Channel 4 has decided not to proceed with a new sitcom based around the Irish potato famine.

According to a story in the Irish Examiner, the channel is not planning to screen Hungry. A script was written by Dublin-based writer Hugh Travers.

40,000 protesters signed a petition demanding the series not go ahead when it was announced last year and there were demonstrations outside C4's office in London.

C4, however, says that a pilot was never commissioned. The press office explained to the Examiner that only a script was commissioned from Travers, who said when the story first broke that he did not mean to cause offence: "Ireland has always been good at black humour. We’re kind of thinking of it as Shameless in Famine Ireland.”

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