Bad taste in the extreme

We have no idea what happened to Madeleine McCann five years ago in Portugal. But her parents are right to be outraged by this:

Madeleine McCann's parents say they are "horrified" their missing daughter's image has been used on an independent website to promote low-cost holidays in Portugal in an online advertisement.

The photo of the three-year-old. who vanished while her family was in Portugal for a holiday in May 2007, was used to promote holidays deals to Portugal's Algarve region by lowcostholidays.com on the website voucherdigg.co.uk.

Kate and Gerry McCann said the use of McCann's image, which was taken just hours before her disappearance, was "appallingly insensitive", the Daily Telegraph reported.

Kate and Gerry McCann's spokesman Clarence Mitchell told Sky News UK: "That is the last picture of Madeleine that was taken on the holiday in 2007 just before she was taken, and for someone to use it - as some sort of sick joke it would appear - advertising holidays to Portugal of all places, is just appalling.

"There is no excuse for it."

To their credit, the people behind lowcostgroup are trying to make amends:

Lawrence Hunt, the chief operating officer boss of lowcostgroup, told the BBC: "We have no contract with VoucherDigg to advertise our holidays and we are doing all that we can to contact the website and get the picture removed.

"We discovered this vile material yesterday and immediately broke all the [web] links to our site."

Hunt said the organisation had also contacted its lawyers.

This is appallingly bad taste on the part of the advertiser. It's another bizarre twist in one of what was already the more bizarre whodunnits of recent years.