Pineapple Dance Studios in name dispute

Pineapple Dance Studios is reportedly in a dispute with a York dance group over using its name.

According to the York Evening Press, the famous Covent Garden studio contacted 54-year-old Lesley Jones to ask her to stop using the name Pineapple Performing Arts Theatre School for her dance classes.

She previously used the name Pineapple Disco in the '80s and '90s and has spent £600 on setting up a website and printing T-shirts.

Jones was contacted by Pineapple Dance Studios, which is currently the focus of its own Sky1 reality show, warning her that they owned the rights to the pineapple name.

"When I told them I had been doing this since the 1980s, he just said: 'I don't think so'," she said. "At first we were chatting and that was fine but when I told him we were starting up on Saturday, he told me I should think very hard about that.

"He said the word pineapple, when linked in any way to music, legally belonged to them. I am in a state of shock."

A spokesperson for Pineapple Dance Studios said: "We aren't in the business of trying to force someone else out of business but I hope that somewhere down the line she will change the name.

"We have a registered trademark for Pineapple Performing Arts School, which is registered in Covent Garden. What I said was: 'This has just come to our attention and did she realise that we had a trademark registration in place?'"

Pineapple Dance Studios, which follows the day-to-day lives of artistic director Louie Spence and "ready made popstar" Andrew Stone, airs Sunday nights at 6pm on Sky1.