from relatively niche

to being actually quite, uh,

quite important presence on the high-street.

Oh God, yeah, yeah. It was a really great place to work.

Everybody there was, um, was really good.

Really exciting place to, um, develop new ideas.

Everyone worked really hard.

Everybody knew that it was a good working environment.

It was a good professional environment.

I think that it was a very healthy environment as well.

Um, it was never about reinventing the brand.

The brand was actually very, very strong.

The product was very strong,

and they were going in the right direction.

I was never asked to sit down and rebrand the company.

It didn't need that.

Uh, my role was to make it better, make it work better.

One of the problems with French connection

is that it's a very, very long word

and a bit of a mouthful,

and a big part of my job was the t-shirts,

uh, men's and women's wear, kid's wear.

You needed something that was quite visually strong.

And it's, uh... it's, uh... The good thing about t-shirts

is that they are a low-value, high-return product.

Sell more t-shirts, more branding,

and it's actually advertising a brand as well.

So we needed to... To really make that work.

The actual F.C.U.K.

literally came from the head of note paper from fax.

We didn't have email. Everything was done by fax.

There were faxes all over the world

and there was a tray of paper that said,

"F.C.U.K., F.C. Hong Kong, H.K.,

F.C.N.Y., F.C. New York."

And I think that that's just... that all it was...

And it was just a joke in the studio.

I never thought it would go in the shops.

Stephen saw it and liked it,

thought it was funny, got the joke,

and he was on his way to Littlewood

to talk about putting product into a catalog

and they hated it, they thought it was awful,

uh, and he'd thought that was great.

He thought it was really funny, came back and said,

"Yeah, we like it. We'll do it."

Oh, it was massive.

It was, um,

partly because you could talk about it.

I mean, when was the last time

anyone actually talked about a t-shirt?

I think it was also summer.

It was, um, a very accessible, easy product,

it was funny,

and it was just, you know, it just worked really, really well.

Everything that they did in the advertising already existed.

Either in, um, in garments or in prints or in press.

It was already in the public domain.

It had already... People had already seen it

and happy for quite some time.

I can completely understand why that mythology

for about five or six years

grew up about the,

the marriage of French Connection and Trevor Beatie

because that was part of the job,

and it did the stores and the brand a lot of good as well.

Um, and I think that it was...

Beatie was credited over and over and over again,

because you would associate him with that

because that was the whole point of it.

Um, I've read interviews where he said,

"Yes, of course, I did that."

And I've read interviews with him he said, "No, I didn't do that."

No, I wouldn't, well, not when I was there.

Um, I think...

Everybody in the office when I was there

was in mid to late 20's, so we would've been born in the late '60s.

So we would've gone through the '70s.

We would've gone through punk and things like that.

It was perfectly legitimate and respectable to take something old,

rip it up, and make it into something new.

This is, you know, call it homage,

call it heritage, call it pastiche or parody.

It was a good thing.

Recreating something and making it fresh

is a positive thing to do.

It's not copying. He wouldn't copy things.

It just didn't work like that. It was quite virtuous.

Okay.

Um, I could...

I didn't really follow it that much after I'd left.

I could... when I would eventually... I'd see things

that were, were close, like, uh, just too close.

I thought, "Well, that's actually, quite clumsy."

And, of course, you've created a thirst for an F.C.U.K. product.

People liked it. They got the joke.

People wanted to buy into it and there's like, "What's next?

We want more. We want more. We want more."

And, you know, you just had to keep turning this stuff out.

And, um,

it's quite hard to keep it fresh

every single time.

Well, you know, uh, it's, well, the funny thing

is I've never actually been able to tell anybody I did it

because they don't believe you.

I... there was one occasion

about a year after I'd left French Connection when I was working,

and I'm still working with a retail consultancy,

and we put together, um, a credentials pitch for quite a big job

and they pulled up all my stuff and said,

"He didn't do that. I know who did that.

My cousin's second next-door neighbor did that.

This is all not true."

And people just don't believe

that there were 50 people working behind the scenes developing this.

It really was that slapdash. We just...

We just did it and pulled it together.

Um, from the Cat. From the Cat.

It never happened.

I knew who they were vaguely in the background

because I'd liked the music, but I'd never heard them.

They had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

It... it's just a coincidence, a complete coincidence.

I didn't know anything about that until years, years later.

And I completely absolutely nothing to do with French Connection.

So antidotally, um, uh, after I'd left,

I was told by somebody who had actually

had quite a city position who I was very...

Still am very friendly with...

That two or three years before I joined the company,

the warehouse and the wholesalers in central London

had a five a side football team,

and the team was called F.C.U.K.

I'm not entirely sure.

I believe that he was originally gonna call it French Collection.

Even though it's an English company,

they thought they'd get a bit of a cute aspire,

pretending that they were French.

