Ukip leader Gerard Batten expressed his outrage at the prospect of a "gender-neutral" Greggs after falling for a spoof tweet about the bakery chain.
The spoof tweet, which came from a mock Guardian news account, read: “Greggs is to rebrand in a move towards a gender neutral business model following criticism that their name sounds too male.”
Mr Batten, who has led Ukip since February, quoted the tweet to his 35,000 followers and wrote a statement expressing his anger at the prospect.
He said: “Criticism from who? Probably someone who doesn’t buy from Greggs. A cheese roll is a cheese roll. When is this madness going to stop.”
He continued the rant by saying: “By the way, almost all the staff in Greggs are female. Do they operate a biased recruitment policy?”
Mr Batten’s tweet has since been deleted. It had been retweeted by the official Twitter account for Ukip.
If the Ukip leader had taken a closer look, he would have seen the account he was tweeting from - “Guardian Headlines” - is a page which posts spoof headlines in a mocking Guardian style.
One of its viral posts, purporting to be a column by its left-wing writer Owen Jones, reads: "I've always had a problem with white people eating rice but I've stayed silent, until now."
