An Australian variety show has become embroiled in an international racism controversy after airing a skit featuring men dressed as the Jackson 5 – with their faces painted black.

The "Jackson Jive" parody, which aired on a reunion episode of the variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, was deemed offensive by the guest judge, the US singer Harry Connick Jr, who complained on air, saying: “If I knew that was going to be part of the show I definitely wouldn't have done it.

“On behalf of my country I know it was done humorously, but we’ve spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons that when we see something like that we take it really to heart."

The show’s host, Darryl Somers, apologised on air to Connick Jr, who lives in New Orleans, for causing offence.

However, Somers said yesterday that the controversy over the “blackface” routine, which aired as part of the Red Faces talent segment, had been blown out of proportion.

“If there were any Australians who were offended ... on behalf of the show I apologise,'' he told Sky News. “To most Australians I think it's a storm in a tea cup.”

Hey Hey It’s Saturday ran on Australian television for 27 years until 1999. The latest episode was watched by 2.3 million people.

The six doctors who performed the Jackson Jive parody had performed a similar routine 20 years ago, without controversy, when they were medical students.

The frontman of the group, the prominent Sydney-based plastic surgeon Dr Anand Deva, said it was not meant to cause offence.

However Dr Deva – who played Michael Jackson in the skit with his face painted white – admitted they would not have performed the routine in the US.

“Clearly, all of us want to apologise. I mean we have offended some people no doubt,” Dr Deva told a Melbourne radio station. “So I want to say on behalf of all of us that this was really not intended ... [to be] anything to do with racism at all.”

Dr Deva defended the act by saying that the group of doctors were from multicultural backgrounds and were huge Michael Jackson fans.

"I am an Indian, and five of the six of us are from multicultural backgrounds and to be called a racist ... I don't think I have ever been called that ever in my life before,'' he said. “Anyone who knows us as a group, we are intelligent people, we are all from different racial backgrounds so I am really, truly surprised.”

He told the Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun that the group had tried to find Connick Jr after the show to apologise.

"I suspect things are probably a bit different in America in terms of what that [black face] means," Dr Deva said. "I understand the history of the black face, but certainly it was not construed in that way at all."

News of the incident went viral, with blogs in the US and the UK debating the incident. Viewers criticised the skit on Twitter, with one calling the show "embarrassing and distasteful".

Australian news websites were also flooded with comments on the issue.

Briton S. Carl, who lives in Melbourne, wrote on the Herald Sun website: “I’m from the UK, just recently arrived in Melbourne, so I’ve got no background on Hey Hey, but from the moment the Jackson Jive guys came on I said to my Aussie flatmates, ‘that’s really not cool – that might have been funny 20 years ago, but that’s just racist now’.”

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