Websites hosting spoofs of latest Tory ad campaign

Online wags have apparently found a recent Conservative Party advertising campaign to be fertile ground for satire, and photoshopped variations have been appearing at a good clip ever since the campaign - featuring a heavily airbrushed picture of David Cameron - was released earlier this year.

Some of the more popular themes in the satirical edits include "Airbrushed for Change", "I'm a progressive conservative, please stop laughing", and "Some of my best friends are poor". An extensive collection of the humorous posters is being hosted at the website Mydavidcameron.com, which also has a web application available for users wishing to create their own.

The advertising news site Daily Maverick says that "by Thursday, close to 200,000 people had checked out that site and generated 185,000 variants of the now-maligned poster". The same article places the blame for the mess squarely at the door of advertising agency Euro RSCG London, which produced the original airbrushed picture.

The creative director of the Sparkloop graphic design agency, Clifford Singer, told the Independent that "political advertising is much more combative than other advertising, and that it leaves it open to spoofs".