ITV has been fined 3,000 Australian dollars (£1,672) after contestants on its show, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, killed and ate a rat.

The fine, for animal cruelty, was issued by the RSPCA in Australia, where the show was filmed last year.

The animal was killed for a TV show, that's not appropriate, said RSPCA chief inspector David Oshannessy.

A spokesman for ITV said: ITV has apologised for the mistake which led to this incident. He continued: The production was unaware that killing a rat could be an offence, criminal or otherwise in New South Wales, and accepts that further inquiries should have been made.

Shock jock Jon Gaunt, who was sacked after calling a councillor a Nazi live on air, has won permission to bring a High Court challenge against the media watchdog, Ofcom.

Gaunt - known as Gaunty - lost his job with Talksport in November 2008 following the exchange, which involved a discussion about Redbridge Council's decision to ban smokers from becoming foster parents.

The presenter, who was in care as a child, was sacked after calling councillor Michael Stark a Nazi and an ignorant pig live on air, and prompted several complaints from listeners.

When Ofcom upheld the complaints under the broadcasting code of practice, Gaunt launched an appeal, claiming his fundamental right to free speech and to criticise a professional politician had been infringed.

At a hearing at the High Court, the presenter was granted permission to bring an appeal against Ofcom. He said: The right of every British citizen to speak his or her mind, free of the fear of sanction from faceless government-appointed bureaucrats is a right that we must all protect and preserve.

Ofcom overstepped its remit in my case, and infringed the free speech which I, and every other British citizen, has enjoyed since the time of Magna Carta.

Gaunt is being supported by the civil rights group Liberty, whose director, Shami Chakrabarti, he once labelled Britain's most dangerous woman.

India plans to lodge a complaint against a British TV documentary on Mumbai slums, describing it poverty porn as it portrays a very wrong image of India's commercial capital and will affect its tourism.

The Indian High Commission in the UK will lodge a complaint with the British TC censor Ofcom about the content of Channel 4's' two-part documentary, Grand Designs on Dharavi Slums in Mumbai showing children living among open sewers, dead rats and toxic wastes.

According to an official, the High Commission in London granted a filming permit to Kevin McCloud, the TV presenter of the channel in the belief that he was making a programme highlighting Mumbai's architectural history.

We thought it would be about the architecture of Mumbai but it was only about slums. He was showing dirty sewage and dead rats, children playing among rubbish and people living in these small rooms.bHe never talked about architecture at all, the official said.

Describing it as poverty porn, the official said we are upset. Many people know India but for people who don't travel, they will think all of India is like this. Of course it will affect our tourism. It is not representative at all.

Channel4 and the production company, Talkback Thames, said: Kevin McCloud follows everyday life in Dharavi and the film is a balanced and insightful account of his experience there.

Viewers have been whingeing about Celebrity Big Brother after housemates talked about orgies and fivesomes before 9pm.

Nicola T, Dane Bowers, Alex Reid and Basshunter were playing a drinking game called I have never and Nicola T started it off saying I have never masturbated in the Big Brother house

Katie Price's boyfriend Alex Reid then confessed to having had a five-some, although he admitted that he doesn't remember the experience. Dane told of a six-in-a-bed romp.

Media watchdog Ofcom received several complaints about the inappropriate content of the reality TV show.

Campaign group Mediawatch called the scenes inappropriate.

BBC nutters ordered an auction house to remove a neo-classical oil painting of a semi-naked woman in case her exposed nipple 'offended' viewers.

Auctioneer Alan Aldridge was being filmed for Flog it!, BBC2's daytime antique programme, when the production team asked him to take down the 19th-century oil painting. BBC Flog It! It features the mythical Greek goddess Ariadne holding a goblet of wine with her left breast exposed.

Aldridge, who runs Aldridge Auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, offered to cover the offending nipple, but was still told to take the canvas down. neo-classical painting. He said: It is absolutely ridiculous. This is a 19th century neo-classical work of art. I can't imagine anyone getting offended over a naked female nipple these days.

