In theory, there are few programmes less likely to cause controversy than Strictly Come Dancing.

Playing out in BBC One’s family-friendly Saturday night schedule, hosted by a national treasure, and with a clutch of C-list celebrities performing ballroom dances, the show would seem to have hit on the perfect blend of blandness.

But this year’s series has been beset by a series of ugly incidents. Yesterday Bruce Forsyth, the veteran host of Strictly, pushed the corporation farther into a race row after making light of an incident when one of the show’s professional dancers said that his partner looked like a “Paki”.

Unlike the comic capers of last year’s series with John Sergeant, Anton Du Beke, the dancer in question, has been lucky to keep his job after apologising unconditionally for the off-air comment to Laila Rouass, the Footballers’ Wives actress with Indian ancestry who had just received a spray tan.

Some BBC insiders have claimed that Rouass referred to herself as a “Paki”, and that Du Beke had been made to carry the can for being overheard repeating it back to her.

But any hope of the row ending was destroyed when Forsyth told a radio station that people needed to “have a sense of humour” about the “nickname”.

Forsyth’s intervention on TalkSport radio, in which he implied that “Paki” was equivalent to “limey”, put the issue back in the spotlight and forced the presenter, 81, to issue a clarification. In the interview, he had called for viewers to accept Du Beke’s apology for what he termed a “slip-up” and said that in previous decades people would have laughed about it.

He said: “We used to have a sense of humour about this. You go back 25, 30, 40 years and there has always been a bit of humour about the whole thing. At one time the Americans used to call us ‘limeys’ which doesn’t sound very nice, but we used to laugh about it. Everybody has a nickname. And Anton is such a sweet guy, it’s such a terrible shame.”

As more than 500 members of the public complained, the BBC was forced to contact Forsyth to arrange for the presenter to clarify his remarks. In a statement issued later in the day, he said: “What Anton said to Laila was wrong and he has apologised unreservedly for this. Nor do I in any way excuse or condone the use of such language. To be absolutely clear, the use of racially offensive language is never either funny or acceptable.

“However, there is a major difference between this and racist comments which are malicious in intent and whilst I accept that we live in a world of extraordinary political correctness, we should keep things in perspective.”

The row has been damaging for Du Beke, who has been groomed by the BBC as a potential host of Strictly. The dancer, whose real name is Tony Beak, presents the entertainment show Hole in the Wall, in which competitors have to get through gaps in a moving wall to avoid being pushed into a swimming pool.

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