Greek E-Ticket Ad Riles Gays, Truckers

A Greek e-ticket ad will be withdrawn from television after managing to insult both the country's truckers and its gay community, top-selling Ta Nea daily said on Saturday

A Greek e-ticket ad will be withdrawn from television after managing to insult both the country's truckers and its gay community, top-selling Ta Nea daily said on Saturday.

In the ad that aired this past month, a young hitchhiker boards a trailer truck hoping to reach Turin.

As soon as the door shuts behind him, the driver flicks a switch, a neon-lit pink divan with cuddly bears and pillows appears in the recess of the cabin, and he blows the passenger a suggestive kiss.

"Do you want to travel cheaply, and end up paying for it dearly?" concludes the ticket ad.

"You have ridiculed Greek truckers brutally and without provocation," the haulers' association said in a complaint filed against the e-ticket company, airfasttickets.

"You have created an insult that will stay in viewers' minds far longer than your company's name or website," it added.

Meanwhile, the main Greek association representing homosexuals also complained that the ad typecast gay men.

"Gay men are presented as devious and sex-obsessed people trying to seduce unsuspecting youths," the OLKE association said.

"Once again, the easy road of homophobia and stereotypes is chosen to advertise products," it said.

The travel group produced a new version of the ad, in which the driver keeps a skull and electric candles in the back of the cabin and wants to take a detour through the Carpathian mountains.

Once again, truck drivers were not amused.

"The new ad presents us as necrophiliacs. We will file a complaint about this one too," trucker president Apostolos Kenanidis told Ta Nea.