Free by New Year: Outrage at paedophile actor Chris Langham's short prison sentence

Once the 43 days he has spent in jail since his conviction are taken into account, the actor will serve just over three and a half months.

Police described the internet images viewed by Langham as some of the most shocking they had seen.

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The sentence outraged child protection groups.

One video found at his home featured a girl of eight who was being abused by her father and has since been rescued by police.

She had been subjected to what is known as 'level 5 abuse' - the most extreme level and which can include sadism and bestiality.

In the film she was bound, naked and blindfolded, and tied to a ceiling.

Her father, who shot the images, has now been prosecuted.

Michele Elliott, director of Kidscape, called Langham's sentence 'derisory'. She added: "The message this sends out is that it's not that serious. People who commit offences against animals get longer.

"Judges don't seem to understand that people like Langham create a market for sexually abused kids."

The pictures were so depraved that the jury were spared having to view them in their entirety but those they did see brought one woman to tears.

Langham, 58, claimed he downloaded them for research as his role as a psychiatrist in the BBC2 series Help, in which he starred with comedian Paul Whitehouse.

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He tried to convince the jury he wasn't a paedophile, saying that, as a victim of abuse himself as a child, had wanted to 'look into the eyes of an offender'.

But as Judge Philip Statman pointed out, only the eyes of tortured children could be seen.

He told him: "All have had inflicted upon them horrifying sexual abuse and, I want to make this absolutely clear to you, I must think first of those children.

"When one sees their faces, in my judgment, they are vacant and lacking in expression. You never ever see the faces of the perpetrators."

Langham sat with his head bowed during most of the lengthy hearing, at one point breaking down in tears.

As he left court he blew kisses at his father and three adult sons from his first marriage to actress Sue Jones-Davies.

He will be on the Sex Offenders' Register for ten years and be subject to a fiveyear prevention order.

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His second wife, actress and choreographer Chrissie Cartwright, was not in court to see him sentenced.

But she said in a statement she was 'shocked and angry at his stupidity and thoughtlessness' but described him as a 'wonderful father'.

She added: "When I ask the children what they think about their father all they say is that he would not hurt anyone, he would not hurt a fly."

Outside court, Langham's solicitor, Angus McBride read an extraordinary statement in which the actor claimed the court had confirmed he was not a paedophile.

It was the final chapter in the downfall of a man who had taken four decades to reach the pinnacle of his career.

Last year he won two Baftas for Help and the BBC political satire The Thick of It.

Langham, from Golford, near Cranbrook, Kent, was found guilty of 15 offences of accessing child-abuse images last month after a three-week trial at Maidstone Crown Court.

He was cleared of grooming and abusing a girl he met when she came to see him in the West End production of Les Miserables as a 14-year-old.

The girl, now 25, contacted police after Langham's arrest in November 2005 as part of Operation Ore, which led to the arrest of high-profile figures including Who guitarist Pete Townshend.

Jurors chose to believe Langham's story that he had taken the mixed-up teenager under his wing and only had sex with her once when she was 18.

They were in no doubt, however, about his obsession with child abuse images.

The night before his arrest, he downloaded files with names such as 'teenage girl raped on beach by five guys' and 'Philippine child prostitute'.