NBA stars Yao Ming, LeBron James to star in ``The Simpsons''

LOS ANGELES July 17 - Sports stars LeBron James, Yao Ming and Michelle Kwan will lend their voices to the hit animated television show ``The Simpsons'' in an episode poking fun at America's obsession with broadcast indecency.

The two National Basketball Association (NBA) stars and the figure skating champion will join television's most dysfunctional family for an episode to be broadcast after American football's Super Bowl championship next February, the show's producers, Fox television, said Friday.

In the animated show, the Simpsons' slobby patriarch, Homer Simpson, inadvertently performs a wild crowd-pleasing dance at a local carnival that gets him hired by several sports stars to choreograph their victory dances.

Homer then organises the Super Bowl halftime show, which became infamous this past February when singer Janet Jackson's breast was bared on national television during a raunchy dance with Justin Timberlake, creating a national scandal and sparking a crackdown on what officials termed broadcast ``indecency.''

In the upcoming episode of ``The Simpsons,'' Homer and his straight-laced neighbour Ned Flanders organise a show that the American public pans for its blatant display of decency, Fox said in a statement.

In addition to the special guests on the Super Bowl episode, the long-running animated show will also welcome a host of other stars in the coming season, the network said.

They include US comedian Ray Romano, ``Sex and the City'' star Kim Cattrall, actor James Caan, rapper 50 Cent, famed architect Frank Gehry and author Thomas Pynchon.

The show, featuring the antics of the yellow-tinted Simpson clan, has become a global cultural touchstone. It is set to launch its 16th season later this year.

The show and its characters - who include dad Homer, the mischievous Bart, his sisters Lisa and Maggie and their mother, Marge - have generated pithy comedy while also tackling or pillorying sensitive social or political issues.

Its more than 300 episodes have frequently caused outrage among those who have been publicly made fun of. - AFP