TV star to testify in Langham trial

Mr Whitehouse, one of the stars of The Fast Show, will appear as a prosecution witness at Maidstone Crown Court.

He appeared with Langham in the BBC drama Help, playing different patients seen by a psychiatrist played by Langham.

The court has heard a 25-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, allege that Langham took her virginity in a London hotel room when she was 14.

The woman met Langham while he was performing in Les Miserables in London's West End in the role of Thenardier. He began a three-year campaign of "systematic abuse" by planting a kiss on her lips during an acting lesson in his dressing room, the prosecution alleges.

The woman told the jury that Langham claimed looking at child pornography on the internet made him feel like a "better man".

His defence counsel, David Whitehouse QC, said his client downloaded the images for research purposes while writing the BBC drama Help.

One of the episodes Langham wrote involved a paedophile being seen by his psychiatrist character.

The 58-year-old actor, of Golford, near Cranbrook, Kent, denies 10 counts of indecent assault and two counts of buggery between January 1996 and April 2000.

He also denies 15 counts of making an indecent photograph of a child between September and November 2005. But he admits he had sex with the woman when she was over the legal age of consent, the jury has heard.