Michael Buerk has criticised the fact that political correctness dictates how presenters are recruited.

Buerk’s comments come in response to the ageism case brought against the BBC, when former Countryfile presenter, Miriam O’Reilly, proved she was discriminated against due to her age. In an interview for the Tonight programme, Buerk lambasts the political correctness culture, saying, “If you’ve been hired because you are young and pretty, because you are mincingly camp, because you’ve ticked a particular ethnic box and then you are no longer young and pretty or the fashions have moved on and you suddenly don’t have a job – get over it. It’s show business.”

He adds, “The idea of putting people on television – which is a non-job, that is terribly well paid, where you don’t have to think too much, or work too hard – and giving people those jobs purely on the ground that we need another six Asians, or we need another six lesbians, or we need another six pensioners, is to my mind almost worse.”

This is not the first time Buerk has criticised the BBC. In 2005, two years after leaving his regular post on BBC News at One, he criticised the shift in the balance of power between the sexes, and was particularly critical about the number of women in senior positions at the corporation.

At the time, he said: “Products are made for women, cars are made for women – because they control what is being bought… Some people might argue that this is a case of the pendulum swinging over the woman’s side for a change, and eventually it will find a happy medium.”

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