The veteran actor had already decided to scale down his commitments to the programme back in November 2007, but will now leave the show altogether, filming his final scenes in October. His decision to leave the programme has saddened the cast, with one member describing him as “the heart and soul” of the programme.

“Ian really set the tone of the show, both on the set and behind the scenes,” he said. “As well as being a consummate professional, he’s all about creating a positive vibe that brings the cast together”.

Australian Channel 10 was at pains to make clear that the decision to write Ian Smith out of the show was his own. His resignation will be another blow to Channel 10, which has struggled to attract more viewers after giving Neighbours a renovation and moving the soap to Five from BBC1 on British TV.

Spokesperson Paula Lucarelli said: “When the discussions were made about his decision to go part-time last year, he said it was only going to be for a short time and then he would let us know. Production was aware that it would be coming.

“It was entirely his decision. We love him and would have loved to keep him.”

Harold Bishop is the longest-serving character on the programme. He began his long run on the show by falling in love with Madge Ramsay in 1987. He worked with both Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan before either of them had established themselves as pop stars.

Harold will be written out of the script after a successful battle with prostate cancer. His final episode will be broadcast next February on Australian TV, and later in the spring on Five in Britain.

Kelly Osborne’s fashion series Project Catwalk has been dropped by Sky One. Based on the American series, Project Runway which is presented by supermodel Heidi Klum, the show follows different designers as they compete against each other in order to avoid being “the next fashion victim”. Fashion designer Ben de Lisi offers both criticism and support to the designers, giving tips as to how they can improve their work.

The programme, made by Elisabeth Murdoch’s independent production company Shine, was launched in 2006 with Liz Hurley hosting the show. However, Kelly Osborne took over from Hurley in the second run last year, when viewing figures began to dwindle. Last season’s run attracted just 110,000 viewers compared to 300,000 for the first series.

A spokesperson for Sky confirmed that the show would be axed next season:

“Project Catwalk was a great addition to Sky One’s schedule. Kelly Osbourne, Ben de Lisi and the team have provided a fantastic platform for genuine talent, introducing the rising stars of fashion to the UK”, he said.

“We felt the series had come to a natural end and we’re now looking for some new female-skewed formats for the 8pm slot to complement our success in the 9pm and 10pm hours.”

Richard Woolf, the controller for Sky One added that Sky was now looking for another “female-friendly formatted show” to replace it.

Celebrity Big Brother is to return to Channel 4 next year, the broadcaster has announced.

The hugely popular reality show was taken off the air in 2007 following a race row in which contestants Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara hurled abuse at Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, prompting more than 50,000 complaints and leading to effegies of the candidates being burnt on the streets of India.

In its place Channel 4 broadcast a successful cookery season on its main channel featuring celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall among others. Meanwhile a replacement reality TV show, called The Celebrity Hijack, was aired on E4.

However, Channel 4 has since had talks with production company Endemol and is thought to be planning another series on its main network. As part of the new agreement Channel 4 is not obligated to air every episode if it feels that doing so would be inappropriate. A spokesman for the broadcaster said that no final decision has yet been made.

But Jade Goody’s (albeit brief) participation in the Indian version of Big Brother, known as Bigg Boss, shows that the ice is melting. The former Big Brother contestant was called back to the UK after receiving a diagnosis for cancer in the Bigg Boss house.

Channel 4 could certainly do with the ratings boost that another Celebrity Big Brother would generate. The current downturn in advertising revenue means that Channel 4 may face a budget cut. Channel 4 will also have to look at alternative sources of income when the government contribution of £150m currently dedicated to analogue television – 15% of the broadcaster’s total spending – is cut within a few years.

Although Celebrity Big Brother is being reintroduced to the Channel 4 schedule, viewers will also be able to watch celebrity cooking programmes as Ramsay, Oliver and Fearnley-Whittingstall seek to change the eating habits of Brits next season, and will also examine cruel poultry farming practices.

Channel 4 has announced the return of its highly acclaimed documentary Dispatches: Undercover Mosque.

The original documentary showed an undercover investigation into extremism in British Mosques featuring preachers who called for homosexuals to be killed, advocated male supremacy and predicted jihad.

Just three months ago, Channel 4 was awarded libel damages and a police apology after receiving false accusations of misleading the public. West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service paid a six-figure sum to the broadcaster as well as to the production company - coincidentally named Hardcash - who were responsible for the programme.

