Insulting references to “poofs”, “Pakis” and “spastics” on the hit television show Life on Mars risk fuelling prejudice and bullying in schools, a teachers’ leader has given warning.

The Bafta-nominated BBC police drama, set in 1970s Manchester, has won critical acclaim and a huge following for its authentic portrayal of hard-drinking, kipper tie-wearing cops and their unrecon-structed views.

But Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), expressed concern that children may not understand that many of the attitudes expressed in the series were no longer considered acceptable.

In last week’s final episode, which attracted 7.7 million viewers, a camel-coat-clad DCI Gene Hunt closed the series by unleashing a volley of insults at his colleagues, including terms such as “fairy boy”.

Speaking at the NASUWT conference in Belfast, Ms Keates said she hoped that parents would explain the show’s historical context.

She said: “If you’ve got abusive terms like ‘fairy boy’, that is particularly worrying in a context where our evidence is showing that one of the factors which causes young people to consider suicide is the fact that in schools they are subject to homophobic bullying.

A spokesman from the gay rights campaign group Stone-wall said that the portrayal of gay characters on Life on Mars could make gay or lesbian pupils more vulnerable to attack in the playground.

“We know from research that we carried out last year that the portrayal of lesbian and gay people on the BBC is problematic in that it tends to be restricted to stereotypes of camp, gay men and butch lesbians as the butt of jokes.

The BBC, which is funded from public money, says that its sophisticated adult audiences can work it out themselves, but our main concern is the impact this can have on young people, particularly on gay and lesbian young people.”

A BBC spokesman defended the programme, saying that the fictional character of DCI Gene Hunt was an extreme, tongue-in-cheek take on a stereo-typical 1970s “bloke”.

“The audience understand and revel in his abrasive and direct approach to his job and life in general. Life on Mars is a postwatershed production, aimed at an adult audience. However, as with many drama-tisations, we do not condone the actions of many of our fictional characters,” he said.

Although the language of the playground has changed dramatically since the 1970s, prejudice-related bullying at schools persists. “There is still a prevalence of homophobic bullying, bullying people on the basis of their body image, and that’s not taken as seriously as racist bullying where everybody now, by and large, responds very severely,” Ms Keates said.

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