An award-winning BBC reporter has accused Lenny Henry of insulting her white colleagues by calling for affirmative action employment polices at the corporation.
The comedian claimed that racism was still rife within broadcasting and asked why ethnic minorities were often found only in menial roles.
But he was criticised by Olenka Frenkiel, a leading investigative reporter who has produced acclaimed reports for Newsnight, Correspondent and the Today programme.
“Lenny Henry calls for a black dg (Director-General). Any black dg?”, she wrote in the BBC magazine. “Regardless of merit, or who they are or what they might have done?”
The Peabody award winner mocked the comedian’s argument. “What about a Polish dg?” Ms Frenkiel asked. “Lots of Poles in Britain today. What about a dg with frizzy hair? Or one who’s disabled? Or incredibly small.”
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Ms Frenkiel concluded: “For goodness sake, campaign for a person to be dg - not for a colour. I am still offended by Greg Dyke’s lamenting of the BBC as ‘hideously white’. Why is it okay to vilify white people for their colour not black ones? It’s insulting.”
However Henry was supported by a member of the BBC executive board. Samir Shah, a former BBC head of current affairs, said attempts by the BBC to employ black and Asian staff in top level positions had been “absolutely dire.”
Shah said: “Thirty years after Lenny came into the business, there is not one black person, not one Asian person good enough to be a Controller. It is an outrage and I think Lenny’s call for affirmative action is the least we can do.”
Henry, 49, stood by the provocative remarks he made in a lecture to the Royal Television Society. He said: “The status quo is predominantly white and middle class. Go to any meeting or go to any production company, you might have a black person on reception and an Asian person in IT or something. And that’s it. That’s appalling.”
Andrea Callender, the head of diversity at BBC, said the BBC was launching a three-year mentoring scheme for minority groups. Giving ethnic minorities automatic preference over white candidates with the same qualifications is illegal in Britain.
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Frenkiel worked her way up at the BBC after joining the corporation’s News Training Scheme. She was the first reporter on the Berlin Wall on November 8th, 1989.
She won the Peabody award for her Correspondent film, Israel’s Secret Weapon, which told the story of Mordechai Vanunu, who was jailed for 18 years after revealing Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme.