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'Blackface' and 'racial impersonation' warnings added to Father Ted episodes
Entertainment

'Blackface' and 'racial impersonation' warnings added to Father Ted episodes

TWO FATHER TED episodes have been slapped with messages warning viewers about racially insensitive material.

UK broadcaster Channel 4 has decided to bubblewrap the episodes over fears some viewers may be offended.

One of the episodes features Father Ted doing an impersonation of a Chinese man, and the other shows the priests in 'blackface' while pretending to be The Supremes for a talent show.

Channel 4 now carries the following warning for the blackface episode: "This episode was made in 1995 and contains a scene of blackface which some viewers may find offensive. This programme isn’t suitable for younger viewers."

For the episode where Ted impersonates a Chinese man: "This episode was made in 1998 and contains language and racial impersonation which some viewers may find offensive."

While this episode was centred around the idea that Ted's actions weren't appropriate, it wasn't spared from the recent explosion of criticism of politically in-correct television programmes in the past year.

The episode where the priests wear blackface came under particularly heavy scrutiny in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, which intensified last year following the death of George Floyd at the hands of US police officers.

It comes after the son of the late Father Ted actor Dermot Morgan last year defended the show — originally shown between 1995 and 1998 on Channel 4 — against the cancel culture mob's accusations it was bigoted.

Don Morgan issued an emotional plea following the outcry asking people not to view his dad or the series as racist.

He said his dad — who died in 1998 at the age of 45 from a heart attack — “abhorred racism of every type and actively worked against it”.