Catherine Bougon had always shrugged aside the inevitable jokes, nudges and winks about her surname, which translates as “grumpy”.

When she learnt, however, that a mainstream television station was to call the heroes of a new fictional programme Les Bougon — and that they were to be a family of scroungers, fraudsters and alcoholics — she could bear it no longer. She formed an association with 60 or so other people called Bougon and went to court in an attempt to persuade the private M6 channel to change the title of its series, which began last night.

In a verdict that made the real-life Bougons grumpier than ever, a court in Nanterre, west of Paris, threw out their demand on a technicality yesterday. For the sake of the children, the association pledged to appeal; its lawyer, André Meillassoux, said that if the programme kept its title “little Bougons will go through hell in their school playgrounds”.

The Bougons are particularly upset at the way their namesakes are portrayed in the programme, which has been adapted from a French-Canadian series.

The fictional Bougons specialise in obtaining welfare benefits, mainly by lying. They steal from supermarkets, avoid work, have beer and cigarettes for breakfast, sleep around, refuse to pay their rent and fiddle the electricity meter. Le Monde said that the parasitic family was a breath of fresh air on French networks burdened by squeaky-clean characters, politically correct storylines and predictably happy endings.

Mrs Bougon disagreed, saying that the hugely popular Canadian series had made life a misery for people called Bougon in Quebec. “It's come to mean a tax cheat because of the programme,” she said. “In fact, they don't call them cheats any more, they call them bougons. There is a newspaper headline which says '20,000 bougons caught by the tax inspector'.”

Pierre Bougon, another of the plaintiffs, said: “Whenever I say what I'm called, I add that I have the name but not the personality. Now we are going to be associated with dishonest, vulgar cheats. It's going too far.”

But Mr Karmann dismissed the criticism, saying: “I would have thought there are more shocking things in the world today.” He said that if the Bougons' lawsuit was upheld, people called Simpson could be justified in demanding that the celebrated American series change its name, too.

Commentators said that the dispute highlighted a growing sensitivity over ancient names in French society — and a tendency to go to court to settle such questions.

In 2000, for instance, 47 men called Monsieur Leneuf took legal action against 9 Telecom, the telecommunications operator, over an advertisement that portrayed their namesake as an idiot. They won, and the company was ordered to tone down the character.

Named and shamed

— A US comedian called Ant began a £16 million lawsuit last month against Ant and Dec, claiming that association with the presenters was damaging his reputation

— In 2004 Law & Order was sued for $15 million by Ravi Batra, a lawyer who claimed that a crooked lawyer who shared his first name and baldness bore similarities to him. The case continues

— Ross Rebagliati, an Olympic snowboarder, won a settlement from CTV in Canada claiming that a gold medallist in Whistler bore libellous similarities to him

Source: Times archives

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