BBC blasted for snobbish portrayal of working-class as 'miserable and in despair'

The 83-year-old, who grew up in Carlisle and is the son of a publican, said: “I did a book called Back In The Day, which was about my background – white working class.

“I wanted them to be represented. They’ve always been underestimated.

“The BBC is probably to blame for this because they only want working class people if they are miserable on their book readings and things, but 70 to 80 per cent of the population comes from much the same background as I do.

“They’re massively underrepresented. I want to say, ‘Look, people like this, they worked so hard. And yet they came up from the mines. They came in from factories. And what did they do? They created a huge culture’. That was completely unrecognised.

“These people are [portrayed] as either miserable, broke or in despair. It wasn’t like that – and it needn’t be like that.”

Lord Bragg, who was appointed as a Labour peer by Tony Blair in 1998, started out at the BBC in the early 1960s.

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He also worked for rival channel ITV and headed up its arts programme The South Bank Show.

The programme was axed in 2010 and moved to Sky Arts two years later.

However, Lord Bragg previously addressed the media’s portrayal of working-class people in 2014.

The 83-year-old, who hosted BBC Radio 4 documentary series In Our Time since 2014, said at the time: “I’m not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers, even by those who came from it.

“All this ‘it’s grim oop north’ sort of stuff.

“Well, it was a joke once but we’ve got to the stage where the working class has been turned into a cliche – and it deserves a lot better.”

But Bragg’s latest comments come one year after the BBC was criticised by Ofcom for failing to resonate with working-class viewers.

Ofcom’s annual report revealed working-class people, who make up around one-in-four Britons, were least satisfied with how they are represented and portrayed in programmes.

The BBC’s annual plan released last year put forward a plan for 25 per cent of staff to come from lower socio-economic backgrounds by 2027.