The permanently bare-chested Iggy Pop has dumped the BBC in further trouble after the Corporation received complaints for the singer’s race word spoken during this year’s television coverage of the Glastonbury Festival. Interviewed after performing with his band, The Stooges, the wild man rocker discussed visiting “paki” shops in Camden, a comment that the BBC apologised for a day later. However with two complaints registered by Ofcom in the immediate aftermath, it was considered too little, too late.

Ofcom ruled that the BBC “failed in its responsibility to ensure the offence caused was justified by the context”, while they have also been reprimanded for not reacting quickly enough. The BBC responded that the American musician “was probably unaware that a term commonly used 30 years ago had now passed out of polite usage” and that “Iggy Pop is one of the wildest men in rock music and, as such, he has a built-in content advisory warning.” The fact that they are even defending the situation upsets me. I can’t help but wonder that if other racial slurs had been used, they would have been much quicker to condemn the star.

[via BBC Online]