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Ex-Heat editor: Harvey sticker was 'huge mistake'

04/09/2008

Publishing a sticker which made fun of Jordan's disabled son Harvey was a "huge mistake", the former editor of Heat has admitted.

The celebrity magazine was forced to apologise to the glamour model after it gave away a sticker branded "Harvey wants to eat me" - a reference to the child's appetite, which is heightened by his suffering from septo-optic dysplasia, a rare condition which causes blindness and growth hormone deficiency.

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) received more than 30 complaints over the sticker and Mark Frith, editor of the magazine, issued a public apology before Heat made a charitable donation.

Speaking to inthenews.co.uk on the eve of the release of his new book about the world of celebrity, Frith admitted the incident is one of his biggest regrets from his ten-year tenure editing Heat.

"The Harvey sticker was a huge mistake, which we apologised promptly for," he explained.

"I want to make it very clear to people that the reason we did that sticker was - we live in a world where Harvey and Jordan are on the cover of OK! a lot, and also she talks in a quite a light-hearted way at times about his food intake, and the sticker was a reference to that.

"It was never intended to be malicious. And a lot of the media coverage about the sticker presumed it was malicious, but we had an incredible relationship with Jordan and wanted to keep that going."

He added: "But in the cold light of day, outside the circle of people who got the reference - our readers, our team, the industry - it was seen as offensive and we were very quick to apologise."

Mark Frith's new book The Celeb Diaries is released on September 4th.