Blistering barnacles!

Turkish TV fined for showing Captain Haddock smoking

Turkey's media watchdog has fined a private television channel over scenes in the Tintin cartoon that show Captain Haddock and other villains smoking.

Now, I'm more of an Asterix man myself, but surely Haddock wasn't one of the villains? Let's check up on Wikipedia...

Haddock was first introduced as the whiskey loving captain of the Karaboudjan, a merchant vessel used by his first mate Allan Thompson without his knowledge for drug smuggling. Due to his alcoholism and temperamental nature, he is characterized as weak and unstable, at times posing as great a hazard to Tintin as the villains of the piece. He is also short-tempered, given to emotional and expletive-ridden outbursts, and capable of infuriating behavior; at one point in the album he even attacks Tintin

This guy sounds like a great role model for children. If only he didn't smoke, he'd be perfect.

Turkish broadcasters normally blur the images of cigarettes, pipes and smoke to evade fines, but critics say the method is counter-productive as it disrupts the viewer's attention and draws it to the smoking scene.

D' ya think? Come to think of it, doesn't Tintin carry a gun in these stories? And don't people get shot and killed?

One board member objected to the fine, arguing that children can distinguish between the fiction and non-fiction...

You mean to say that Explorers on the Moon and The Crab with the Golden Claws is fiction? Billions of bilious blistering blue barnacles!

...and that smoking fitted with the features of villains.

Of course. And what better way to show that a character is evil than having him smoke?

In Turkey, the world's 10th largest tobacco consummer, almost one in three adults smoke, with the rate reaching 48 percent among men.

So no chance of children seeing anyone smoking in real life then? Good work guys. Now if we can just ban Avatar, we should be well on our way.