British comedian Rik Mayall today defended his role as Adolf Hitler in an advertising campaign against adopting the euro currency.
Mayall appears dressed as Hitler in the television commercial due to be launched later this month. He parodies the dictator's famous raised-arm salute and declares: "Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Euro! (one people, one empire, one euro)".
"It's satire," he told The Sunday Timesnewspaper. "I'm saying what I say because if Hitler tells people to support the euro then surely they won't. That's the point of it."
Mayall rejected accusations from some Jewish groups that the 90-second film, condemned last week as "beneath contempt" by the European Commission, was anti-Semitic.
Britain, Denmark and Sweden are the only countries in the 15-nation European Union that have not adopted the euro.
Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair has pledged to apply five economic tests by mid-2003 to determine whether joining the euro would be in Britain's economic interests. If he decides it would, Britons would have the final say by voting in a referendum.
AFP