Stephen Minton, a psychologist and researcher at the internationally renowned Anti-Bullying Centre at Trinity College in Dublin told the Sunday Tribune that he believed such television was "irresponsible" and "disappointing" and that if bullying is portrayed as a sport on television, children will begin to imitate it.

He was speaking after Westlife manager Louis Walsh called Green Party TD Dan Boyle "the fat guy" on the celebrity version of the show last week. "I'd be very concerned about it [the remark] to be honest, " Minton said.

"Everything we're trying to do is about giving out the message to young people that bullying is not a good thing.

"When you see bullying on TV portrayed as a positive thing or when there are no consequences to it, it's very irresponsible. In my personal view as a psychologist, children tend to imitate what they see."

The International Conference on Workplace Bullying, held at Trinity College in June, was told that 100 people in Ireland kill themselves every year because of bullying, he pointed out.

Boyle told the Sunday Tribune that he thought the slur was a "gratuitous, unnessesary personal remark. I was more angry than anything else, " he said, "because it's a charity competition, and there's no need to resort to personal remarks.

"The idea that anything goes in the name of entertainment is something that I don't agree with." Boyle believes that such behaviour is "certainly a form of verbal or psychological bullying. The person being judged is open to whatever remark someone wants to throw at them."

Despite continuous coverage in the media regarding different aspects of bullying . . . namely cyberbullying amongst school children and bullying in the work place . . . ritual insults are a key element of reality television.

Programmes like You're A Star, X Factor and Pop Stars . . . which involve a lengthy audition process and performances . . . feature contestants being routinely humiliated and often left in tears.

Recently, reality TV programmes have been the subject of much scrutiny following bullying of contestants. British MP George Galloway and TV presenter Michael Barrymore were criticised last January for bullying glamour model Jodie Marsh on Celebrity Big Brother.

The model, who was raising money for the BeatBullying charity throughout the programme, eventually threatened to kill herself.

And on this year's Big Brother, one contestant, Shahbaz, walked off the programme following bullying and intimidation from his fellow housemates, who locked him out of the house and stole his clothes while he was swimming. The Glaswegian eventually threatened to take his own life live on air.

In Australia, prime minister John Howard is leading calls for Big Brother to be taken off air after a male contestant rubbed his crotch in the face of a female housemate while another man held her down.

Last week, Helen Green, who worked for Deutsche Bank in the UK and endured "offensive, abusive, intimidating, denigrating, bullying, humiliating, patronising, infantile and insulting" bullying over four years, was awarded around 1m in a landmark bullying case.

The Broadcasting Complaints Commission has not received any complaints from viewers during this series of Yo u ' r e A Star. Viewers have 30 days to lodge a complaint since the date of broadcast.

During the previous series, the BCC dealt with complaints relating to comments made by Brendan O'Connor to fellow judge Linda Martin. RTE defended the remarks by saying that "the level of banter between the two panellists is well within the audience's expectations and that the trading of insults is part of the play-acting which is expected on these kind of shows."

RTE also said "the audience is aware that the interplay between the 'good guy' and the 'bad guy' is part of the contrived nature of the series and should not be taken too seriously." Both complaints were rejected by the commission.

Louis Walsh has so far refused to apologise for the remark. Speaking to the Sunday Tribune he said he was "just trying to be funny.

"I was thinking about what to say, and then Brendan [O'Connor] said 'call him the fat one', so I did. It was just a joke. I said it and I'm not sorry I said it, because it wasn't meant in a bad way, and I didn't know one of his friends [Green Party councillor Fintan McCarthy] had been killed that day, I had no idea."

Walsh, who also judges X Factor along with Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne, believes that people watch such programmes because of the cringe-factor and controversy they generate. "People love it, " he said, "Why are you writing about it? Because people are talking about it. I know people say they are doing it for charity and all that, blah, blah, but they're also doing it for ego and also to help their careers . . . at least everyone knows who Dan Boyle is now."