Ofcom investigate Coronation Street amid double racism scandal

Watchdog Ofcom has launched an investigation into an episode of Coronation Street involving a racist slur by Catherine Tyldesley’s character Eva Price.

The episode was broadcast in August and saw Eva in Audrey’s hair salon booking herself in for a set of highlights and saying: ‘I have more roots than Kunta Kinte. No idea who that is, by the way, just something my mum used to say.’

Kunta Kint is a character from the famous novel Roots: The Saga Of An American Family by Alex Harley that was made into a TV series and is based on a Gambian relative of the author who was sold as a slave.

Shocked viewers accused the soap of racism and it was forced to apologise at the time but further action is now being taken, following 472 complaints to Ofcom and a spokesman for the body has said in a statement: “We’re investigating whether a comment made by a character in Coronation Street was offensive and breached generally accepted standards.”

The news comes today as a fresh blow to the ITV soap which sacked actor Marc Anwar over the weekend for racists tweets he posted about Indian people on Twitter.

The 60-year-old actor, who plays Sharif Nazir, responded to recent fighting in Kashmir between Indians and Pakistanis and the Pakistan-born actor branded Indians ‘b*****ds’ and ‘p**s-drinking c**ts’.

Today he apologised in a video posted on Youtube under the account ‘The Real Marc Anwar’ and said: ‘This was never my intention and the language was unacceptable, I feel that I have let a lot of people down, my family my friends and my former colleagues. On Friday I saw on the news people being pelted with pellets, women mourning their dead in Kashmir, this upset me very deeply and in a moment of madness I ranted out and vented my anger’

‘Again the language that I used, I sincerely apologise for but my feelings were very sincere for the people of Kashmir. I hope everyone can find it in their hearts to forgive me.’

Police have launched an investigation into the comments as a potential hate crime.