IN your article "TV Show Copycat Horror: (LET, April 19) I am quite appalled by the fact that you and the "victim's" mother are blaming the television show Jackass for what happened.

I am not saying the young boy deserved it, far from it. I wouldn't wish that to happen to anyone. All I am saying is that these young boys were jumping over a home-made bonfire and then decided, quite bafflingly, to throw petrol on Joe.

The point I am making is that it is pure common sense that if you throw petrol on someone and jump over a fire you will almost surely combust. And let's not forget that the show both at the beginning and end twice tells us that these stunts are highly dangerous and should not be attempted at home or anywhere else.

Let me put this in perspective as well. A boy covered in petrol, jumps over a fire and gets burned. Now how can you blame a television show that is made several miles away, for something that this boy did? I myself enjoy the show but I don't go out and throw myself into a sewer or spray mace in my eyes.

Why don't we blame the actions of people who have started fights on a Jackie Chan movie or people who have taken drugs on Trainspotting?

Many will remember the court case in America where people tried to sue McDonalds for making them fat. Well don't blame the show for the actions of someone else. At the end of the day that's all it is. A show. It's for our own personal entertainment not as an ideas factory for how we can destroy ourselves.

RICHARD SIMMS, Springfield Avenue, Cherry Tree, Blackburn.