West Midlands Police had taken Channel 4 to Ofcom, claiming in a statement written jointly with the CPS that the broadcaster had “heavily edited” the words of the Muslim preachers featured on the programme so that the meaning behind their words was “completely distorted”. However, Ofcom ruled that the programme had not been deceptive, but rather “dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context”, prompting the two companies to sue for libel.

On Friday, Hardcash announced that they would be producing a follow-up documentary to “see whether extremist beliefs continue to be promoted in certain key British Muslim institutions”.

The second programme promises to be no less shocking than the first. It follows a female reporter who attends prayer meetings in a mosque that prides itself on its commitment to “dialogue with other faiths”. However, far from promoting moderate beliefs, preachers to the all-female congregation are seen inciting hatred in their followers. One preacher calls on the women to kill homosexuals, adulterers, women who act like men and converts to other faiths. A trip to the mosque bookshop reveals “books and DVDs still on sale, promoting extremist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and intolerant messages”.

The documentary goes on to investigate “the role of the Saudi Arabian religious establishment in spreading a hard-line, fundamentalist Islamic ideology in the UK - the very ideology the government claims to be tackling”.

A range of voices can be heard throughout the programme, from hard-line jihadists to liberal Muslim academics, as well as non-Muslim politicians.

Dispatches: Undercover Mosque: The Return will air on Channel 4 on September 1 at 8pm.

The minute “Run Lola Run” kicks into action, you’re swept along at lightning speeds as the unstoppable red-haired Lola (Franka Potente) sprints through the streets of Berlin, dodging cars, window panes and a host of nuns, driven by desperation, always running.

The story goes as follows: Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), who is due to give his gang boss 100,000 Deutsche Mark at 12 noon but accidentally leaves it on the underground after bolting from two ticket inspectors. The bag of cash is then picked up by a tramp. The couple have 20 minutes to come up with the cash, somehow, somewhere, or Manni will be killed.

The film then plays with three alternative realities. We see the same scene three times. Lola sprints past the same people, but in each version some tiny turn of events changes the course of Lola’s fate massively. Cleverly, whenever Lola runs past (or into) a person, we see several snapshots of their life to come. In the first scenario for example, Lola bumps into a poor woman who kidnaps a baby after her child is taken from her by social services. In the second version, the woman wins the lottery, and the third time around she experiences a religious conversion. The message is that tiny events can have enormous consequences.

Film is ideal for exploring alternative realities, and certainly director Tom Tykwer makes the most of his medium. The throbbing, hypnotic techno music, co-written by Tykwer, perfectly matches the film’s adrenaline-fuelled rush.

Refreshingly the film does not explore any moral themes, nor does it judge the violence and greed of gang members. Rather it is an introverted film which focuses almost exclusively on the running itself.

Run Lola Run is showing at 9pm tonight (Friday) on Fiver

It’s all bonnets, bodices and barouches this autumn as a flurry of period drama adaptations from the likes of Dickens, Austin and Hardy hit our screens in the coming season.

BBC 1 will air a fresh, sexed-up version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles starring Gemma Aterton as Tess and Gavin and Stacey co-writer Ruth Jones as her mother. The new adaptation of Hardy’s magnificent rural tragedy promises to be “big, passionate, violent, romantic, sexual” according to screenwriter David Nicholls. The novel has already been screened several times, most notably by Roman Polanski in a film starring Nastassja Kinski in the title role.

Aterton also stars in ITV1’s Lost in Austin, a drama inspired by various Austin novels. Amanda Price (reference Fanny Price of Mansfield Park fame) is a frustrated romantic who adores Jane Austin novels and wishes she could escape to a world of English country houses, country dances and suppressed passion. Then one day she finds a secret door to the world of her favourite novel, Pride and Prejudice. But the “real” story is in danger of being thrown into disarray by her presence.

Whilst conceding there’s been a lot of Austin on the box in recent years, the show’s producer Kate McKerrell said the show is original in that it is “trying to think of a way of retelling the story on modern television”.

Other historical dramas on this season include an adaptation of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, directed by Andrew Davies, and Peter Flannery’s “In the Thick of It”, a political drama starring Peter Capaldi as Charles I. Capaldi also takes a role in Channel 4’s The Devil’s Whore, spanning the English Civil War.

ITN rolls with You Tube rival

The news corporation ITN has announced the launch of six channels related to news, sport and music on the French video-sharing website Dailymotion. This is the first such deal to be struck by a British news partner with the rival to YouTube.

The channels due to be launched will have the names ITN Entertainment, ITN News, ITN Music, ITN Sport, Games and Gadgets and OMG.

