Here's another bit of news to file under the 'accident waiting to happen' banner, alongside 9/11, the economic downturn and Gordon Brown. Microsoft has pulled out of sponsoring a TV spin-off of risque cartoon Family Guy, after execs attended a taping of the show and found it to be, well, not a good fit with its core values.

Eyebrows were raised a couple of weeks ago when Redmond announced it was sponsoring the show, and not through regular advertising either, but by weaving Windows 7 messages into the script. Family Guy fans everywhere gasped; could the show which brutally lampoons the Fox Network on which it runs on an almost weekly basis, finally be going soft?

Well, thankfully, we'll never find out, as Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show, to give it its full title, was decided to be "not a fit with the Windows brand". Who would have thought jokes about deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest were not what Microsoft was quite looking for?

28 Oct 2009