The BBC waded into yet another race row yesterday after Harry Enfield blacked-up for his latest comedy sketch show and poked fun at a Muslim girl in a burka.
The comedian and his comedy partner Paul Whitehouse were accused of being ‘crass and tasteless’ yesterday for apparently mocking ethnic minorities.
Their new show – Harry & Paul: The Story Of The Twos - will be shown later this month as part of BBC2’s celebration of its 50th birthday.
In one risqué sketch, Enfield makes fun of black American singer Harry Belafonte by covering his face in dark make-up.
The character – who appears as a mock ‘talking head’ - is thinly disguised under the name Barry Helafonte.
He is one of a series of real-life personalities, including Harry Hill, Harry Potter and Barry Cryer, Enfield lampoons as part of a running gag about famous people called Harry or Barry.
In another bizarre scene likely to outrage some viewers, the comedians turn a young Muslim girl covered in a burqa into the butt of their humour.
For no apparent reason, she is introduced into a spoof of Danish crime drama The Killing along-side a young boy dressed in a costume of animated penguin Pingu.
The implication seems to be that her burqa makes the Muslim girl look like a penguin.
The pair are seen waddling through a tower block before the boy shoots a woman in the head at point blank range.
Coming just weeks after Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson was forced to apologise for apparently mumbling the N-word during an outtake, the sketches are likely to further inflame tensions over what the BBC puts on air.
The Story Of The Twos, which will be shown at 9pm on Sunday May 25, is expected to be watched by millions of families.
Asked to justify his decision to include a young girl in a burqa at a preview screening this month, Enfield, 52, said he wanted to have a ‘little Muslim’ in the show.
He said: ‘I thought we had to have a Muslim person in it because they always have Muslims. All the Swedish programmes, they always have a Muslim. Why is there a Muslim in them?’
Enfield joked that his burqa-wearing character should have been called ‘red herring’ because that is the role that Muslim characters play in the foreign thrillers.
Last night, media standards campaigner Pippa Smith, of the group Safermedia, said Enfield risked stoking ethnic tensions with his comedy.
She said: ‘Is Harry Enfield just going out of his way to be controversial by using a young girl dressed in a burqa meeting a young boy dressed in a Pingu penguin costume for his sketch?
‘Poking fun at young Muslims, who look no more than children, is in very poor taste, especially when some young Muslim women are complaining of being harassed and even attacked for wearing the burqa.
‘To then shoot a woman in the head is completely inappropriate. Harry Enfield is no longer funny and the BBC has lost the plot.’
It is not the first time Enfield has been caught up in a race row because of his edgy comedy.
In 2008, he provoked fury in the Philippines with a sketch in which he played a man who tries to get his ‘pet Northerner’ to mate with his Filipina housemaid.
A senior Filipina congresswoman demanded the BBC apologise over the ‘revolting’ sketch, which she said depicted Filipinas as ‘submissive sex objects’. The country’s ambassador to the UK said it was ‘gutter humour’.
The same year, Enfield revealed he was forced to drop a planned character of a sex-crazed Muslim hoodie because producers were afraid of provoking a barrage of complaints.
He was also warned not to play another new character, paedophile Catholic priest Father Paddy, for the same reason. Enfield said at the time: ‘I was told, “Don’t even go there”.’
The latest controversy comes after Clarkson was embroiled in a racism row for apparently mumbling the word n***** in unaired footage.
And last week, the BBC sacked Radio Devon DJ David Lowe, 67, for broadcasting a song con-taining the words: ‘He’s been tanning n****** out in Timbuktu, now he’s coming to do the same to you’.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse have a well-established brand of humour which is well known to BBC Two audiences. In History of the Twos a wide range of people, history and trends across BBC 2’s 50 year history are parodied without any intention to offend.
‘In the ‘Pingu’ sketch no group of people are being satirised, but the genre of Nordic Noir is very much lampooned.’