Anyone for a ‘Vera Lynn’? Dame’s battle over gin name

Vera Lynn may be Cockney rhyming slang for gin — but the indomitable 102-year-old Forces’ Sweetheart is now battling a global drinks company that wants to call its new alcoholic tipple by her name.

The Liverpool-based Halewood International has applied to trademark ‘Vera Lynn’ after the singer (pictured in 1947), who found fame during World War II singing such moraleboosting classics as We’ll Meet again, There’ll always Be an england and The White Cliffs Of Dover.

‘My mother has told the company “absolutely not” because she doesn’t drink gin and certainly would not put her name to anything alcoholic,’ says Dame Vera’s daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones, 73, who lives with her mother in Sussex. ‘She is very upset.’

not even the brand’s offer to donate ‘a few bottles of the Vera Lynn Gin’ to her favourite charity has softened her resolve.

In fact, Dame Vera has instructed her lawyers to oppose the application to register her name as a trademark.

‘There is no connection between this Liverpool alcoholic drinks company and Dame Vera Lynn, and she instructed us to oppose their application, which they made without asking or notifying her,’ says Charles Lloyd, a partner at law firm Taylor Wessing. ‘We put in evidence that they’re trading off the goodwill associated with Dame Vera’s name and international reputation without any justification.’ The judgment will be announced within the next three months. Halewood, whose range of alcoholic spirits includes Christopher Wren Gin and The Pogues Irish Whiskey, claims to be the fastest-growing independent alcoholic drinks company in the UK, with a turnover of £350 million. a spokesman tells me: ‘We applied for “Vera Lynn” as a trademark for gin. The application was made due to the fact “Vera Lynn” is rhyming slang for gin, much like the registered “ruby Murray” for curry trademark.’ Dame Vera, whose face was projected on to the white cliffs of Dover to mark her 100th birthday, has just been made a lifetime member of the royal British Legion, in recognition of her support for the veterans’ charity. Virginia adds: ‘Ma used to enjoy just a glass of red wine or champagne, but she doesn’t really drink at all now, bar the odd small glass of Sanatogen [tonic wine].’