A pub has landed itself in hot water after releasing an ad that asked punters: “Would you punch your ex for a steak?”

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The ad was released on Facebook by the George Pub and Grill in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, and includes a picture of (you guessed it) a gigantic steak.

Although it was only supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, the venue is now facing losing its license after a bunch of people took offence, with many accusing landlord Craig Harker of taking the piss out of domestic violence.

After posting the ad on July 27th to its 92,000 followers, anti-violence charity White Ribbon Scotland tweeted:

It’s a shocking approach to advertising that any business would offer free food as an incentive to undertake violence against an ex partner.

It’s not a joke, it’s misogynistic attitudes in practice.

Meanwhile, head of PR at Women’s Aid Teresa Parker added:

Just shocking, domestic abuse is no laughing matter.

Not funny to joke about punching your ex in the face, especially to the many survivors of domestic abuse living every day in fear of their ex.

With 1 woman getting killed every 4 days in the UK, they are scared for a reason.

So severe was the backlash that the post was even reported to the police, who have spoken to the landlord and the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to explain that it has breached its code of conduct.

Craig remains unapologetic about the incident, telling the Metro:

Anyone who took offence simply isn’t our clientele and we know our audience.

To top the madness off, the police have then taken on the request of the MP and are actually investigating The George FB page.

Surely with police cuts they have more important things to concentrate on, like the local issues with drugs, knives and thefts – the actual issues in the town.

Now the police licencing and council licensing have tag teamed together to try and remove our licence for alcohol and placed us under review.

The whole scenario is absolutely laughable when we have never had a police incident in the whole six years of running.

A Cleveland Police spokesperson said that they met with the landlord this week, adding:

Any licence review is dealt with as part of a formal process, and as such, we would not provide a comment outside of that process if any review were to take place.

Looks like the pub seriously misfired with their attempt at a jokey ad – they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but if they end up losing their license, in this case the rule does not apply.

Nearly as bad as that time Pepsi seriously fucked up with their tone deaf advert.