Langham porn viewings 'sympathetic'

Langham, 58, who was released from prison early last week, denied he had any sexual interest in children but admitted looking at the images was "completely wrong". And he revealed he may have been filmed by the man who abused him as an eight-year-old.

In an interview with Sky News, the disgraced star of The Thick Of It described how a chance call from a friend was the only thing that stopped him killing himself. He repeated the claim made at his trial that he downloaded child pornography to inspire his writing.

He said: "It was wrong of me to look and I'm sorry that I did, and I paid a heavy price for it. I found them (the images) too upsetting and distasteful and disturbing. So I looked because I felt that if I was going to tell the story with a responsible and caring attitude.

"I think in my mind was that because I knew I was doing it in a compassionate and sympathetic way I didn't feel at the time a bad person, but I knew it was against the law ..."

The consequences for his family had been "horrific" he said.

He said he didn't pay for the images and looked at "only" four of them, while paedophiles who have a "sick interest" in child porn download hundreds of thousands of images.

"I had 15, only four of which I've ever seen and of the four that I saw I only saw the first few seconds of them because I couldn't bear it."

He said when he logged on to the child porn sites he thought he might see images of himself being abused.

"The guy who abused me had a cine-camera so when I accessed those images, the four images that I saw, there was always the thought in my mind, 'I wonder if it's going to be me'."