Flog it! presenter Paul Martin, who lives in nearby Seend and used to run an antiques shop, defended the decision saying viewers would complain; Yes, they had to have the painting moved. It wasn't a big deal but they do get complaints about this sort of thing. You'd be surprised.

Gordon Ramsay has been criticised for his disrespectful treatment of Indian chefs in his latest show.

More than 100 viewers complained to Channel 4 about his behaviour on Gordon's Great Escape.

The restaurateur described an Indian guru as Father Christmas and repeatedly used obscenities when speaking to locals.

The three-part series, which aired last week, featured Ramsay visiting different parts of India to learn about traditional cooking methods.

In one scene, Ramsay  met a guru and learned how to cook vegetarian food. He made fun of the guru's beliefs, saying on the show: When I first saw him I thought he was Father Christmas. But I don't dig all the stuff about the food. I respect carrots, fine, but they're not living to keep us happy.

In another scene, he told a Keralan tree climber: You little fucker, making me look like a twat.

Channel 4 admitted it had received 116 complaints – more than double the average the network receives for his other show, The F Word.

A Channel 4 spokeswoman said: Gordon is a passionate character and viewers know what to expect when watching his programmes. The series was broadcast after the watershed and each episode was preceded by a clear language warning.'

The BBC is to ask the nation if its comedians should be allowed to tell jokes about lesbians and gays. The issue will be part of the most wideranging piece of research on sexuality that the corporation has commissioned.

Tim Davie, BBC director of audio and music, will chair a working group on the portrayal and inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It will examine how they are reflected in the corporation's use of language, tone, stereotyping, humour and scheduling.

The report was commissioned last August, months before the corporation received hundreds of complaints over a headline on the BBC News website relating to a debate on Ugandan government policy. It asked: Should homosexuals face execution? The corporation apologised and amended the headline.

2CV, a research group, will conduct the project for the BBC, with a report due this summer. It will even canvass parts of the community, such as religious bodies, that are seen as anti-homosexual.

Davie said: As a public service broadcaster, we have a responsibility to serve all of our audiences and it's vital that we reflect the differences among all of the UK's diverse communities, nations and regions.

Gay rights groups have long called for the BBC to include more gay characters in its output. Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, which lobbies for lesbian, gay and bisexual interests, said: This is long overdue. Stonewall research into BBC output found that during 168 hours of programmes, gay lives were represented positively for just six minutes.

Is Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses racist?

The issue arises because the other day I interviewed John Sullivan, the creator of Only Fools, and he told me about the way he has to edit old episodes to cleanse them of politically incorrect dialogue. He cited an episode from the Eighties in which Del told a child to pop down to the Paki shop. That line is no longer broadcast in repeats.

I think it should be. Now, before I explain why, I must make clear that, to me, the phrase Paki shop is reprehensible and racist. I'd hate to hear it used in everyday speech. This is, after all, 2010.

But that's exactly the point: it's 2010, not the early Eighties. In the early Eighties, such a phrase was common currency. Whether we like it or not, that's how some people spoke – so it's only realistic that the odd fictional character should have spoken like that too. Tackling racism is one thing. Pretending racism never existed is another.

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A BBC News presenter has been subjected to a deluge of personal abuse after fronting a documentary about one of the most controversial events in recent Indian history.

Sonia Deol was forced to delete her page on the Facebook website amid a barrage of criticism from fellow Sikhs over her film about the Indian army storming the Golden Temple in Amritsar, one of the faith's most holy shrines, in 1984.

Now protesters are planning a mass boycott of the licence fee in disgust at what they see as a slur on the controversial religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in the raid.

Many Sikhs consider him a saint and are furious that in Ms Deol's documentary, 1984: A Sikh Story, he was described as a militant. They also claim he was depicted in the film in a similar way to Osama Bin Laden.

Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered the assault on June 4, 1984, after Bhindranwale and up to 500 armed supporters took refuge in the holy site, apparently fearing arrest amid rising Sikh-Hindu tensions. Around 500 people died in the ensuing battle, which some Sikhs now refer to as our 9/11. As troops moved in, Bhindranwale's followers fired missiles at Indian tanks.

