Oliver riles Germans with joke on Holocaust

The television chef Jamie Oliver has angered German viewers by making a jocular remark about the Holocaust when objecting to complaints from Germany about how he gassed chicks on the Channel 4 programme Jamie's Fowl Dinners.

At the Edinburgh International Television Conference, Oliver was talking about the response to Fowl Dinners. "We had a lot of complaints about the gassing of chicks from the Germans," he said. "This has gone all round the world and the one country that had a problem with it... I thought f****** hell!"

Several Germans were in the audience and it was said to be noticeable that some responded with an uncomfortable silence.

One of the people at the lecture, the German writer Udo Seiwert-Fauti, said: "I wanted to stand up and say: 'Hey, after 65 years why do you need to bring that up?' I was shocked."

A spokesman for Oliver said the chef had not meant to cause offence and hoped Germans would forgive him.