Recently named Burger King CEO Bernardo Hess obviously didn't come up through the marketing ranks. Or human relations either…

Not judging from his rather boorish remarks at the University of Chicago where, according to the Chicago Maroon campus paper, he observed that he was able to concentrate on his studies while a student at the University of Warwick in England because “the food is terrible and the women are not very attractive.”

This being the age of instantaneous communication, Hess' remarks almost immediately went viral in the UK where, it's safe to say, BK now has a PR problem.

One could forgive the crack about the food. England is the land of kidney pies and boiled mutton, after all. Who wouldn't want a Whopper — heck, even a Whaler — instead?

But unattractive women? Okay, we'll concede Margaret Thatcher and the queen, but the sceptered isle did grace the world with the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vivien Leigh, Julie Christie and of course Princess Di.

How hard was Hess hitting the books to miss that? They say all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Apparently a dimwitted one as well…