LONDON, Jan 8 (AFP) - The BBC went ahead Saturday night with a British television screening of a controversial musical, despite reported death threats and a record 45,000 complaints about its foul-mouthed script and perceived blasphemy.
Called "Jerry Springer - The Opera," starring David Soul as famous US talk show host Jerry Springer, it is thought to be the most expletive-laden programme ever shown on British television.
The successful comic stage musical, which has run in London for more than three years, includes tap-dancing members of the American Ku Klux Klan, and a scene in which a nappy-wearing Jesus Christ admits he is "a bit gay".
The BBC has received 45,000 written and telephoned complaints, while 7,000 objections have been lodged with the British broadcasting complaints authority Ofcom.
These figures far outstrip the 1995 screening of controversial Hollywood movie "The Last Temptation of Christ," directed by Martin Scorsese, which prompted 1,554 complaints.
Some senior BBC executives were being protected on Saturday by security guards following telephoned death threats to them and their families, a series of British newspapers reported in their Sunday editions.
The BBC refused to confirm this, but did say that the head of BBC2, the channel showing the musical, and some other staff, had received "a large number of abusive and unpleasant calls".
Critics have slammed the show -- which was broadcast as planned from 10:00 pm (2200 GMT) -- as unnecessarily lewd and blasphemous, claiming it contains 8,000 obscenities, a figure dismissed by the BBC, which puts it at around 300.
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said he was a practising Christian and did not find anything blasphemous in the show.
But Stephen Green of the religious group Christian Voice, said: "I find it astonishing that Mark Thompson and David Soul claim they are Christians and they can see nothing wrong with 'Jerry Springer - the Opera'.
"Do they really not find an obese Jesus wandering on dressed in a nappy with his arms outstretched in a mockery of the crucifixion saying 'I feel a bit gay' blasphemous?"
He added: "If this show portrayed Mohammed or Vishnu as homosexual, ridiculous and ineffectual, it would never have seen the light of day."
Michael Ancram, deputy leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said he had concerns about the BBC's reasons for showing the musical.
"What they are trying to do is to get people to watch it because they think it is going to shock them. I don't think it is the duty of the BBC to do that."
Television lobby group Mediawatch-UK has written to BBC chairman Michael Grade claiming the show breached the corporation's guidelines on respecting religious sensibilities.
In an open letter, Mediawatch-UK's director John Beyer said people who paid the licence fee, the compulsory levy for all British television viewers which finances the BBC, "do not expect the BBC to be pushing back boundaries of taste and decency in this way".
However, the National Secular Society urged the BBC to resist "religious bullies".
01/08/2005 22:54 GMT - AFP