Chewing gum ad collared after viewer complaints

A British ad for chewing gum, in which a dog crawls out of a man's mouth, has been pulled from television after attracting record complaints.

Britain's advertising watchdog, the Independent Television Commission, says the advert drew nearly 700 complaints from viewers who said it was offensive and frightened their children.

The technologically-enhanced commercial was intended to highlight the problem of morning-after "dog breath."

The previous British record, of 544 complaints, was held by a 1998 jeans ad which featured a dead hamster.

The Independent Television Commission is currently considering its attitude to the news footage that will be beamed into the living rooms of Britain during the upcoming bloodbath "Operation Liberate the Oil Wells" in Iraq. Spokesperson Ms. Kylie Whitehouse said, "The Commission is currently of a mind to allow this footage to be shown.

I have been assured by our American counterparts that the images will be presented in a tasteful and decorous manner. Indeed Presidential Press Secretary Heidi Fleischer told me personally, "the American people are sensitive to such matters having once had a leader who couldn't walk the dog and chew gum at the same time".

Offending body parts, no matter how widely strewn, will be fully pixelated. We have been further guaranteed that no pictures of maggots crawling out of the mouths of collaterally damaged innocent Iraqi villagers will ever reach Western television screens.

Furthermore we have been assured by sources directly connected to the Whitehouse (no relation) that the current military operations would not cause harm to any cute Iraqi canines, unless they happen to be in the vicinity of mosques, kindergartens and creches all of which are known to house Saddam's biological weapons laboratories."