Da Vinci Code Really Really Not Plagiarised At All

It's probably fair to assume that nobody on earth has thought about The Da Vinci Code for almost a year now - especially not Tom Hanks, who must shudder at the thought of that godawful mullet he sported in the Da Vinci Code movie.

No, that's unfair. There have probably been a couple of people who have given The Da Vinci Code some thought lately, namely Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Baigent and Leigh last year went to court claiming that The Da Vinci Code was all their idea and that Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, had stolen all his ideas from a book they wrote containing similar claims about Jesus knocking up a hooker once. But that case was ruled in Dan Brown's favour, so Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh appealed. And today that appeal was also dismissed, meaning that the pair now face legal fees of over £3 million - roughly the amount of money that Dan Brown wipes his bum on every morning while checking his hair in the reflection of the 100ft platinum statue he has of himself in his bathroom.

You know who we feel sorry for? Jesus. If Kanye West isn't pretending to be Jesus, then Madonna is pretending that she's friends with Jesus, people are naming Tom Cruise as the new Jesus or James Cameron is claiming that he owns a whole big coffin o' Jesus. And if that's not bad enough for Jesus, the whole Da Vinci Code thing is being dragged up again.

Almost a year ago, barely a day passed without some fresh Da Vinci Code controversy being dug up. After the movie of The Da Vinci Code opened Cannes, all sorts of Catholics tried to get The Da Vinci Code banned until Tom Hanks told them all to shut up. That didn't stop The Da Vinci Code getting banned from China and Pakistan, though - for religious purposes, obviously, not because The Da Vinci Code was a terrible film that everyone hated based on a book that made all sorts of arseholes believe they were theological experts.

But despite The Da Vinci Code being a big sack of cocks, some people still wanted to claim authorship on it. Although Dan Brown was the author of The Da Vinci Code - and subsequently made enough money from it to never have to write another dreary book again - two writers called Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh sued Dan Brown last year, claiming that large portions of The Da Vinci Code were stolen from a book they wrote together entitled The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which explored similar themes of Jesus doing it with a whore and getting her pregnant with Amelie. Dan Brown won the case against Baigent and Leigh, but that didn't stop Baigent and Leigh from appealing against the verdict. Which they did. And lost. BBC News reports on this new Da Vinci Code shenanigan:

The Court of Appeal in London has ruled that Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, did not reproduce ideas from an earlier work in his best-selling novel. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who claimed that themes from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail were plagiarised by Brown, now face a legal bill of £3m… In a statement issued after the appeal's rejection, the co-authors said they were disappointed by the ruling. "We believed, and still do, that non-fiction authors would suffer and be discouraged from extensive research if it was found that any author could take another's ideas, 'morph' and repackage them, then sell them on," they said.

So it looks like the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case is well and truly over, and we can all go back to forgetting all about The Da Vinci Code again. Or at least we would if a clutch of stars like Lovejoy, 1970s Kevin Keegan, Pat Sharp and Billy Ray Cyrus weren't about to sue Tom Hanks for plagiarising their haircuts in The Da Vinci Code, anyway.

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Da Vinci Code appeal is dismissed - BBC