A senior Asian figure within the BBC has accused the corporation of placing too many ethnic minorities across its channels.

Samir Shah, a member of the BBC's board of directors, said this had led to a "world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease".

Shah who formerly headed the BBC's current affairs now runs an independent production company, Juniper. He said the politically correct approached embarrassed minority viewers and added the selection policy was creating an "inauthentic representation of who we are".

He pointed to the casting of the Ferreira family in 'EastEnders' as an example. "If you were to cast an Asian family in the East End, it should have been Bangladeshi. Instead we had a family of Goan descent," Shah said.

"The plain fact is that this tick-box approach to equal opportunities has led to an inauthentic representation of who we are: a world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease."

He added if he had a "magic wand", he would "make it incumbent on every major broadcaster and producer in the UK that, within five years, they need to demonstrate that their team of executives with real power over airtime or commissioning budgets come from a variety of different backgrounds, life experiences and ethnicity".

Shah said that if the UK TV industry did not change, then further regulation might force reform upon it.