A STAND-up comedian has delivered a stark warning of the threat religious fundamentalism poses to free speech in the UK.

Stewart Lee, co-writer and director of the controversial Jerry Springer - the Opera, was speaking at a meeting of the Dorset Humanist Society in Moordown, Bournemouth.

He and composer Richard Thomas developed the award-winning show, which uses Biblical metaphor, at a small venue in south London in 2001. It went to the Edinburgh Festival the following year and the National Theatre in 2003.

"It even got good reviews in the Church Times and Catholic Herald before transferring to the West End for about 18 months," recalled Lee.

But trouble began when the BBC decided to screen the opera. The show's religious references turned it into a target for the Christian far right. Two evangelical groups spearheaded a campaign to keep the opera off the small screen.

"I would never have anticipated any of the trouble we ran into," said Lee. "There's a precedent for using Bible stories in this way. In advance of the screening, they managed to generate 60,000 complaints. I subsequently found out that the vast majority of those came from Texas."

Shock headlines described the opera as containing 6,000 swear words, but Lee said: "There are actually 174, which is quite a lot, but less than you get in lots of films." Another complaint was the description of God as a "fascist tyrant on high" - a line lifted from Milton's Paradise Lost and delivered by Satan in the opera.

Although the screening went ahead in January last year, campaigners then tried to stop a national tour of the stage show. "Christian Voice were writing to theatres interested in taking it telling them they would be picketed if they did," said Lee. "We lost about a third of the venues."

He added that plans to stage a benefit also had to be cancelled because of the threat of pickets at the hospice that would have received the money.

Lee went around the country to take part in discussion panels. "It was a dispiriting experience. You realise the sheer pointlessness of trying to discuss anything with religious fundamentalists," he said.

He said no-one had been able to prove any contravention of the law, but the show had become financially unviable. Many retailers, including large supermarket chains, had also withdrawn the DVD.

"Freedom of speech has to be non-negotiable, because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. It's something I never had to give any thought to until I got caught up in this," he said.

"The Christian right wanted something to nail their colours to and it was unfortunate we happened to come along."