The creators of animated comedy South Park have hit back at Isaac Hayes, who, as previously reported, left the show recently after it ridiculed his religion, scientology. The opening episode of the tenth series, which screened in the US last week, turned Chef, the character voiced by the singer, into a paedophile before apparently killing him off.
The instalment sees the character brainwashed by something called the 'Super Adventure Club' seemingly a veiled reference to Scientology. After travelling with the Club, Chef returns to South Park and repeatedly tells the children that he wants to "make sweet love" to them. The children manage to cure him, but he is brainwashed again, before falling off a bridge, being burned, stabbed, then mauled by a lion and a grizzly bear; the character does not survive, although presumably it's not a foregone conclusion that he'll never be back - if you've ever watched it you'll know how many times Kenny died and came back before his light was finally extinguished, as it were.
A funeral follows however, during the course of which one of the characters is heard to say "A lot of us don't agree with the choices the Chef has made in the last few days. Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can't let the events of the past few weeks take away the memories of how Chef made us smile."
Hayes, of course, did not participate, the relevant lines being cut together from the singer's previous recordings.