Auntie will broadcast the latest Royal Opera House production by the co-creator of Jerry Springer: the Opera on BBC4 early 2011. Anna Nicole will have its world premiere at Covent Garden on February 11. The ex-stripper and Playboy model married 89-year-old oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, more than 60 years her senior, in 1994. She was then embroiled into a long-running legal battle to claim a share of his estate. Smith died of a prescription drugs overdose in 2007, aged 39. Christians protested outside BBC offices when it aired Jerry Springer: the Opera on TV in 2005. One Christian group attempted to sue BBC boss Mark Thompson for blasphemy. The Royal Opera House is billing Anna Nicole as “a celebratory story of our times that includes extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content”. Expect the viewer complaint hotline to be ringing off the hook.

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