One Unhappy Customer…

…can make big changes:

A TV ad for New Southern Railway featured Loca Toledo, a Mexican wrestler character in cloak and tights, enthusing about British trains. He danced and ran alongside a moving train leaving the station platform and ran alongside a moving train while looking in through the window at a passenger.

So what? Well, someone thought it needed to be stopped. For, you guessed it, 'the children!'...

One viewer objected that the ad was likely to encourage or condone irresponsible behaviour, because it depicted a man running alongside a moving train, which was a dangerous activity that could be copied by children, particularly in light of reported accidents.

The complaint was rejected, but according to the ‘Metro’, the company pulled that footage from the ad anyway.

On the other hand…

When Dennis the Menace had a politically correct makeover last year, his creators aimed to remove 'any traces of nastiness'.

But according to at least one young reader of The Beano, the new watered-down Dennis is now devoid of all fun, too.

Eight-year-old Jacob Rush was so upset by the changes that he sent an email to the comic's bosses, begging them to bring back the old menacing Dennis.

He wrote: 'I don't like Dennis because he doesn't have his catapult or water pistol any more and he's not menacing enough - I want the old Dennis back.'

And the company immediately leapt into action and...

Actually, no, they didn't.

When no one replied, he called the comic's Dundee HQ and received a letter blaming a newly sanitised BBC cartoon version.

Ah, right. The 'It wasn't us!' defence. Which might work, if the cartoon and the comic hadn't been two seperate things...

Beano editor Alan Digby admitted there had been 'a number of' complaints, adding: 'There are certain compliance rules relating to the way things like bad behaviour can be depicted on children's television, particularly on the BBC.

So, this isn't even a case of one complaint, it's more? And we aren't talking about your deal with the devil BBC, but about the comic. A seperate thing...

However, Alan has drunk deep at the well of bureacratic dissembling...

'I would not say Dennis has been watered down, he has evolved as the character has done throughout his lifetime. He still has his catapult and peashooter, but does not use them against people any more.'

Well done, Alan. Absolutely no-one is looking at you with contempt and barely-disguised pity at the lameness of your excuse, or thinking you a functioning moron for uttering it. Oh, dear me, no...