Tormentor of Indian actress evicted from British reality show

LONDON, Saturday (AFP) - British viewers Friday evicted a woman from a reality television show after her alleged racist bullying of a Bollywood actress caused an Anglo-Indian diplomatic row. Viewers voted to evict Jade Goody rather than Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, who was the target of the taunts in the Celebrity Big Brother programme, where participants live shut off from the world in a fishbowl environment.

"Jade, you will be leaving the house shortly," the programme presenter Davina McCall informed her on Channel 4 following the vote to decide which of the pair should leave. Goody, 25, had been the hot favourite to be evicted as Indian government officials called on their British counterparts to step into the row and British lawmakers lined up to attack the show.

McCall said she would soon inform Goody, who had tears in her eyes, of the full scale of the row. Starting to realise Thursday that her behaviour had sparked a race row, Goody had pleaded with the show's producers to let her avoid the eviction-night crowd. "I've never been more scared in my life. I swear to that," she said.

The man tipped to be Britain's next prime minister, finance minister Gordon Brown, was again drawn into the row during a visit to a film studio in Mumbai on the final day of his Indian tour, urging viewers to vote for "tolerance". Asked by BBC television whether that meant backing Shetty, he said: "That's possibly the way forward, but it's pretty clear that people here know that Britain stands for... tolerance, and I think that's exactly where the values of India and Britain are shared."Presenter McCall -- who shares the same agent as Goody --- has been criticised for failing to raise the issue of racism with the loud-mouthed Londoner's mother, Jackiey (eds: correct) Budden, when she was booted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house.

Budden repeatedly mispronounced Shetty's first name, ending up referring to her as "the Indian". The Sun, Britain's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper and once a champion of Goody, rounded on her Friday, calling for readers to vote her out because of the damage being caused to Britain's reputation overseas. Shetty has been called a "dog" and asked whether she lives in a shack, prompting protestors in India to burn effigies of the show's producers.