'Yorkshire Ripper' T-shirt design sparks outrage in district (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

'Yorkshire Ripper' T-shirt design sparks outrage in district

7:30am Monday 13th February 2012 in Bradford

Novelty T-shirts which bear a cartoon of the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe under the banner ‘T’Only Way Is Yorkshire’ were today condemned as being “tasteless, disgusting and exploitative”.

The image of the Bradford mass killer is contained alongside other well-known Yorkshire people or characters, including Keighley-born actress Mollie Sugden, on the garments produced by London-based firm Totally Original T-shirts which ape the popular TV series The Only Way Is Essex.

But demands have been made by a senior Bradford Councillor for the company to immediately remove the items from sale.

Executive member, Councillor David Green, whose responsibilities include tourism, described the decision to include the Ripper on a supposedly humorous T-shirt as “the lowest of the low”.

He said: “It’s thoughtless, tasteless and the most disgusting, exploitative piece of clothing I have ever heard of.

“To make money out of something like this is outrageous.

“I would suggest this company needs to re-think it’s design and withdraw it from sale until Peter Sutcliffe is removed.”

Among the other well-known faces on the T-shirt, claimed by the makers to be a homage to all things that make Yorkshire great, are Huddersfield-born former Prime Minister Harold Wilson in a flat cap, actress Diana Rigg in a cat suit, Last of the Summer Wine character Nora Batty and former England cricketer Geoffrey Boycott.

They are shown perched on or behind a sofa and a drystone wall with pigeons and greyhounds.

Sutcliffe, a married lorry driver, of Heaton, Bradford, was convicted by an Old Bailey jury in 1981 of the murders of 13 women and the attempted murders of seven others during a reign of terror which started in the mid-1970s.

Telegraph & Argus reader and Bradford exile Ian Shaw said he was shocked to see the image of the Ripper when he received one of the T-shirts as a present.

“How can anyone design a T-shirt with him on the front and how can anyone wear it?” he said.

The T-shirt, sold on the Iffyton High Street website, is one of a whole Grim Up North range, according to the manufacturer’s website.

The marketing blurb describes the range as “celebrating the best of Northern style and humour”.

It continues: “We’ve got a mushy peas T-shirt in the style of pop art and keeping in that context we have a Lowry dole queue shirt.

“Whether you keep a ferret or eat black pudding, this range of northern T-shirts will keep flies off.”

A spokesman for TOT-shirts told the Telegraph & Argus that these were the first complaints it had received about the T-shirt since it went on sale.

He said: “It’s just a bit of dark humor and if it’s offended anyone it wasn’t intentional.

“If the man who was offended when he got it as a gift wants to get in touch with us we’ll replace it with another T-shirt of his choice.

“We sell lots of our Grim Up North range to northerners which proves they are big enough to take the mickey out of the stereotype.”

But Bradford-born businessman and chairman of the Yorkshire Society, Keith Madeley, said: “We’re making great strides to promote the proper professional image of Yorkshire and we don’t want so-called dark humour to be holding us back.”