Jerry Sadowitz is not offensive. Official.

TV watchdogs said a gag he made about prostitutes and pus on his late-night Channel 5 show was "unlikely to have caused offence".

A viewer complained to the Broadcasting Standards Commission after hearing the 'tasteless' joke on the Jerry Atrick Show in December.

Channel 5 claimed most viewers would be familiar with his 'abrasive and unrestrained' style, and a strong language warning was screened before the programme started.

Watchdogs have now agreed, saying: " It would have been unlikely to have caused offence to the majority of the audience to this adult show."

Frank Skinner and David Baddiel similarly escaped censure following two complaints about their Unplanned shows in January.

Viewers objected to two comments on two subsequent nights, claiming comments about deaf people and Alzheimer's sufferers were in poor taste.

Skinner's genuine comments that deafness was "a terrible disability", and the fact that the gag was at the expense of Baddiel, who failed to grasp the nature of a joke, were mitigating factors in the first complaint.

And in the second, Skinner's light-hearted remarks about Alzheimer's in response to Baddiel's ignorance of the song Memories Are Made Of This, were made without malice, the commissioners were told.

The panel agreed that the jokes were in line with what viewers of the unscripted, post-watershed show would expect, and so did not uphold the complaints.

Published: 4 Jun 2001