Former BBC presenter and champion of liberal causes Sir Ludovic Kennedy has denounced the increasing number of black faces appearing on television programmes as "political correctness [that] has got completely out of hand".
Sir Ludovic said he was "all in favour of black advancement", but claimed ethnic minorities were over-represented on TV and this was an "imbalance" that should be "readjusted".
The comments by the former presenter of Did You See?, which are bound to provoke controversy, were made in a review of former BBC executive Will Wyatt's autobiography, The Fun Factory: a Life in the BBC, for the latest edition of The Oldie magazine.
"I'd like to take issue with Will when he says it was his aim to bring more blacks to the screen, in which it seems he has more than succeeded. I am all in favour of black advancement, but there's now hardly a TV pub, police station, soap, vox pop or ad without rather more than its fair share of black participation," Sir Ludovic wrote.
"The Statistical Office tells me that the proportion of all ethnic groups (blacks, Indians, Pakistanis, Asians) to whites in this country is no more than 7.5%. Political correctness has got completely out of hand and now requires that the imbalance be readjusted," he added.
But Sir Ludovic's criticism was dismissed by a BBC spokesman, who said the corporation was not in the business of "playing 'politically correct' numbers games".
Posted by jsmooth995 at September 25, 2003 6:45 PM
