When you've had a career as long and distinguished as Jerry Lewis - part of a comedy act with Dean Martin, star of The King Of Comedy, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, charity monolith - you can pretty much do whatever you want.

OK, you can pretty much do almost whatever you want. Introducing an imaginary character called Jesse The Illiterate Faggot 18 hours into his annual Labor Day telethon to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association is probably one of the few things that Jerry Lewis shouldn't do. But, hey, Jerry Lewis did it anyway, clearly not realising that even calling invented invisible characters 'illiterate faggots' during an event that raised $63 million for charity will land you in all sorts of trouble these days. Now, however, Jerry Lewis has apologised for his outburst and everyone's happy again - apart from Jesse The Illiterate Faggot, who plans to write a tell-all book about the incident entitled Jery Loois Iz A Dik.

Jerry Lewis isn't a perfect man by any means - something that's true about anyone who's directed and starred in movies about a German clown who lures Jewish children to their deaths in Nazi gas chambers during World War II - but the never-ending energy that Jerry Lewis has shown by raising money with his MDA Labor Day telethon - over $800 million in 41 years - makes up for a lot of his failings as a human being. And that's true right up until the moment that Jerry Lewis starts shouting the word 'faggot' on live TV.

When you've hosted an almost day-long telethon every year since 1966 like Sinatra-snitcher Jerry Lewis has, chances are you're going to run out of material at some point. And that happened 18 hours into this year's Labor Day Telethon, when Jerry Lewis went and said this…

Watching the clip it's clear that midway through that last word a mental image of Mel Gibson cursing the Jews flashed through Jerry Lewis's mind, leading to the abandoning of the word, the swift "no" and the lurching away like Frankenstein's assistant. But Jerry Lewis has gone one stage further and apologised directly to the handful of people who actually stuck with the Jerry Lewis telethon for 18 hours and didn't just watch a 30-second clip of Jerry Lewis being homophobic on YouTube like everyone else. ABC reports:

    In an e-mail statement released by the Muscular Dystrophy Association Tuesday, Lewis apologized for the remark, saying it was a "joking comment" intended for a member of his production team."I apologize to anyone who was offended," Lewis said. "I obviously made a bad choice of words. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well. That something like this would distract from the true purpose of the telethon pains me deeply… The success of the show and all the good that will come from it shouldn't be lost because of one unfortunate word. I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses. I am sorry."

By apologising so quickly and sincerely, it looks as if Jerry Lewis has escaped the fate of Isaiah Washington, who was also called to task for using the same gay slur on the set of Grey's Anatomy. That's good news for all concerned because not only has Jerry Lewis learnt an important lesson, but now he won't have to a) go to gay rehab or b) star in that ropey-looking Bionic Woman remake. Plus it's thought that in next year's Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, all proceeds will be snatched away from the wheelchair-bound children and instead be used to set up a charitable fund for imaginary homosexuals that can't read good, which is clearly a step in the right direction.

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