THE UK Advertising Standards Authority is to review its decision not to investigate complaints earlier this year about Channel 4’s advertising campaign behind the latest series of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.
The billboard “Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier” campaign led to nearly 500 complaints, but the advertising regulator decided not to investigate, which caused anger in the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain.
Recommending an inquiry now, the authority’s independent reviewer, Sir Hayden Philips, said he believed it should “reconsider” the decision. The authority is not bound by law to accept this.
The Traveller movement’s director, Yvonne McNamara, said the Channel 4 campaign obviously breached regulation, since the authority “would never have permitted a ‘Bigger, Fatter, Muslimer’ or ‘Bigger, Fatter, Blacker’ ” campaign. Travellers and gypsies, she added, “are the last ethnic minority group against whom it is still acceptable to make derogatory jokes and to malign and denigrate in the media, the last bastion of acceptable prejudice. That ends today.”
The Channel 4 documentary series is sponsored by Japanese car maker Honda, which initially was critical of the billboards but later went silent on the issue.
