Australian Idol gay porn gaffe

Newspaper advertisements congratulating a 16-year-old girl who won the latest Australian Idol television competition mistakenly directed fans to a gay porn website.

Casey Donovan had won the top-rated reality TV programme and a record contract.

Telecommunications company Telstra, a major sponsor of the programme, ran half-page advertisements in newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne congratulating Casey and directing fans to a website.

But visitors calling up the site were confronted by a full frontal nude picture of an American porn star also named Casey Donovan, with links to his gay porn DVDs and videotapes.

Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton put the gaffe down to “simple human error in the last-minute preparation of the ad”.

Telstra alerted web filters to add the porn website to databases that prevent children from unwittingly viewing pornography.