He saw, I believe the film, The French Connection

and he liked it so much, he thought

that that was a better name than French Collection,

and so he called it French Connection,

so copying the name of a film.

Other people will say

it's because he was married to a French woman.

Um, I don't think it really matters.

Great film.

Yeah, and as with Stephen's ex, she was lovely.

Nicole. Great woman.

The double whammy on 20th Century Fox

was that they had originally made the film

The French Connection.

And now...

So out of the kindness of my heart,

I phoned 20th Century Fox and they say,

"Is that Dave Griffiths?"

And I'm like, "Yes, it is."

And they were like, "We've heard about you.

Are you phoning about the 20th Century Fox

infringement by French Connection?"

"Yes, I am."

I was like, "Yeah, this is good, they already know who I am."

And they went,

"Well, we're not gonna do anything about it.

We're not gonna play your game.

And you're only phoning us for your own benefit

to get revenge on French Connection.

So we're not gonna play your game."

And I was like, "So you're not gonna take your...

Remove your t-shirts from the stores?"

"No, we're quite happy with it

because they've got a bit of kudos for us,

and also, their models look really good.

And so we'd be quite happy for them

to infringe on our logo."

I started to learn about trademark law

after I received that letter.

The guy lost the case

of the French...

And I knew that if one company allows another company

to a fringe on their logo

and they don't protect it,

it opens the floodgates for other companies

to infringe on their logo.

Would they be okay with that?

Because they were okay with French Connection

infringing 20th Century Fox,

so it must be okay for me to infringe their trademark as well.

And I sent them a picture of the model

that I was gonna use to model the t-shirt.

So every single t-shirt was withdrawn

and every brochure with the picture

of the fantastic model in the 20th Century fcuk t-shirt

was withdrawn.

Oh, goodness.

Um...

That's a very difficult question.

Um, I don't know.

I think it's just happened over the years,

and I think it's just become more...

More obvious as the years have gone on, really.

But I can't remember,

I mean, I don't remember

that when he was younger, really.

I think that's become a thing

now since that really, of latter times.

But I don't know. I couldn't like to say when it... when it was.

I would say yes.

I would say he's quite obsessive about things, yep.

Not everything.

Certainly not about tiding up.

Yeah, I'm totally obsessed,

but I'm totally obsessed with any injustice.

So doesn't matter if it's French Connection

or the government in...

Bosnia or whatever. Pfst.

He definitely has a personality which, uh,

uh, yeah, Dave's personality is, uh,

it can be one single track,

so he'll get something in his mind

and he will just run with it and run with it

and run with it and run with it.

And you just hope that what he's running with

is, uh, productive, won't destroy him.

Yeah, I didn't know, I mean, you know,

many people have said to me,

I've got an obsessive compulsive disorder,

um, well, an obsession as such,

um, I've become obsessed about things.

If something was wrong or if I didn't like something,

you know, I'd obsess about it,

and I'd go over it and over it and go over it.

Or if I got into trouble, I'd go over it, over it, over it.

If something was unjust, I would go over that.

And I couldn't let go of things.

Well, he didn't seem to be able to get away from it.

He's, uh, it's always there.

I don't know. I was just born with an awareness.

Where things were right, when things were wrong,

and if they seemed wrong to me,

like someone being bullied,

then I knew immediately it was wrong,

and I'd have to try and intervene.

I couldn't leave things.

Whereas a lot of people would go,

"Well, that's how things are."

It's definitely there, you know he's a,

I don't know, he's very, um, clear about,

he's got very strong set of principles.

He'll always be quick to point out any kind of hypocrisy.

Yeah, he doesn't like injustice,

No. It's...

Yeah, not one little bit.

I presume my obsession with injustice

must have come through my parents.

I mean, that's how most things come through,

so they obviously taught me

what was right and what was wrong...

What they felt was right and what was wrong...

And, uh...

my father always said, you know, if you felt injustice

then you should always fight against it

and every person, you know,

is equal and that, you know,

there shouldn't be a situation

where someone, for instance, is bullied.

That just isn't right.

Everybody should be treated with the same amount of respect.

I do know that he has become more and more determined

as he's got more into it.

Never seen anyone, well, I don't think,

work as hard as David.

It's taken over his life, really, I'd say.

The negative is that it takes

your total focus away from anything else.

I mean, I spent nearly

all my money on this

and didn't go out,

didn't go on holiday.

I just purely fought this

and put all my resources, energy and money into this,

into fighting this cause.

I got a letter from the council for...

Threatening me with prison

for not paying my council taxing time.

So, um, I'd obviously let everything slip.

I haven't paid for ages. I haven't paid on any bills.

I was getting red bills left right and center.

Well, I worry in that I think,

um, it does take over his life a bit too much, probably.

