Remarks on the difficulties of employing foreign Father Christmases, and in particular black Father Christmases, have provoked a discussion of racist attitudes in Norwegian society. Tony Samstag reports from Oslo:

A company called Western Staff Services is one of the biggest temporary employment agencies in Norway and the market leader when it comes to supplying Father Christmases for the holiday season.

The company even runs a special training course, which it calls "Santa University", and which struggles every year to fill an insatiable demand from shopping centres, department stores and Christmas parties. It was a routine pre-Christmas interview with a tabloid newspaper that set off the row.

A director of the employment agency, asked whether his company would take on immigrant Father Christmases, replied that he was happy to do so, but he found that Santas who spoke Norwegian with a foreign accent, especially if they were dark-skinned or black, were seldom if ever offered jobs.

"If a person came from deepest, darkest Africa," he added, "I would have serious misgivings about using this person as a Father Christmas!"

The resulting uproar has gone all the way to the top. The Minister for Local Government has declared herself appalled and hinted that legislation to encourage positive discrimination might be in the pipeline.