Bosses at auction website eBay have been forced to pull the sale of a used cough sweet which was sucked and discarded by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A fan fished the sticky sweet out of the garbage after the action man-turned-California Governor attended a recent police memorial.

The bidding opened at $500 (GBP277.80) last week (ends21MAY04) but was quickly pulled from the site because it was advertised as a piece of Arnie's DNA - and that goes against eBay's policy of refusing to sell off body parts.

EBay spokesman HANI DURZI (corr) says, "There is a policy against human body parts or remains, so you cannot market something as someone's DNA."

It's possible the lozenge could be resold on eBay this week (beg24MAY04) as a collector's item.

24/05/2004 09:17