The hastily assembled episode was broadcast in America as South Park fans called on the internet for a boycott of Tom Cruise’s new film, Mission: Impossible III, over the Scientology row.

Hayes, 63, who won an Oscar for the theme music to Shaft, quit South Park last week after a decade as the voice of Jerome “Chef” McElroy, the oversexed school cook who is a confidant of the show’s foul-mouthed preteen heroes. He was apparently offended by an episode that lampooned his Scientologist faith.

In the episode, which was shown in America in November but never seen in Britain, Scientologists become convinced that Stan is the reincarnation of the religion’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and Tom Cruise, probably the world’s most famous Scientologist, ends up locked in a cupboard.

Two days after Hayes quit, the Comedy Central cable channel abruptly cancelled a rerun of the episode. Cruise denied reports that he had flexed his muscle to get the show pulled by threatening to stop promoting Mission: Impossible III for Paramount Studios. Both Paramount and Comedy Central are owned by Viacom.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the South Park creators, got their promised revenge at the start of the show’s new season on Wednesday. Despite Hayes’s departure, Chef appears, with a voice apparently assembled from tapes of the soul singer’s previous contributions.

The children are thrilled by his return from the “Super Adventure Club”, but it quickly becomes clear that something is wrong as the womanising Chef starts to proposition the pre-teen boys for sex.

The friends take him to a psychologist who declares that Chef is the worst case of brainwashing he has ever seen. They discover that the Super Adventure Club is a group that travels the world for under-age sex.

The boys reprogramme Chef by taking him to a strip club, but he is then recaptured by the Super-Adventure Club. In the end, Chef dies a grisly death. But the adventurers try to revive and reprogramme him — so it is not clear if he is really dead.

“A lot of us don’t agree with the choices the Chef has made in the last few days,” the character Kyle says in a eulogy at Chef’s funeral. “Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can’t let the events of the past few weeks take away the memories of how Chef made us smile . . . We shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us. We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains.”

LOSING THE PLOT

Neighbours Shane Connor, who played Joe Scully, was fired from the show after claims of absenteeism connected with drug use. He filed for wrongful dismissal and won substantial damages

EastEnders Leslie Grantham, who played Dirty Den, exposed himself to a webcam in his dressing room. He was suspended for two months

The Archers Scriptwriter Anthony Parkin, who left after a clash with his boss over storylines, wrote a novel featuring the editor of a radio soap opera called Humbridge, who clashes with an heroic but unassuming writer

Coronation Street Lynne Perrie embarrassed the show’s bosses with a string of toyboy lovers and a raunchy workout video. They packed her character off to a nunnery