Michael Buerk, the veteran news journalist who reported from the world’s worst crisis zones, has attacked “infantile” celebrities who lecture the public on world issues, singling out Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Thompson for particular criticism.

“As a superannuated war reporter myself I’m a little sniffy about celebs pratting around among the world’s victims,” wrote Buerk in a Radio Times interview he conducted with former soap star turned war reporter Ross Kemp.

Michael Buerk. Photograph: Glenn Dearing/five

“I hate it when feather-bedded thesps pay flying visits to the desperate to parade their bleeding hearts and trumpet their infantile ideas on what ‘must be done’.”

There’s only so much of the Benedict and Emma worldview you can take Michael Buerk

Buerk, who praised Kemp’s bravery while reporting from Afghanistan’s Helmand province, suggested that political grandstanding without experience was the problem with celebrities like Cumberbatch and Thompson. “There’s only so much of the Benedict and Emma worldview you can take,” he wrote.

Cumberbatch came under fire, perhaps, because of his recent stand against the government over immigration and the migration crisis. In October last year, he reappeared after a performance of Hamlet at the Barbican, asking the audience to say “fuck the politicians” and donate to Save the Children. Meanwhile, Thompson, who has used her celebrity to highlight the issue of sex trafficking, told a press conference at last month’s Berlin film festival that the UK would be “mad not to” stay in the EU.

Buerk became famous for his candid news reports from South Africa during the end of apartheid and a 1984 broadcast that exposed the extent of the Ethiopian famine. He was the regular anchor on the BBC Nine O’Clock News and the BBC News at Ten for much of the 1990s and until 2003.

Now retired from news journalism, he is best known as the host of Radio 4’s long-running ethical discussion programme The Moral Maze. He has recently appeared on reality TV shows, including I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!, in which he twerked and rapped with pop MC Tinchy Stryder.

He also writes for the Radio Times. A recent piece, headlined Michael Buerk takes on his toughest assignment yet, details Buerk’s luxurious experience while on a five-star cruise to Tahiti.