Censorship in the UK

[mrfrapp]

A TELEVISION advertisement in which the comedian Harry Enfield ridicules Winston Churchill, calling him a “porky prime minister”, has been banned by the advertising standards watchdog.

8<--- snip ---

A second advert, informing people of the ban and directing them to see the original on the company’s website, has also been outlawed.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1442085,00.html

Interested viewers can see the advert at the madasafish web site.

The original ban, it could be argued, is valid -- although not by me. The second ban however, seems vindictive.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I'm surprised this has been banned

and that's a bit worrying. Normally with something like this, the company puts the advert out, waits for the complaints and the newspaper articles, and then withdraws the advert, having gained the free publicity.

As they say, the advert is clearly ridiculous (and would have passed completely unnoticed in Enfield's TV show), and a few might think it is slightly insulting to Churchill, but that normally doesn't get a ban. Maybe ther are going to hold adverts to higher standards than shows, on the grounds that you don't know when an advert is coming on, so the "just don't watch it" argument doesn't apply.

[Eric J in MN]

2. In some ways they have less freedom of speech than

we do.