A good joke under any title will still make ’em laugh — which is just as well, as a comic naming-war has broken out at the Edinburgh Fringe. The stars of Channel 4’s Nineties cult improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? — including Clive Anderson, Josie Lawrence and Greg Proops — will be reuniting at the festival this August.
They were going to call their gig Whose Live Show Is It Anyway? but Hat Trick, the company behind the TV show — as well as other hits from Father Ted to Have I Got News For You — has called in the lawyers and demanded that the Edinburgh show change its name, despite programmes, tickets and posters having already been printed. It also insisted that the show’s promoters make no connection between the live show and the Channel 4 one.
Combining promotional hyperbole with legal obligations, the blurb for the show at the McEwan Hall now reads: “This improv show will be nothing like you have seen before.” Its new title? What Does the Title Matter Anyway?
Whose Line Is It Anyway? is itself a twist on an old television programme called What’s My Line? and Brian Clark’s 1972 play Whose Life Is It Anyway?
Hat Trick didn’t return The Londoner’s calls. Anderson is optimistic about the run, up to a point. “I’m very enthusiastic,” he said when the show was announced last month. “But if you ask me again 10 minutes before we start, I’ll be saying, ‘Why have I agreed to do this? It’s going to be a disaster’.”
