LONDON — The nation that created Monty Python and Mr. Bean apparently has no sense of humor when it comes to the "B" word — "bloody" that is.

Britain's advertising regulators have ordered the slang term stricken from an Australian tourism campaign designed to lure Britons Down Under with a TV commercial featuring bikinis, beer and the Great Barrier Reef.

The commercial closes with the question, "Where the bloody hell are you?" — or at least it does outside of Britain.

In the days since, Australia's Tourism Minister Fran Bailey has fired off a barrage of statements ridiculing the decision and this week jetted to London to urge regulators to overturn the ban.

On Monday, Bailey said what many Australians have been thinking since the storm broke — that profanity was introduced to Australia by convicts shipped there by Britain in the 19th century.

"After all, it was the British who brought the word 'bloody' to our shores. To not be able to use the phrase as we now invite them to come back for a holiday is a bit of joke," Bailey said.

The council raised no objections to any other words in the commercial — not even "hell."

The "Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang" defines "bloody" as an adjective that is "now considered fairly mild, but which was held to be taboo in many circles until the later 1960s."