YouTubeButlin’s have had to apologise after a ‘race hate’ wrestling show took place at one of their holiday camps.
Families were reportedly asked to boo a bearded baddie called Hakim as he entered the ring waving an Islamic-type flag, reports The Mirror.
He went into battle against ‘good guy’ Tony Spitfire who wore Union Jack shorts and carried an England banner to the cheers of the crowd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1HDcii7vZ0
Butlin’s staff even got involved, encouraging the crowd to join in screaming ‘En-ger-land’ as Hakim snuck up behind Tony Spitfire.
Christian Cerisola, who was in the audience with his wife Frances, 39 and two their daughters, said he was ‘horrified’.
He said:
I understand wrestling needs goodies and baddies but this was very awkward and embarrassing.
Where was the moral compass in all this? My gut feeling was one of deep discomfort.
YouTubeMr Cerisola said he thinks it sends out the wrong message to kids who were encouraged to boo the guy who is not English.
The next day the PR company director took to Twitter to complain about the ‘Superslam Wrestling show’ descibing one section of the show as: “A horrific race hate-filled ten minutes of everything wrong on racial stereotypes.”
In response to Mr Ceriso’s tweets, Butlin’s said:
Yesterday’s wrestling was a deviation from the agreed content and we’re conducting a full review with our supplier as to why.
We’d like to assure you and all guests this was a totally unacceptable one-off which is contrary to Butlin’s values.
YouTubeSkegness Butlin’s resort director Chris Baron said the section in the show was not agreed content:
We had a wrestling company in on Saturday who did a show we are not happy about.It was not funny or acceptable.
For some reason they tweaked that part of the show which we did not know about.
Yeah, encouraging racism in young children isn’t really acceptable behaviour is it.
