The MS Trust has changed the name of a fundraising initiative at the request of the US-based Coachella festival.
The charity has been planning a home fundraising festival for August, and had originally named it “Couch-ella”.
But organisers of the Coachella festival, a California arts and music festival that attracts thousands of people every year, asked the charity to rename it because it was too similar to their own event.
The event will still take place, but will be called the MS Trust Home Festival.
In return for a donation to the charity, participants will be able to take part in a series of activities, including comedy with singer-songwriter and radio presenter John Shuttleworth and fitness classes with Mr Motivator.
The original Coachella has been cancelled because of the pandemic this year, after having initially been postponed from April to October.
The MS Trust said in a statement: “The MS Trust has been asked to change the name of its upcoming home festival fundraiser. The Coachella festival in America got in touch and said our festival could get confused with theirs. So we decided to change the name of our event to MS Trust Home Festival.
“We are pleased the event can still go ahead and are really looking forward to bringing our supporters a brilliant line-up to enjoy from their own homes, while raising much-needed funds and awareness for the MS Trust.”
The MS Trust is also running an emergency appeal called “MS doesn’t stop” to support its beneficiaries during the pandemic.
It recently said it is experiencing “a significant reduction in income” as a result of the crisis and has proposed some changes to its staff to make up for it, including “a small number” of redundancies and a temporary reduction in staff working hours.
