The campaign has been running in January on primetime slots during ITV1 programmes.

Bolt appears in the third of the ads, where Tennant discovers a terrible lookalike of the Olympic and world champion sprinter, whose attempt at Bolt's signature lightning pose is interrupted by the arrival of the real thing.

Usain Bolt and David Tennant appear in the new Virgin Media ad campaign

Other ads see Branson accidentally deleting his favourite programme and Tennant himself, showcasing the "undelete" feature.

Ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which has been using Britain's double Olympic champion Mo Farah in the Virgin Media campaign since last summer, is also running the campaign across print and online outlets.

Richard Larcombe, director of advertising and sponsorship at Virgin Media, commented: "We're delighted that David, Usain and Richard are back and flying the flag for our fantastic services."

The ASA ban was triggered by complaints over a phrase employed in an ad where Bolt dresses up as Branson - "bye bye buffering" - which implied Virgin Media customers would never experience buffering delays.

Another ad was objected to over the phrase "Richard Branson's doubling your broadband speed" - a complaint that it was not made clear exceptions applied to this claim was upheld.

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