Now all those phone calls he made

and when it became, you know,

almost stopping Dave living his life and doing,

perhaps, some of the other important things.

Hah-hah!

Yeah, they sat down and said, "Dave...

We're gonna tell you"...

So, no, I just. They know me.

They know that I will just carry on until I finish

and feel that the situation has been resolved.

And, you know, I do think it's gotten in the way of him

maybe getting a Nobel prize except for something else.

But, um...

Then French Connection did something

even more unbelievable

than stopping sending me my brochure.

So one day I was going into French Connection

as I usually did every other week or every week even,

uh, looking through the t-shirts

to check if there are any new infringements.

I saw a design that was actually mine.

It had W.N.A.K... wnak on it.

The f-cukers had stolen my wnak.

So I got the t-shirt,

I got this top and I went and I bought it immediately

and came home and I was like,

"What the hell am I gonna do about this?"

Yes, subsequently I remember getting a phone call from Dave to say,

"Duncan, guess what? Good news."

You could almost see his little eyes light up over the phone.

So I sent them a letter.

I sent them almost exactly the same

trademark infringement letter that they sent me.

All I needed to do was really simple,

was change my name for their name.

"Dear Sirs.

It has recently come to our client's attention

that your client is openly selling

on its website and in its shops,

t-shirts featuring the slogan wnak.

Our client has significant goodwill in these marks

and your client's actions are a clear case

of exploiting our client's reputation and goodwill.

We look forward to hearing from you."

The argument is exactly the same.

It's our goodwill. It's our mark.

You've copied it.

You couldn't possibly have got it elsewhere.

It's unique to us,

um, you're passing off as us.

You're causing confusion in the minds of the public.

When they came back to me and then responded,

um, and they were absolutely furious.

And the result was the letter

denying, uh, that there was any cause of action,

denying that we had any sufficient goodwill, uh, in the mark,

that we really weren't selling hundreds of thousands of units.

And they latched directly onto that.

They put,

Are you seriously suggesting that

500 t-shirts that I'd sold of wnak

was regarded as a trademark infringement?

And I was like,

Yeah, it is that 500 t-shirts

is quite a lot for a company of my size.

And they were obviously worried because they justified it

by saying that by having the dot between

the W. The N. The A. And the K.,

it was not my wnak, it was their wnak,

and by having the F.C.U.K. in this coat of arms,

which I'd never seen before and an anchor underneath,

it was their wnak, and it clearly said

it was made by French Connection.

Yeah, again,

it's a question of, uh,

I suspect a question of might and resources

and the next step,

the only next step that a lawyer could have offered

would have been to commence court proceeding,

go to the high court, let's get it on.

And that's very expensive.

And is Dave really gonna spend 50,000, 100,000?

Probably not.

Dave's, uh, a far better route to Dave,

we have been some other way

of getting back or fighting French Connection

that did not involve going to court.

Now this wasn't there F.C.U.K., this was my F.C.U.K.

because there was clearly a dot

between the F., the C., the U., and the K.,

and it was clearly made by

King Cnut.

There was no confusion whatsoever.

I never saw another wnak t-shirt

in a French Connection store,

all the t-shirts with wnak on in the brochures

I never saw again.

On the website was never seen again.

So I believe

that within a very short period of time,

they decided they'd better withdraw the wnak t-shirt.

And I felt ecstatic.

Probably what happened, I would guess,

that Dave's just a minor annoyance to them at the stage

and each of their t-shirt designs

only has a certain shelf life anyway.

They're continually updating their... their stock,

and I suspect they just ran that one through.

I certainly don't ever recall receiving a letter

from Davenport Lyons saying, "You got us. Here."

Um, yeah, sure. We'll withdraw our stock.

They would never have admitted that.

But it may have had some bearing on it.

I found out about this

because someone phoned me and said,

"Have you seen... you're in a...

You've got a full-page spread in the Metro newspaper today.

They've mentioned you in a court case."

So I ran down to this shop and, uh,

I would say bought, but it's free,

and got a free copy of the article,

and I was amazed that, uh,

that they used me as a defense.

Um, it was very likely that he was gonna lose

because French Connection was obviously,

had pumped a lot of money, though employing a lot of people,

the chances that a judge would go,

"Yeah, I agree."

Let's, uh, let's stop the trademark.

Let's unemploy loads of people,

a big company that supposedly helps the economy,

um, the chances that you're gonna get it overturned

after several years as well as them trading is very small.

French Connection's barrister

in French Connection's defense,

the first thing he said was,

"Why aren't you taking Cnut to court?"

Because their brand

is much worse than ours.

In the ruling made by this brilliant judge called

Judge Arnold QC...

"In a decision made public yesterday

Judge Richard Arnold QC

compared the fcuk trademark with cnut.

'Cnut was not a swear word, ' he said.

