FHM bungles Hillsborough apology

Fresh embarrassment has been heaped on FHM Australia as the magazine has been forced to "re-apologise" for an article turning the 1989 Hillsborough disaster into a sick joke.

It has been forced to tear out the page carrying the original apology planned for its December issue and run another apology in the January issue.

And insiders at the Australian publication say the fiasco, which involved "joke" captions about people rushing for a drink or into the January sales to describe photographs of the Hillsborough crush, has cost the magazine £160,000.

It has now emerged FHM has got it wrong again - the apology it was planning to run, which has already been printed, was not "serious enough" to reflect the outraged reaction from readers, Liverpool FC and victims of the disaster.

An apology was originally due to run in the December issue of the men's glossy after the magazine's publishers were flooded with complaints and the magazine had to be taken off the shelves.

But once the strength of feeling over the original article became clear, FHM's publishers decided the planned apology, which included a reprint of the offending captions, did not take the issue seriously enough.

Now FHM Australia has removed the page containing the weak apology from its December edition.

"It's impossible to put a figure on how much this has cost FHM Australia," said a spokeswoman for Emap, the magazine's publisher. However, one senior executive in Sydney has estimated the cost of the fiasco at around $450,000 Australian dollars (£160,000).

Relatives of the 96 people who died in the football stadium tragedy were horrified when the Australian edition of the bestselling lads' mag featured pictures of the disaster accompanied by highly inappropriate captions.

One picture, which showed the steel mesh at the front of the terrace where many fans - mainly youngsters - were being crushed, carried the caption: "Shoppers waited for the doors to open for the end-of-year sale."

Another shows fans in the upper tier trying to lift fans from below to safety, with the caption: "Get us a beer while you're there."

Yet another shows victims laid out on advertising hoardings surrounded by distraught helpers and is captioned: "Pitch invaders: lazy."

An apology will appear in the January issue of FHM Australia and also in the UK edition, although the two titles are produced independently.

"We have prepared an apology for the January issue and have made sure that nothing pre-empts that apology prior to the January issue going on sale," the spokeswoman said.

Philip Hammond, the vice chairman of the Hillsborough family support group, and Liverpool FC both said they were "sickened" by the captions.

The publisher of FHM Australia, Geoff Campbell, has already apologised over the article, admitting the magazine acted "without sensitivity and in a totally inappropriate manner". He has also pledged to make a donation to the families of Hillsborough victims.

However, Mr Hammond said the mistake should not have been made in the first place and added that he would be calling on other members of his group and fans of Liverpool FC to boycott the magazine.