British actor Chris Langham (58) will be sentenced today for downloading child pornography.
When police raided his home in November 2005 as part of "Operation Ore" they seized three computers containing photographs and video clips of children.
Langham, who won a Bafta for his role in the BBC drama The Thick Of It, admitted looking at child porn but pleaded not guilty to the charges against him because, he said, he wanted to make a public declaration that he was not a paedophile.
Chris Langham leaving Maidstone Crown Court in Kent in July
His defence was that he was conducting research for the BBC television series Help.
Langham told Maidstone Crown Court he and a co-writer had created a paedophile character called Pedro whose catchphrase was "I'm only a minor offender", and that he wanted to explore the way society viewed sex offenders through him. The episodes were never made.
Langham said he also looked at indecent images of children because it helped him to come to terms with his own sexual abuse.
The jury convicted him of 15 counts of making an indecent photograph of a child between September and November 2005 after a three-week trial which finished last month.
Langham was also accused of having sex with an underage girl in upmarket hotels, his West End dressing room, his car and his home.
But the jury accepted his account that he only had sex with her when she was 18 and cleared him of six counts of indecent assault and two counts of buggery between January 1996 and April 2000.
Langham had denied all the charges.
PA