A few weeks ago, a small Breton brasserie with three employees was making headlines at the national level. For ten years, it has been marketing beers whose names are a play on words based on celebrities. Among them was the John Lemona drink with lemony notes obviously inspired by the name of John Lennon, former member of the Beatles, assassinated in 1980. However, Yoko Ono, the widow of the latter, put the brewery on notice, asking to expressly cease the sale of its beers John Lemon. Aurélien Picard, the director of the company, therefore had to sell off the 5,000 bottles he had left in stock in record time. As he confided last April 30 on radio ICI Breizh Izel, he risked “up to 250 euros per day” fine.
Why did Mireille Mathieu attack a Breton brewer?
Obviously, this story reached the ears of another celebrity: Mireille Mathieu. The singer with the legendary bowl cut is also entitled to a beer inspired by her name: the Mireille Mafieux, “the contraband brunette”. “Indeed, that didn’t make him laugh”assured the artist’s agent, Hervé Marc, Here Vaucluse. “She is always very shocked by this kind of exploitation which hijacks her image and her name. I think she takes it as a lack of respect“for her part explained Maître Christine Aubert-Maguéro, the lawyer for the 79-year-old singer.
Aurélien Picard therefore received, once again, a letter of formal notice, in which Mireille Mathieu’s lawyer requests the destruction of the bottles as well as the cessation of their marketingin addition to questioning him on how he could “repair the patrimonial and moral damage suffered by Madame Mireille Mathieu as a result of this unauthorized exploitation”. “Such exploitations (…) would harm (…) the image and reputation of Madame Mireille Mathieu since the name Mireille Mafieux, followed by the words ‘La brune de contrabande’ affixed to an alcoholic drink, directly associates her name and her image with the world of the mafia and the crime, or a particularly offensive reference and contrary to the public image of my client“is written in this letter dated May 7.
An amicable solution found between the Breton brewer and Mireille Mathieu
This time, Aurélien Picard should do better than with Yoko Ono. He wrote a handwritten letter of apologysent directly to Mireille Mathieu, in which he explained that he was acting only out of humor, while showing that his tax notice was “quasiment à zéro”. “She read the letter and given this approach, we will not take legal action, it stops there”said his lawyer to 20 Minutes before adding: “Anyway, my client doesn’t do this for money or to annoy peopleshe just wants to be respected”. Today, the dark beer is still on sale, but without the name or the visual associated with it. As for the Breton brewer, who was looking “just to have a little humor”he confided to Parisian hope that the série noire s’arrête lí.
