YOUNG AMIS CAUGHT IN ILLEGAL ACT

An advertising campaign for Martin Amis's acclaimed autobiography
Experience has been banned by London Underground because it features a
photograph of the author as a young boy smoking.

The company has insisted the photo, which appears on the book's cover, be
removed because it features the novelist doing something illegal and could
encourage underage smoking.

Pleas from Amis's publishers to airbrush the cigarette or place a sticker
over it were rejected. A replacement poster will sport just a black background.

The ban comes a day after it emerged that London Underground had banned an
advert for Miss Selfridge showing five women giving the V-sign for being
"rude, offensive and extreme", while a second poster showing scantily clad
models was axed for fear customers would find it "difficult to avert their
eyes".

A spokeswoman insisted there was no desire to act as the capital's moral
arbiters.

"We rejected the poster about Martin Amis's new book because it showed a
young boy of about seven years old smoking a cigarette. Under our
guidelines advertising must comply with the law, and as it is illegal for
children under the age of 16 to smoke, this advertising was rejected. We
also feel it could be said it incited children to break the law."

Amis's publishers, Vintage, who will still use the picture in a national
press campaign next month, said they were "bemused" by the decision. "We
put up over a thousand posters in bookshops up and down the country when it
was published in hardback last May, and the image was reproduced widely,
but we had no complaints," said a spokeswoman. "It's an adorable picture
which refers to something in the book, and it's so Martin. Anyone
interested in buying it would know it was him."

In the past, London Underground has banned a condom advert for SafeGuard
Forte featuring two men, naked from the waist up, embracing. Earlier this
month it banned a poster for Spitfire Ale, featuring the line "German beer
is pants", on the grounds it was racist.