BRITS: TAKE HOWARD DOWN!

Posters advertising porn jock Howard Stern's New York-based television show prompted such a swamp of complaints - 222 of them, says Fox News - that British authorities ordered the posters taken down.

The posters featured such Stern quotes as "It's OK for a man to commit adultery if his wife is ugly," a rather daring quote considering his own recent marital collapse and his very public anguish over it.

But the British Advertising Standards Authority ordered the Bravo channel to take them down on Tuesday and to submit future posters for advance approval. The ASA said people simply didn't get the joke in the Stern quote.

Stern can at least claim this much - the only recent ad campaign taking more heat was for the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. "Shag" is British slang for sex. But the ASA took no action over those posters.