A Bradford heating firm thought its cheeky bikini posters were a gas - but advertising watchdogs saw them in a different light.

The Gas Showroom in Queensbury hoped to raise chuckles with the advert featuring a scantily-clad woman in front of a gas fire.

The caption read: "Let the Gas Showroom stick something warm into your hearth-hole!"

But the heat was on when a mum complained to the Advertising Standards Authority and the advert has now been banned.

The woman said the advert was offensive, particularly because it appeared in the ladies' toilets in family-friendly pubs.

"I was genuinely surprised, we thought it wryly humorous," said Rawson Swaine, general manager of The Gas Showroom. A wide section of the public of all ages were having a joke about it. They thought that it was very funny."

Mr Swaine said customers at the showroom in Black Dyke Mills in Brighouse Road were having a giggle after seeing the adverts displayed in pubs in the area.

"A great many smiled and said We've seen the advert, brilliant, well done'," he said. Mr Swaine said he had not received any complaints or negative feedback.

The advert was displayed in five pubs, two of which included a Wacky Warehouse children's play area, visited by an average of almost seven million children a year.

But the ASA ruled that although the image was not explicit, it was sexually suggestive.

The headline, in conjunction with the provocative image of the woman, made it likely to cause serious or widespread offence, the ASA decided.

Rochdale firm PUBlications, which designed the advert, said it had been used by other gas fire companies in the North of England without a problem. Francis Collins, a partner in the firm, said Mr Swaine knew it had been used with no complaints.

Mr Collins said his firm acted swiftly to remove the posters as soon as a complaint was made.

A staff member at the Walnut Tree pub restaurant in Barnsley Road, Wakefield, said that the poster had been taken down and thrown out after a child's mother complained.

"There were just two in the toilets and we threw them out. I hadn't noticed them until someone complained," she said.

At the Sun, in Leeds Road, Lofthouse Gate, Wakefield, just one copy of the advert had been up - in the men's toilet.

An employee said: "I thought it was quite comical. It was at the top of the noticeboard. There was no way a child could have seen it."

The Gas Showroom has replaced the poster with one showing a builder bending down and displaying his behind. The caption reads: "We do a cracking job!"

So far, no one has complained...

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