That's my joke you're telling!

There's something of a brouhaha brewing over last week's Have I Got News For You.

Not only has gay rights group Outrage alleged that the gag that Elton John "sees little bit of himself in Billy [Elliot]" offensively peddles an image of homosexuals as predatory paedophiles ¼ as detailed in this news story - but now a little-known Scottish comic has claimed that host Dara O'Briain stole one of his gags.

Mac Star wrote to O'Briain's agents Off The Kerb demanding compensation and threatening legal action because he used a joke while hosting the show that Star has been telling on the Scottish circuit for a couple of years.

The gag was that Adolf Hitler would have been useless at 'rock, scissors, paper' because he always chose paper, like the Nazi salute - but Churchill would always defeat him because his famous V-sign represented scissors.

Now O'Briain has hit back, saying the joke was written by HIGNFY's team of writers independently.

"It's bad luck for him, and a shame he's lost a very good joke," he told me. "But this sort of thing is going to happen.

"Separate people can come up with the same gag, and if he's writing lines that good, he should probably get in touch with the producers and ask for a writing job."