Ad watchdogs take him to task

Keith Chegwin has landed in hot water over his Twitter feed – but this time, it’s not for plagiarising gags

A tweet from the notorious joke thief has been rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for plugging a gambling website without stating that it was an ad.

Amid all the second-hand gags, Chegwin tweeted: ‘Just a quickie: log on to pchprizes.co.uk 4 Your chance 2 win £100k plus Win £2,500 a week 4 life. Have a go X.’

However, he failed to tell his 120,000 followers that he had a commercial relationship with the Channel-Island based site.

Cheggers is the face of the online casino and sweepstake site, Publishers Clearing House, but the company said there was nothing in his contract that required him to tweet on their behalf.

They also argued that the tweet would not have misled anyone, as the Dancing On Ice contestant had written it to make it look like a commercial communication.

Banning the ad from running again, the ASA said: ‘We considered it was not clear from the tweet itself that Chegwin had a commercial relationship with PCH and therefore it would not be clear to Twitter users that Chegwin was tweeting on PCH's behalf.

‘In the absence of an identifier such as "#ad", we considered the tweet was not obviously identifiable as a PCH marketing communication.’

In 2011, Ed Byrne had a well-publicised Twitter row with Chegwin over his stealing of gags, prompting Chegwin to complain he was being harassed by ‘cyber bullies’.

On New Year’s Day, Chegwin tweeted: ‘Have a lovely 2013 Twitter. Thanks 4 being here. Can’t tell u how lovely it is 2 have so many followers. Don’t know how that’s happened.’

Comic Darren Walsh replied: ‘Because you constantly use other people’s jokes (and because you’re off the tele)’. Chegwin then blocked Walsh.

Published: 9 Jan 2013