Gary Glitter loses 'execution' complaint

Media watchdog Ofcom has turned down a complaint from convicted sex offender Gary Glitter about a television mockumentary that portrayed his execution for child sex offences.

The show, called The Execution of Gary Glitter, was set in an imagined version of the UK which had reintroduced capital punishment for serious sexual offences against children. It followed Glitter's fictional arrest and a subsequent - and also fictional - Old Bailey trial, while human rights groups and death penalty supporters clash over their opposing views.

The disgraced glam rocker, real name Paul Gadd, complained he was treated unfairly by the Channel 4 programme, which mixed real footage of him with dramatised scenes where an actor played him.

Gadd, who was jailed in Vietnam for sexually assaulting two girls aged ten and 11 and was later deported back to the UK, said that he was never prosecuted in Vietnam for child rape.

A report from Ofcom found "because … the charges of child rape were clearly in a fictional context, the committee found that viewers would not have reached the conclusion that Mr Gadd was guilty of more serious crimes … as a result of any assertions made in this drama".