A cheeky ad by the Sun gloating about Britain winning more medals than Australia at the Beijing Olympics, using a twist on the "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign, has been banned by the ASA following a single complaint.
The regulator considered the word "bloody" to be a swearword and that it was "irresponsible" to reproduce in a medium where children could see it, and told The Sun not to use the word "bloody" on posters in the future.
3 things spring immediately to mind.
Bloody is used in headlines on the front page of several newspapers, which are available for purchase in newsagents, where many children have been spotted before buying sweets and chocolate, and newspapers are often to be found lying around in millions of households on a daily basis. I'm looking at the front page of today's Daily Mirror and Times newspapers, and I'd rather be explaining to my kids what "bloody" meant and the right and wrong context to use it in, than explaining what "Monster raped his two daughters" and "Rape father jailed over daughter's 9 children" meant.
A single complaint is therefore sufficient to allow the ASA to ponder whether the sensibilities of the nation have been offended? 48 million people aged 16 or over in the UK, and a single complaint suffices? That's got to be nonsense surely. I find Gordon Brown offensive, so if he ever appears on a piece of Labour Party marketing communication, does that mean I can get him banned from future use?
Finally, it's The Sun. And it made me smile. Which is pretty good going in today's gloomy world.
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