"And on the Cnut t-shirt website makes reference

to the Danish born

King Cnute who ruled England from 1016 to 1035."

The website displays the slogan...

So I got a recommendation in the court for my t-shirt

and got a judge

to infringe on the Mr. Kipling Logo

at the same time.

So I phoned Mr. Kipling.

I decided that I wanted to work out

how much it would likely to have cost French Connection

because it had cost me by this time,

about 10,000 pounds I reckoned, uh, fighting them.

It was me, the accountant, the lawyer.

I felt that was a fairly fair, um, return

for my 10,000 that I'd spent fighting them.

Yeah, obviously that's just a, a guess

of everything, but we have no idea.

Um, just from

the t-shirts being withdrawn

and the brochures being destroyed,

um, as well as the lawyers letters

and everything else that they have to do,

not including the compensation

the French Connection had to give to the companies

for what had been sold,

we worked out that it would probably cost French Connection

in the region of 3.5 million pounds.

Uh, I will never stop.

If I go past a French Connection shop,

I will pop in and have a look

because there'd been so many

infringements that I've caught them doing

over the years that I don't believe

that they will ever stop.

Um...

I need to know that they've stopped doing

what they told me not to do.

I guess it depends how you define victory.

Um, uh, he has done everything at his disposal

to call to account a large corporation,

uh, who Dave sees as, uh, wronging him or bullying him,

and so he's using

whatever, uh, means that are at his disposal

to, uh, to try and get even, to try and get back.

Um, incredibly persistent person.

Or French Connection are incredibly persistent, one or the other.

Um, but, yeah, I'd suppose you just don't,

you know, don't let them off the,

you know, let them off the hook.

If you can continue to tweak their tail

and cost them a lot of money,

um, you know, for a relatively modest outlay yourself,

then, yeah, a good idea.

Yeah, 'cause, yeah, I think it's important to, uh,

to prick the pomposity of the unimaginative.

No, I like that kind of thing.

Everyone loves an underdog.

And Dave is that underdog.

Um, hmm...

"I don't know" is the answer.

But I'm not quite sure

where he's quite gonna go on from, from this.

If he continues,

whether he's going to take up some other cause

which is quite possible,

and I think if he does

he will go into it full... You know, fully,

as he's done with this.

But otherwise, I think it'd be nice for him to have a rest after this

'cause he certainly will need it.

When I was at the company, we had a conversation

between us in the design studio

about where the F.C.U.K. would go,

because, you know, I honestly didn't think it would last more than a year.

I didn't particularly like it, and I still don't.

It's not my kind of product.

And the... it was all about F.C. and not about fuck.

That was the important thing.

We would never cross that boundary,

and we always had to be very clear about that.

The whole trademarky thing was about the fact it said F.C.

Um, the conversation went along the lines of,

Well, at least they'll never be a motherfucker.

Which of course, unfortunately there has been and worse.

And I think that's a great shame because

the product and the brand are better than that,

and they're bigger than that.

In fact, they probably wish

they'd never met Dave or written the letter

in the first place, I suspect.

All the letters that went backwards and forwards,

all the time spent, all the stress,

the hair loss, all the double standards,

them still taking the higher ground

all the way though, even even though they'd been

infringing on hundreds of people's ideas,

all the money

that was involved,

the, um, bullying

and the ridiculousness of the whole thing,.

If they had just ignored

this little boy who had a t-shirt dream,

none of this would've happened.

So is that it?

Yes, why not?

It should be... it'd be wonderful to have it out there.

Wouldn't it when the credit are rolling at the end...

"And here's the lawyer's band."

♪ I know what you're going to say ♪

♪ Go ahead and say it anyway

♪ You promised you'd sail the seven seas ♪

♪ New sleeve stripes and sail away ♪

♪ You promised your lover

♪ that she would see sense over time ♪

♪ The ship sailed out to sea

♪ You hesitated dock side

♪ And it's such a shame

♪ Dinner's spoiled again

♪ It's no good wishing on tomorrow ♪

♪ When your conversations are full of yesterday ♪

♪ It's always the same

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ It's always the same ♪

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ Little sister you gained an attitude ♪

♪ Don't let the welfare go to your head ♪

♪ Go raise your handsome young son ♪

♪ Change your outfit get out of bed ♪

♪ And it's such a shame

♪ Dinner's spoiled again

♪ It's no good wishing for tomorrow ♪

♪ When your conversations are full of yesterday ♪

♪ It's always the same

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ It's always the same ♪

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ 'Cause I can't take anymore of this madness ♪

♪ I'm leaving today

♪ The front door bell's ringing out ♪

♪ Somebody come to take me away ♪

♪ It's always the same

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ It's always the same

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ Conversation's the same

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same

♪ Situation's the same

♪ Nothing's gonna change

♪ It's always the same