How do you remove an invalid remote branch reference from Git?

Question

In my current repo I have the following output:

$ git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/public/master

I want to delete <

Answer 1

The accepted answer didn't work for me when the ref was packed. This does however:

$ git remote add public http://anything.com/bogus.git
$ git remote rm public