A French fashion chain has been caught with its pants down after publishing a photo of a naked man on its website.
Posh French clothes retailer La Redoute put the snap featuring four children running up an idyllic looking beach on its website, which is viewed by thousands of people daily.
Whoever put the picture up failed to notice that behind the happy children was a naked, chubby, middle-aged man walking out of the sea, with everything on show.
The mishap was quickly picked up on social networking site Twitter and soon attracted thousands of comments.
The usually liberal French neighbours seemed shocked by the mishap with one Twitter user leaving the message ‘Scandale!’
“As a mother I am not happy to see this picture, we do not know this man, or if the children are safe,” the Sun quoted another disgusted user as tweeting.
While some were totally against the man who has unknowingly put everything on show, others sided with him.
“Poor man! It was photographed without his knowledge and was published in all of France!” one user tweeted.
La Redoute later apologised for the gaffe.
“La Redoute apologises for the photo published on its site and is taking steps to remove it. We have opted to delete all the posts including this picture,” it said.
“We are aware that it may offend the sensibilities of surfers. We will strengthen the validation process of all brand communications so this can not happen again in the future,” it added.
Nothing is known yet about the identity of the man in the picture.