Comedian Joe Lycett Legally Changes His Name To Hugo Boss

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Joe Lycett has legally changed his name to Hugo Boss – and the reason isn’t as silly as you may think. 

The 31-year-old comedian, famed for his stand-up and appearances on 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Taskmaster, took to Twitter to expose Hugo Boss – the fashion company – for its alleged litigation against a slew of small businesses and charities.

In order to really ‘get his own back’ and support those affected, he published a letter from the UK Deed Poll Office – showing his full committal to ‘absolutely and entirely renounce, relinquish and abandon the use of my said former name’.

Hugo Boss, the company, was founded in 1924. It employs more than 14,000 people across 127 countries, and raked in a whopping £2.3 billion in 2018 across all its 439 shops. However, reportedly, the brand isn’t taking kindly to others using its name.

Boss, or the comedian formerly known as Joe Lycett, wrote on Twitter: 

So @HUGOBOSS (who turnover approx $2.7 billion a year) have sent cease and desist letters to a number of small businesses & charities who use the word ‘BOSS’ or similar, including a small brewery in Swansea costing them thousands in legal fees and re-branding.

It’s clear that @HUGOBOSS HATES people using their name. Unfortunately for them this week I legally changed my name by deed poll and I am now officially known as Hugo Boss. All future statements from me are not from Joe Lycett but from Hugo Boss. Enjoy.

This full endeavour will be featuring on Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back on Channel 4 – a hilarious show in which he ‘fights for the rights of the Great British consumer’. He’ll soon reveal a ‘brand new product as Hugo Boss’ (his Wikipedia page has already been updated).

He’s been met with a tidal wave of support online, with one user writing: ‘Shithousery of the very highest order, I salute you good sir!’ Others have paid due attention to his new amazing signature, with one fan writing: ‘Absolutely incredible. I’m living for his new penis-looking signature.’

The name change comes after Boss Brewing owners Sarah John and Roy Allkin said they were tied up in £10,000-worth of legal fees after trying to trademark their business’s name, as per Wales Online. When charity DarkGirlBoss tried to trademark its name in 2018, it also received a legal letter from the fashion brand.

In a statement provided to UNILAD, Hugo Boss described itself as an ‘open-minded company’, adding: ‘We would like to clarify that we do not oppose the free use of language in any way and we accept the generic term “boss” and its various and frequent uses in different languages.’

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The statement continued:

We welcome the comedian formerly known as Joe Lycett as a member of the HUGO BOSS family.

As he will know, as a ‘well-known’ trademark (as opposed to a ‘regular’ trademark) HUGO BOSS enjoys increased protection not only against trademarks for similar goods, but also for dissimilar goods across all product categories for our brands and trademarks BOSS and BOSS Black and their associated visual appearance.

Following the application by Boss Brewing to register a trademark similar to our ‘well-known’ trademark, we approached them to prevent potential misunderstanding regarding the brands BOSS and BOSS Black, which were being used to market beer and items of clothing.

Both parties worked constructively to find a solution, which allows Boss Brewing the continued use of its name and all of its products, other than two beers (BOSS BLACK and BOSS BOSS) where a slight change of the name was agreed upon.

Boss, the comedian, also took a jab at the brand’s infamous production of SS uniforms for the Nazis during the Second World War, writing: ‘Hugo Boss did not historically manufacture uniforms for the Nazis. Sorry, THIS Hugo Boss did not historically manufacture uniforms for the Nazis.’

The fashion brand apologised for any ‘harm or hardship’ inflicted upon labourers at the factory at the time.

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Cameron Frew

After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.