A British soap Emmerdale has cut an upcoming transphobic scene after the actress involved complained.

The scene, which would have aired in early 2014, featured four female characters in a gay bar competing to get phone numbers from other women.

The ongoing soap drama cast a trans woman to play the barmaid.

The ‘scatter-brained’ Laurel, played by Charlotte Bellamy, gets a phone number from the barmaid. But her friends and her boyfriend say it ‘doesn’t count.’

Marlon Dingle, Laurel’s partner, tells her: ‘That’s not fair. That’s a he, not a she.’

Actress Samantha Valentine complained to producers about the joke, and said she would have never have agreed to appear if she knew the scene would ridicule transgender people.

John Whiston, the creative director of Emmerdale, has now apologized.

Describing the scene as ‘plain wrong’, he said: ‘It is a huge disappointment to me and to the team that in this instance such unthinking and old-fashioned prejudice should have crept into the show in this way.’

‘It would no doubt have been picked up by myself, the producer or Compliance, when we viewed and approved the programme prior to transmission,’ Whiston added, according to The Sun.

‘But this would have been in early January, so it is really good you have brought it to our attention now and we’ve been able to take action at this earlier stage.’