Irreverent greeting cards featuring Karen Matthews and Jimmy Savile should stop being sold, a children’s charity has said.

Instead of the usual syrupy, saccharine cards pledging undying love this alternative Mother’s Day card priced at £2.99 includes a drawing of Dewsbury’s most infamous citizen, Karen Matthews, alongside the phrase: “Thanks for never hiding me under a bed.”

While the cards for Fathers Day in June are if anything even more provocative.

Regarding Savile, a prolific sex offender from Leeds, it says: “Thanks for never letting Jim fix it for me” while a drawing of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian criminal who imprisoned his own daughter and fathered seven of her children is also featured by freelance illustrator Samuel Hague of Derbyshire.

The Jimmy Savile Fathers Day card

In January 2009, Matthews was jailed for kidnapping her own daughter, Shannon Matthews, in an attempt to claim reward money. The case transfixed the nation and consumed a huge amount of police time.

The NSPCC has described the cards, which are drawn in a cartoon style, as “thoughtless and irresponsible”.

However, Mr Hague, 29, who sells the pieces via online marketplace Etsy, has defended his work and says he does “not condone any acts of child abuse whatsoever”.

Etsy has been approached for comment.