GAURDiAN ST0RY...

The BBC has received more than 1,000 complaints about violence and references to the Hillsborough disaster in Tuesday night's episode of EastEnders.

The broadcaster has received 663 emails and phone calls about violent scenes of thugs attacking drinkers in the Old Vic with baseball bats, shown before the 9pm watershed. Character Honey Mitchell, who is heavily pregnant, was thrown to the floor.

A further 389 complaints were made about a reference in the same episode to the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy, in which 96 Liverpool fans died as a result of crowd congestion at an FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield.

John Beyer, the director of pressure group Mediawatch UK, said the representation of violence was "beyond the pale" for the timeslot and audience."It's a ratings game and they seem to be prepared to do anything to attract controversy," he said.

The BBC defended the episode, which started at 7.30pm after a warning and was seen by an average of 9.6 million people. However, the broadcaster has decided to edit some sequences for the Sunday afternoon omnibus.

"The climax to the storyline shown on Tuesday night was absolutely in line with our editorial guidelines for pre-watershed viewing," a BBC spokeswoman said.

"EastEnders, however, is aware that the audience mix on a Sunday afternoon can be different and is therefore is undertaking some editing while retaining the drama for this time slot."
She added that the BBC had edited the omnibus in the past, most recently in April when it removed a scene with a crying baby.

The BBC's response, published on its website, acknowledged that this was "a particularly dramatic episode", but argued the violence was "in the main, implied rather than explicit" and "in no way glamorised or glorified".

The broadcaster said the scene was over relatively quickly, with the rest of the episode focusing on the fallout, which saw Honey rushed to hospital. The BBC added that viewers were warned of the nature of the content through pre-programme announcements, billings and programme publicity.

The complaints about the reference to the Hillsborough tragedy were prompted by a comment by character Minty Peterson.

He told northerner and reformed soccer hooligan Jase Dyer: "Five years out of Europe because of Heysel, because they penned you lot in to stop you fighting, and then what did we end up with - Hillsborough."

The BBC response said Minty was actually reminding Jase that football hooliganism, such as that at Heysel in 1985, led directly to the fencing-in of fans at football matches and that this had tragic consequences for the innocent spectators at Hillsborough. The BBC added that it apologised if these remarks were misinterpreted or caused any offence.

The spokeswoman told MediaGuardian.co.uk the complaints tally did not include any phone calls from the early hours of this morning because of a technical problem.