Comic banned from using Simpsons voice

Homer Simpson has been silenced on a stand-up comedy album following a legal row.

American comedian Paul Krassner has accused Rupert Murdoch's Fox company of censorship after it blocked the use of Homer's voice on his latest stand-up CD.

Dan Castellaneta, who provides the voice of the bungling Simpsons patriach, provided an introduction for the show, recorded in Los Angeles in Februrary, in character.

Taking issue with Krassner's atheism, he says: 'If there is no God then who has placed a pox on me and mocks me every day?'

However, after hearing the full contents of the album, Irony Lives!, Fox executives refused permission to use the voice.

A defiant Krassner has nonetheless included a clip on his website, where around 250,000 people have heard it.

The row has also generated invaluable extra publicity for the album, released by Artemis Records next month.

Krassner mused: "Whoever thought that Homer Simpson would one day becomed an intellectual property?"

Rebel Krassner has long been involved in America's counterculture underground. Once one of Ken Kesey's drug-smoking Merry Pranksters, he says he counted Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan and John Lennon among his friends. He even claims to have taken LSD with Groucho Marx.

Published: 27 Jul 2002