The BBC was accused last night of letting BNP bigot Nick Griffin 'play the martyr' amid bitter recriminations over his appearance on Question Time.

Senior MPs accused the corporation of whipping up controversy to maximise viewing figures - then crudely stage-managing the programme so he was under attack throughout from the audience and fellow panellists.

They said the attempt to expose his racist views risked backfiring because some voters would feel he had been unfairly treated.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson admitted the exposure would lead to a short-term bounce for the far-Right party, but predicted that in the long term it will have done them 'no good at all'.

'When the content sinks in I think people will recoil,' he said.

But other senior Labour and Conservative figures said the BBC risked long-term damage by allowing Question Time to be transformed into the 'Nick Griffin Show'.

While Question Time normally ranges across issues of the day, which this week included the postal strike and the economy, all but one of the questions selected focused on the BNP and its policies.

Mr Griffin, one of two BNP candidates elected to the European Parliament earlier this year, faced fierce attacks on race, immigration and the Holocaust.

Viewers heard him brand Islam 'wicked' and smear homosexuals as 'creepy'.

He went on to make inflammatory remarks about the composition of the audience, suggesting London was 'ethnically cleansed' and 'no longer British'.

Labour former Home Secretary David Blunkett said last night: 'The BBC played into Griffin's hands by managing to create a victim out of a perpetrator. Their totally unwarranted blanket coverage on news broadcasts before and after Question Time was blatant self-promotion.

'They made the format so obviously skewed that they have allowed him to play the martyr. It was all about him and the BNP, not about the issues of the day.

'They have achieved his victimhood and that may make people much more open to hearing what he has to say in the future.'

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said: 'The point of democratic discussion is to dissect the weaknesses and stupidities of extremists, not to make them the gift of martyrdom.

'David Dimbleby is old enough and wise enough to have been able to present a properly impartial exposé of Mr Griffin's many inadequacies without having to resort to such crude stage management.'

Labour MP Diane Abbott said Mr Griffin's appearance had given the BNP unnecessary credibility and exposure by 'putting him in the mainstream'.

She warned that many people across the country would have thought he was picked on by the other panellists.

But Labour minister Margaret Hodge, in whose Barking and Dagenham constituency the BNP won 11 council seats in 2006, insisted: 'The BBC gave Nick Griffin the opportunity to show himself up for what he is - flaky, dishonest and bigoted.

'I have been in Barking all day asking people about it, and one or two did say they felt he had been bullied. But overwhelmingly people thought it had exposed him as a bigot.'

Activists on far-Right websites condemned the BNP leader for being 'overawed' and 'flustered'.

One said: 'The public despise indecisiveness as they see it as weakness, and all these quotes from Nick's past make the party look bad.'

The BBC defended the programme, saying viewers would make up their own minds.

A spokesman said: 'It is normal for the programme to reflect topics that are in the news - people would accept that the BNP and Question Time have been prominent topics.'