The ITN News channel will air breaking news stories, as well as news round-ups and an environmental news bulletin.

Programmes on other channels include quiz shows, video games review shows, celebrity gossip from both the UK and around the world, as well as music broadcasts. Advertising revenue from the programmes will be split between ITN and Dailymotion.

Website users will be encouraged to upload their own video clips, blog comments and photos.

Creative director of Dailymotion UK, Digby Lewis said “This perfectly complements our roots in citizen journalism and curated content from our Motionmaker community.”

It has long been a gripe of those who enjoy the arts that there are simply not enough cultural programmes on TV. Indeed, this week’s terrestrial schedule has a paltry offering – cultural “highlights” include Maestro, in which celebs attempt to conduct the BBC concert orchestra, badly, and the Edinburgh Festival Show, both on BBC2.

So a new arts channel from Sky should put a smile back on the faces of dissatisfied arts enthusiasts. Replacing the current Sky Arts Channel, Sky will be launching Sky Arts 1, which will showcase contemporary art, rock concerts and documentaries, and Sky Arts 2, which is to focus on classical music, opera and dance. Sky Arts HD will show programmes from both channels in High Definition.

Programmes include The Book Show hosted by Mariella Fostrup; a series of operas from the New York Metropolitan, including Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth; The Classical Top Ten, hosted by Vanessa Mae; and a four-part documentary of the late British painter Edward Seago.

The managing director of Sky entertainment, Sophie Turner Laing, said it was more difficult for terrestrial channels to maintain their arts content because they were driven by ratings. “To us they are not the be-all and end-all because the viewers have already decided to be with us. We have airtime available to make it easy for people to watch arts programming.”

She went on to say: “At a time when other broadcasters’ commitment to the arts is open to question, we firmly believe in giving our customers the best choice, all delivered in the highest possible quality, HD.

“This is further evidence of our commitment to invest in the content that people love and demonstrates how pay-TV can meet viewers’ individual needs.”

The Channels are due to be launched on 20^th October, and together will broadcast 36 hours of arts output a day.

Laurence Fishburne has been confirmed to replace actor William Petersen as the lead in the American CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

The celebrated actor best known for his role as Morpheus in the Matrix movies will first appear on screen in series 9, which is due to air in October in the US. Channel 5, which holds the British terrestrial rights, and Living, which holds the multi-channel rights, will air the new series next year in the UK. Fishburne’s character is currently being developed and doesn’t even have a name, known only as “The Professor”. However, we know that he’s a pathologist turned college lecturer whose job is to find out why people turn violent. Disturbingly, he finds he shares many of the biological traits of the aggressive criminals and murderers he investigates. The Professor has some other skeletons in his medicine cabinet, having been was sacked from his previous job as a pathologist for reasons unknown. He will join the Las Vegas Crime lab as a level 1 crime scene investigator after assisting with a murder case.

Fishburne was quite a catch for CSI executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar, who said he topped their “dream list”.

“The quality that we were looking for was deep intelligence, and Mr. Fishburne, you look at his work, he’s always brought that sensibility to the work that he’s done,” said Shankar.

Whilst Fishburne’s acting was by no means new to the producers, her had never seen an episode of the veteran crime drama before the audition.

“I felt a little stupid and embarrassed that I hadn’t watched the show prior to having a meeting with them,” admitted the actor during a news conference on Monday.

“But I’m happy to say that the episodes that they sent me to look at were really engaging and really wonderful, and kind of dark and moody like a lot of the work that I’ve actually been involved in.”

Petersen, who will no longer appear on screen in series 9 will remain executive producer of the show.

Jade Goody has cervical cancer, it was announced last night.

The star, who had been due to appear on the Indian version of Big Brother, known as Big Boss, was forced to leave the show after the news came to the house from her consultant in the UK.

A tearful Goody told the other contestants simply “I have cancer,” after she was informed of her condition in the diary room. She had undergone hospital tests in early August after her third cancer scare and several collapses. These were the tests that confirmed that she was suffering from cancer. She was immediately withdrawn from the show and flown back to the UK last night for treatment.

Goody’s spokesperson said last night “She went for tests and results have come back and she has cancer. She was phoned up and informed. This is a massive blow for her.”

Goody had decided to enter the Indian Big Brother house in order to make amends for the torrent of racial abuse she directed at Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty in the British celebrity version of the show, and to clear her name. She was reportedly being paid £100,000 for appearing on the show.