In an era when women are running two of the world's largest computer companies – IBM and HP – Dell only succeeded in making itself look small when it hired an expert in misogynistic humor to MC a partner event attended by Michael Dell himself.

Dell apologized on Monday for the way it handled the event, held last month in Copenhagen. The shindig's moderator was Mads Christensen, a Danish "inspirational speaker" who did his best to crack up the crowd of about 800 Dell partners and employees with offensive zingers such as: "The IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy," according to a report from Danish blogger Christiane Vejlø.

Christensen later asked "all (men) in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, 'shut up bitch!'" Vejlø reported.

Though the event was in mid-April, it caused a firestorm Sunday after an English-language version of Vejlø's account was posted to Reddit.

Vejlø wrote that she was shocked that a company of Dell's stature would hire someone like Christensen.

It doesn't look like that will ever happen again.

"Mads Christensen made a number of inappropriate and insensitive remarks about women. Dell sincerely apologizes for these comments," Dell wrote Monday in a post to its Google+ account. "Going forward, we will be more careful selecting speakers at Dell events."

Neither Christensen nor Vejlø immediately responded to requests for comment.