French fashion chain La Redoute has been left red-faced after it forgot to airbrush a naked bather from a promotional photograph for its children's clothes.

The image, which appeared for several hours on its website today, showed a group of four children running on the sand.

But, in the background, a naked man can clearly be seen wading behind them up the sea-shore.

Web users spotted the 'faux pas', which has since been taken down, and immediately took to Twitter to poke fun at the clothing company.

One tweeter labelled it a 'SCANDALE' while another highlighted the 'EPIC FAIL de la Redoute!'.

La Redoute immediately apologised for the mistake, but its website has now come under intense scrutiny from users who also discovered a spelling mistake on one of its T-shirts.

Instead of having 'Enjoy Holidays' written on the garment, it actually says 'Enjoy Holydays'.

The bather's identity has not yet been revealed, but he has already sprung to fame across the web with a series of mocking images being produced.

Some keen photoshoppers have cut and paste famous people into the original image, which has seen President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, and even late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, taking his place.

Others have placed a cut-out of the naked man in other situations, including a music festival and in someone's house.