Ananova:

ITV has been criticised after John Lydon used the c-word during a live broadcast of I'm A Celebrity.

Presenter Dec Donnelly, who was visibly shocked by the outburst, was forced to apologise live on air after the former Sex Pistol said "f****** c****," when he learnt viewers had voted for him to stay in.

The 48-year-old has spent the last week working on his bad-boy image, refusing to pose for photographs at the start of the show and bad-mouthing Jordan. Dec said: "We are very sorry for that. It's a live show. We are incredibly sorry."

A spokeswoman for ITV1 said: "It was a live broadcast so it was unpreventable, but we apologise for any offence caused. It is a hazard of live shows and obviously we ask people not to swear or say anything appropriate. It is not something we can control."

The spokeswoman said it was too early to say whether the programme would consider imposing a delay on transmission to avoid broadcasting such outbursts. But the incident is bound to infuriate media watchdogs and attract the attention of the TV regulator Ofcom, the guardian of broadcasting standards.

Research by the Broadcasting Standards Commission has shown that a huge majority of people still regard the c-word as the most severe and offensive swear word.

Controversy and outrage have followed quickly every time it has been broadcast since the swear word was first aired on British television by Channel 4 eight years ago, during the Irvine Welsh drama The Granton Star Times.

John Milton-Whatmore, chairman of Mediawatch-UK, the country's leading broadcasting standards watchdog, said he was not surprised at the outburst by Lydon. "It was only a matter of time before one of the incumbents of the present series went off the rails and Rotten is in there for this sort of purpose," he said.

"A lot of people will be upset by it. I also think it is a sad time really, when a major television company has to resort to bad language and questionable activity to entertain our homes. I think it is counter productive. People will eventually switch off."