WEST Ham United fans can no longer wave replica hammers around at matches after Timmy Mallett, the former children’s television presenter, warned the football club that they were an infringement of his copyright. The East London club, nicknamed The Hammers, has withdrawn the popular Herbie the Hammer, a sponge miniature of the official mascot, after Mallett’s lawyers said that it bore a striking resemblance to Pinky Punky, a registered soft toy.

Pinky Punky is the caricature of the oversized hammer used by Mallett to clobber children over the head for incorrect quiz answers on Wacaday, a hit for TV-am between 1985 and 1992. Mike Schlagman, a director of Brilliant TV, Mallett’s production company, said: “It was pointed out that the similarity was a potential infringement of copyright. The club denied infringement but agreed to take the offending article off the shelves.”

Fans noticed this season that the toy hammers, popularised by Ian Wright at his signing in 1998, were no longer sold in the club shop. “We were bang to rights. There was nothing we could do,” Scott Duxbury, company secretary and legal director, said.

Mallett, who sang on the No 1 hit Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, is in the company of another pop star in his run-in with a football club. Victoria Beckham, also known as Posh Spice, launched legal proceedings to stop Peterborough United, known as The Posh for the past 70 years, from registering the name as a trademark.