Two Stephen Fry-fronted TV ads for Twinings Tea have been cleared by the Advertising Standards Authority after a complaint that they presented a negative stereotype of a black man as sexually promiscuous.
The watchdog accepted the arguments by ad agency Lowe that "race was not central or relevant to the ads", which were based on Fry's character being "older and less cool" than the young black American man he featured alongside.
In the first ad, Fry was shown alongside the man, called Tyrone, and speaking to three white women sitting at the counter of a teashop about tea. When he comments that they are "well informed" one of the women says: "Tyrone's been filling us in."
The women are then seen laughing and looking at Tyrone who drops a tin of tea to the floor with Fry commenting: "Oh has he? Has he indeed?"
A second ad showed the same teashop and featured Tyrone writing on a blackboard the words "Earl Grey puts the Zing in your ding-a-ling".
In the course of a discussion about the phrase and the quality of the tea, Fry urges Tyrone to "feel" the taste. Tyrone responds "In your ding-a-ling?", with Fry retorting: "No Tyrone. Not in your ding-a-ling."
According to one viewer, both ads were offensive and harmful because she believed they played on a negative racial stereotype of a black man as sexually promiscuous and, in the case of the first ad, also existing to provide sexual services for white women.
According to Lowe's submission to the ASA, this was the first complaint that the Twinings campaign was racist.
Lowe said that the character of Tyrone was picked as an opposite to Fry and was "intended to be a way of contemporising the brand and making tea cool".
In its ruling, which cleared the advertisement of breaching its standards code, the ASA said: "Although we acknowledged the innuendo was mildly sexual, we did not consider that it was reliant on the young man's ethnic origins or a racial stereotype.
"We noted the character of Tyrone was shown as an attractive, confident young man and ... clearly enjoying the attentions of, and flirting with, the women.
"We did not consider that his or the women's enjoyment of the situation implied that his character was there simply to provide sexual services for white women, but rather that he was a young man enjoying the confidence-boosting attentions of a group of women.
"We considered that Tyrone was shown as a positive character and, because neither ad was reliant on race for its humour, viewers generally were unlikely to believe the ads implied that black men were promiscuous or there to provide sexual services for white women.
"We concluded that the ads were not harmful or likely to cause offence to most viewers."
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