First he provoked the ire of the entire US media establishment; now he has run into trouble with the world's most powerful retailer.

Jon Stewart, the comedian who used a live CNN talkshow, Crossfire, to attack the 'partisan hackery' of America's political journalism, has offended Wal-Mart with the contents of his new book about American history.

The supermarket chain has banned Stewart's satirical textbook, America, from its stores because it contains a fake photograph of the members of the US Supreme Court in the nude. 'We felt that the majority of our customers would not be comfortable with it,' said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burk.

The store, which is responsible for 20 per cent of all book sales in the US, was unaware of the book's contents when it purchased tens of thousands of copies.

The photograph is obviously a fake and shows the heads of the nine Supreme Court justices grafted on to bodies taken from ClothesFree.com, a nudist website. It also supplies cut-out judicial robes and invites readers to 'restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe'.

The spat will only add to Stewart's popularity among twentysomething iconoclasts, though it was already sky-high after his run-in with CNN. In a live television exchange which is destined to be reshown ad infinitum, he accused the two hosts of the cable news channel's Crossfire show, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, of failing in their responsibility to inform the public discourse.

Carlson, a well-known Republican supporter, responded by calling Stewart the 'butt boy' of Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry and said the comedian's job was not to pass judgment on journalists but to be funny. A clearly furious Stewart then called Carlson 'a dick' - a first for American television audiences.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart's decision to ban America from the shelves has done little to dent the book's popularity. It is currently at the top of the New York Times ' bestseller list.