Professional ‘funny man’ Keith Chegwin is facing the wrath of fellow comedians for tweeting one-liners that don’t appear to be all that original.

Simon Evans (you might have to Google him like I did) was the first to take umbrage after Chegwin, who has nearly 39,000 followers, tweeted: ‘My auntie Marge has been ill for so long we changed her name to “I can’t believe she’s not better.” This particular joke is said to belong to one Milton Jones (I had to Google him too). Evans responded, ‘Cheggers old chap, you are no doubt acting out of good intentions, but these jokes are written by professionals. It’s not really on to distribute them like this, without credit.’

Comedian Ed Byrne promptly jumped on the bandwagon with, ‘I think you’re wrong not crediting your sources. Of the last four jokes you tweeted, one was Milton Jones and one was Lee Mack – both working comics.’ Chegwin, quite bizarrely, also stands accused of using jokes nicked from The Simpsons.

It doesn’t really help matters that last year Chegwin was quoted in an interview as saying, ‘If you’ve not got your own, nick a gag! That’s what all the top comedians do.’

Chegwin, surprised but not exactly repentant, retorted to his critics: ‘I’ve really upset these stand-up comics. Most of them doesn’t [sic] write good stuff. They just refresh your memory.’

Got to love Byrne’s swift come-back to that – ‘That’s the command of English that’s kept you off our screens all this time.’

Of course, bad reactions online can eventually have positive outcomes – in this instance that would be Keith’s follower count suddenly rocketing up a couple of thousand, leading him to tweet breathlessly, ‘Bloody hell, my followers have gone up in 24 hours…Thanks to all the comics who slagged me off.’

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