HAVING TOLD Asda "I ain't gonna be your bitch" when the supermarket offered him a lucrative advertising contract, comedian Bill Bailey has set up a merchandising company in Edinburgh to cash in on the slogan.

With the spat having inspired a song and a routine in Bailey's current UK tour, Bill Bailey Merchandise has been selling commemorative products including mugs, T-shirts, sheet songbooks and guitar picks at each venue. But the products will be on sale across the country from this week when they are put on the comedian's billbailey.co.uk website for the first time.

Bailey commented: "Seeing what we've got now, I am shocked at how bad it the merchandise was before. I just decided that people deserved better."

Bailey has invested a low six-figure sum in the company, which is being run by long-time friend Gill Robertson and his Scots-born wife Kris.

Using ethical suppliers and fair-trade materials and working from her home in the city's Leith area, Robertson has designed the products herself. The fact that they are considerably more expensive to produce than most other merchandise has meant that there is a much smaller mark-up than usual, where 20 times costs are not uncommon.

While spin-offs have been around since the days of Charlie Chaplin, it is unusual for entertainers such as Bailey to create their own products.

Robertson said: "An awful lot of merchandise that you see is really poor quality. There is a huge mark-up once the logo is added. You see £1 T-shirts being sold for £20 or even more. Bill just decided that he didn't want to do that any more.

"Everything that we sell has to be ethical and has to be Fairtrade. Bill oversaw all the content himself. The T-shirts are printed in water-based ink without harmful chemicals. We got someone to turn the Asda slogan into a bar code and it really works if you scan it."

Having also organised merchandising stalls at Bailey's recent gigs, she added: "Lots of the people at the venues and involved in the touring business have been waiting to see how this works."

There are currently no plans to make the products available in supermarkets.