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Wicked Campers falls foul of Ad watchdog again for Chuck Norris masturbation and burning churches

wicked campers logoControversial van hire company Wicked Campers has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Board twice more for two slogans on the side of its vehicles, taking its tally of breaches of the code to nine this year.

This time complainants pointed to the slogans “Chuck Norris needs a monkey wrench and a blowtorch to masturbate” and “If you love God, burn a church” written across two of the companies vehicles as inappropriate, which the board agreed.

The company is currently at the centre of a campaign by activists with an online petition to get the vans with controversial slogans taken off the road reaching nearly 95,000 in just 48 hours.

Previous ASB rulings against Wicked Campers this year have included the slogans: “Get out ya tits and we’ll call it quits”, “Fat girls are harder to kidnap“, “Does your asshole ever get jealous of the shit that comes out of your mouth?”,  “Shut the f#ck up Donny“, “God I’m Fucking Awesome”,  “I was in fuckin’ Nirvana dude. Dave Grohl“ and “Half of life is fucking up, the other half is dealing with it”.

The last two complaints related to two separate vehicles. the first was a car with the Chuck Norris slogan on the side, and the second was a van.

In ruling on the Chuck Norris complaint the ASB looked at a previous ruling on a slogan “If you’ve ever met a woman with crooked teeth, you’ve met a woman who has given Chuck Norris a blow job”, which had been ruled against on the grounds of inappropriate sexual references.

Whilst some members of the board argued the word masturbate is the “is the correct word for a solo sexual act and is not a word which should be considered strong or obscene”, but the majority of the board decided it was not appropriate to be on the side of a vehicle.

For the church ruling the board noted it was a quote from The Dead Kennedy’s frontman Jello Biafra adding: “The Board noted that whilst the true meaning of the quote is a sophisticated theological argument regarding the link between religious beliefs and how they are taught, in the Board’s view the overriding message to the community is still the same: that churches should be  “burnt’.”

It decided the slogan did discriminate against people based on their religion and upheld the complaint.

Wicked Campers did not make any representations to the board in its defence.

Alex Hayes

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