C4 to repeat that episode

The edition of Brass Eye that tattracted thousands of complaints after tackling paedophilia is to be repeated.

Channel 4's chief executive Michael Jackson announced the hugely controversial news last night, just as he leaves the channel for a new job in the US.

Broadcasting watchdogs partially rapped the original programme, aired in July, saying it was right to tackle such a sensitive subject - but criticised it for causing distress and said that Channel 4 did not give enough warning about the content of the show.

Giving the New Statesman media lecture last night, Mr Jackson said: "On the face of it, Brass Eye didn't contain anything very shocking for a late-night audience.

"In fact, so wide was the commotion - from left and right, moralists and libertarians - it was hard to pinpoint exactly what nerve had been struck, or how many.

"Its cumulative effect cut deeper than images or language. That's why it was so elusive and unnerving. It was a paradigm programme - and, for those who missed it, we're planning to show it again.

"More than a lampoon of the media's coverage of paedophilia, the programme touched on a moral panic that people didn't want to confront.

"But sometimes, for the strangest of reasons, society needs to feed off a hysteria of its own making. And sometimes that hysteria is about a programme that was about the original hysteria."

A date has not yet been set for the re-run.

Published: 1 Nov 2001