By Paul Kunert
29 October 2008
Hewlett-Packard’s ad men have made a bit of a boob by paying convicted paedophile and ex-glam rocker Gary Glitter a six figure sum to use one of his songs in an advert for its latest touch-screen PC in the US.
Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, has been paid £100,000 in royalties for the use of his 1973 hit Do You Want To Touch Me, sung in the ad by US rocker Joan Jett, to promote the Touch Smart PC.
Screened in the US, it is claimed the marketing campaign could net the 64-year old star even more if the advert results in a rise in internet downloads.
The British glam rocker fell from grace in 1999 when he was found guilty of possessing thousands of indecent images of children. The images were discovered after he took his PC to be fixed at PC World in Bristol.
Glitter served two months of a four month sentence and later travelled to Asia but once again became embroiled in child sex allegations in Vietnam in 2005 where he was imprisoned for three years.
In August 2008 Glitter returned to the UK having been refused entry into Thailand and Hong Kong, and went into hiding.
The use of his songs will cause great offence to many people and Child Abusewatch.net has called for the US public to boycott the advert.
It has written to HP CEO Mark Hurd and other board directors with the aim of encouraging them to “remove the ad from airplay due to the poor taste and judgement by HP.”
This afternoon Hewlett-Packard said it was withdrawing all relevant advertising in the UK and was "urgently" reviewing the issue in other countries. "This is a sensitive issue and HP takes the matter very seriously".
