by Adam Williams

Shocked families were left facing computer screens full of hardcore porn after hackers attacked a council theatre's web address.

Visitors to the site of the New Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury had their web browsers automatically redirected, it has emerged.

Boffins at the city council frantically tried to fix the problem as more and more potential theatre-goers logged on.

A link via the Canterbury City Council website, a quick search through Google and typing in the theatre site address directly all produced the same result.

The pornographic site contained a mix of moving and still images, all very explicit in nature, catering for a number of tastes.

Deeply embarrassed and having fielded a flurry of calls from the public, who also spotted the blunder, city council IT officer Paul Robinson explained how the chaos erupted.

He said: "We were being targeted by someone who redirected our web addresses to other sites.

"It was caused by unauthorised changes to our records held at an external domain registering agency, something completely out of our control.

"Nothing within our network or any of our web content was affected.

"We became aware of the issue very quickly and by Monday evening the problem had been resolved."

Mr Robinson confirmed steps are being implemented to prevent the site returning to city council pages.

News that hackers had taken over the website disappointed chairman of the New Marlowe Theatre Trust Peter Williams.

He said: "If this was meant to be a joke, it's somebody with a very sick sense of humour.

"The new Marlowe is a community initiative and one of the most ambitious things that Canterbury has ever done.

"To hear of somebody trying to sabotage that is very disappointing."