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national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday November 27, 2002 22:35 by Viktor.

Moron

George W Bush TV cartoon banned in Britain.

28.11.2002 9.37 am

A cartoon television commercial which shows George W Bush mistaking a toaster for a video recorder has been banned in Britain for ridiculing the US president.

An advertising watchdog said today that the advert, for a satirical cartoon show, was offensive. The clip shows a grinning Bush setting fire to a toaster as he tries to play a video at the White House.

It also features Tony Blair fetching a ball tossed by Bush -- a reference to the British prime minister's reputation among critics as Bush's unquestioning poodle in world affairs.

"We found that ... President Bush might find the portrayal not to his liking and therefore offensive," Uisdean Maclean, director of the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC), an industry-funded body which vets TV ads in Britain, told Reuters.

The BACC said the producers should have sought permission from Bush to use his image before lampooning him.

The makers of the 2DTV show rejected the criticism, saying the ads amounted to little more than a "gentle ribbing".

"It seems absurd," producer Giles Pilbrow told Reuters. "We are much tougher in the programme."

Adverts face tougher guidelines than programmes in Britain, which means full episodes of 2DTV will still be shown on the commercial channel ITV1 and repeated on the cable network ITV2.

Rows over Bush's intelligence are nothing new. A senior aide to Canadian prime minister resigned on Tuesday after describing Bush as a "moron".

Websites devoted to Bush's most publicised gaffes, or "Bushisms", have sprung up on the internet.

Choice examples include "they misunderestimated me", "is our children learning?" and "terriers and bariffs" instead of tariffs and barriers.