Jamie stunt leaves Italians boiling

It's not very often that Jamie Oliver is accused of leaving a bad taste in the mouth.

But the celebrity chef's depiction of Mafia- style torture, in adverts for his show about Italian cuisine, has proved an exception to the rule.

Officials at the Italian Embassy in London were so unhappy about the stereotyped image that they complained to programme makers Channel 4.

The adverts feature Oliver strung up on a meat-hook alongside animal carcases.

In one punchline he pleads: 'How was I supposed to know the recipe was 450 years old?'

On another he begs: 'I didn't mean to insult your mother's cooking - it was just a bit of parsley, to lift it.'

In two other versions of the advert Oliver, who has won support from the Government for his campaign to improve school meals, declares: 'I know the Prime Minister, and he'll kick your a***' and 'I've cooked at Number 10. I'm a national bleedin' treasure!'

The adverts, which appear both as posters and as TV trailers for the show, were shot in an abattoir in New York.

They echo a scene in the 1990 Mafia movie Goodfellas starring Robert De Niro, when one of the mobsters is found frozen blue and dangling from a meat-hook.

The campaign is due to run throughout the six-week series of Channel 4 show Jamie's Great Escape, which started on October 19.

Channel 4 admitted yesterday that officials from the Italian Embassy had been in touch.

The Advertising Standards Authority said it had also received complaints from viewers criticising the promotions as offensive, disturbing and likely to condone threatening behaviour.

But the watchdog ruled on the side of Channel 4 and allowed the adverts to continue.

Jamie's Great Escape follows the 30-year-old chef as he travels through Italy in a camper van attempting to rediscover what inspired his love of food. He started the tour in Sicily, the home of the Mafia.

Rufus Radcliffe, head of marketing at Channel 4, said: 'The image of Jamie hanging upside down in an Italian kitchen was devised to be humorous. And thankfully, some Italians see the joke.' A spokesman for the Italian Cultural Institute in London said: 'As long as it doesn't get out of hand then I think we should treat these things as a bit of fun.'