The longest civil case in British history is the 'McLibel' trial, which began on 28 June 1994 and was continuing in summer 1996. McDonald's Corporation are suing Helen Steel and Dave Morris for libel over a factsheet entitled "What's wrong with McDonald's?".

THE BUSINESS OF APPLYING PRESSURE

This satirical TV panel game about the week's news had an item about the McMunchies sandwich bar and Mr Ronald McDonald of Aberdeen. In the odd one out round again, four pictures were shown to Greg Proops, a comedian and one of the panellists. The pictures were of:

(1) Viz magazine
(2) The McMunchies sandwich bar and Mary Blair, its proprietor
(3) The skyline of Aberdeen with an arrow above pointing down
(4) Martin Clunes (from the BBC TV sitcom "Men Behaving Badly")


Well, Greg guessed it - the odd one out is Martin Clunes. Clunes is suing Bernard Ingham for libel for calling him (in his column in a tabloid newspaper) "a foul-mouthed yob". All the other three relate to litigation to do with McDonald's.

As a finale to the item, Angus Deayton (the panel game host) read out the Viz originial of the laundry/Oxfam top tip, followed by the McDonald's version used in a recent ad campaign - they are almost identical. Angus then quoted a McD's spokesperson - basically he made a joke about how their explanation for the 'apparent' plagarism was clearly all a load of bullshit.

A giant yellow footprint on our landscape [Another article about the "McMunchies" affair and McDonald's attempt to assert dominion over the prefix "Mc".] The image of McDonald's has already been tarnished badly by the so-called McLibel case in which bully-boy McDonald's have been trying to squash two harmless protesters and which has gained McDonald's more bad publicity than it would be possible to buy.

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