A British comic is being sued by her estranged husband for mentioning him and their marriage in her act.

Louise Beamont, 31, says she referred to her hubby Thomas Reay only a handful of times in her 50-minute show “Hard Mode” — which she performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival stand-up show last year — in order to tell the audience about how their marriage had broken down.

But Reay claims the comments made it seem like he was abusive, and were therefore defamatory, a breach of privacy. He is suing his wife for over $40,000, plus legal costs.

In an online campaign to raise money to pay her legal costs, Beamont wrote that her husband has “a lot more money” than she does and that the suit is “simply an attempt to silence” her.

“As standup comedians, I believe it’s the very definition of our job to talk about our lives and social issues,” she wrote. “So this has become a free speech issue — and free speech means everything to me.”

Reay’s lawyer, Taylor Hampton, denied the case had anything to do with free speech and said the comedian had insinuated she’d been abused by her husband in the show.

“Beamont repeatedly performed a comedy show which identified our client verbally and in still and moving images, contained private information about him and his relationship with Ms. Beamont, and made very serious and inflammatory allegations of wrongdoing against him,” he told The Guardian.

“These allegations included the entirely false suggestion that our client’s relationship with Ms. Beamont was an abusive one.”

The case could have a significant impact for comics who tend to use personal material in their shows.

Mark Stephens, a libel lawyer, told The Guardian that the case could rest on the judge’s sense of humor.

“It’s going to be a test of whether the British judiciary understands a joke — I mean that seriously,” he said.