The BBC has received 52 complaints about the documentary, which attracted 1.3 million viewers and was billed as Ms Deol's emotional journey back to India in a bid to discover how such an attack could ever have taken place.

However, community TV station The Sikh Channel says it received more than 8,000 calls to a phone-in about the film. Channel owner Davinder Singh Bal said: The documentary contained many sweeping statements and didn't attempt to uncover the truth of what happened. Our viewers were not happy. BT said that our exchange was going into overdrive. The BBC is not responding to the Sikh community and we are thinking about organising a campaign to invoke the non-payment of licence fees by the 700,000 Sikhs in Britain.

Dr Sadhu Singh, chairman of the Council of Sikh Temples, said many viewers were angered that the BBC showed him [Bhindranwale] looking like Bin Laden. He said: They used pictures of him wearing a turban and holding a gun. To someone who doesn't know what Sikhism is about, it would be very misleading.

A BBC source said Ms Deol's documentary was never intended to be an investigation, saying: It was her personal journey, a look at her reaction to rediscovering her faith as a Sikh. It was for a mainstream channel, BBC1 and there's only so much you can say in an hour. A lot of the attacks on Sonia have been because people think that the documentary reflected her views on Bhindranwale, but she did not give her opinions about him at all.

In a warning for couch potatoes everywhere, Australian research has found that relaxing in front of television for hours every day can shorten your life.

Each hour [per day?] spent vegging out in front of television increases the risk of early death by up to 18%, according to researchers from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne.

Even healthy people who exercise increase the chances of premature death from heart disease by 18% for each hour spent in front of television. They have a 9% increased risk of cancer and an 11% increased risk of death from all causes claims the Australian and French team, whose findings are reported today in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.

However it is not television per se that is the killer, but long periods of sitting doing nothing, said David Dunstan of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute who led the research. Sitting for long periods at an office desk was also bad for the health, but the research focussed on television watching as that is the most common sedentary activity

The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time, said Professor Dunstan. But technological, social and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to. For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another - from the car to the chair in the office to the chair on front of the television.

Dr Dunstan and his colleagues tracked 8800 men and women aged 25 and over, over a period of six and a half years. The group, which did not include people already at risk of premature death from pre-existing cardiovascular disease, were tested for glucose tolerance and provided blood samples so researchers could measure biomarkers such as cholesterol and blood sugar levels. They were divided into three groups; those who watched fewer than two hours of television a day, those who watched two to four hours, and those who watched four or more hours a day.

Compared with people who watched less than two hours of television daily, those who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent increased risk for CVD-related death, the researchers said in a statement.

The next stage of the research is to test the hypothesis that taking breaks from sitting still to move around will help in the breakdown of fats and glucose.

Redemption Films have agreed a deal with UK TV's Film 24 which is available on Sky Digital channel 157.

The schedule is as follows

• January 16th Nude Vampire
• January 23rd Nude for Satan
• January 30th Satanic Sluts – The Black Order Cometh
• February 6th Cold Eyes of Fear
• February 13th Dracula's Fiancee
• February 20th Schoolgirl Hitchhikers
• February 27th Requiem for a Vampire
• March 6th Living Dead Girl (English subtitles)
• March 13th Lips of Blood (English subtitles)

Start time for them will be around midnight after a Network TV Premiere of a horror movie.

BBC staff say they have been forced to spend hours vetting preschool children's series and classical music concerts for sex, violence and inappropriate language under idiotic compliance rules introduced after the Jonathan Ross scandal.

taff have told The Sunday Telegraph that his legacy is a burdensome bureaucracy which stifles creativity while being unlikely to prevent further incidents.

Under the enhanced compliance procedures, which apply to most pre-recorded programmes, every second of material to be broadcast must be watched or listened to check for unacceptable content, and a seven-page form must be filled out.

Among the programmes subjected to the new procedures are parts of the BBC's Armistice Day coverage. All episodes of the Teletubbies must be vetted, despite the show being aimed at under-threes and containing few or no normal words. Also being vetted are many Radio 3 concerts of works written after 1900.

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