LONDON: Jade Goody on Sunday admitted making "racist'' comments and "bullying'' Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on the Celebrity Big Brother show and, as a gesture of remorse, announced that she would be donating her £50,000 fee from the programme to charity.

Another £50,000 she was to get from a newspaper interview would also go to charity. The money would be given to causes chosen by her and Ms. Shetty.

The admission — seen as a desperate attempt to retrieve her image and save her career — came in an interview with News of the World, Ms. Goody's first public comment outside Channel 4 since she was evicted from the Big Brother house on Friday after a head-to-head poll with Ms. Shetty.

A whopping 82 per cent voted against her in protest against her behaviour.

"I accept I made racist comments. Shilpa was a victim of my bullying,'' Ms. Goody said. "I hold my hands up to the comments. I'm not going to justify my actions because they were wrong.''

Wiping her tears, she said: "I understand why people hate me. They were my words and it's embarrassing... Maybe I'm just stupid and nasty at heart — but I really don't think I am.''

However, Ms. Goody, who herself is of mixed parentage (her mother is a white and her father a black) insisted that she was not racist though she may have used racist language. Her father, Andrew Goody, was of Jamaican descent. He abandoned the family when she was two, and died of a heroin dose in 2005.

"No, I'm not a racist, but I accept I made racist comments. I don't see people for the colour that they are, or where they come from," she said.

She told the newspaper that she did not want any money for the interview.

"I don't want to make a penny from this. I don't want it. I don't want money from something that is wrong. I'm going to give it all to charity."

Channel 4 was under growing pressure to scrap the Big Brother series with the issue likely to dominate a meeting of the channel's board on Monday.

A number of board members were on Sunday reported as saying that the programme ran contrary to Channel 4's "public service'' remit, with its former chief executive Vanni Treves denouncing it as a "grotesque travesty'' of what the channel was supposed to do.

Channel 4 is self-financing but subsidised to help it make socially relevant programmes.

Two more firms have reportedly decided to sever their commercial links with the reality show — described as a big blow to Channel 4.

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