As the BBC tries to draw a line under the Strictly Come Dancing racism row, Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has added his thoughts on the television industry's diversity policies.

In a column for the new issue of Top Gear magazine, the BBC presenter ridicules TV bosses for being obsessed with having "black Muslim lesbians" on shows to balance out the numbers of white heterosexual men.

In response to questions about the lack of female presenters on BBC's Top Gear, Clarkson said: "The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blond-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian.

"Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works. But here we have Top Gear setting new records after six years using cheese and cheese. It confuses them."

The comments come just days after it emerged that dancer Anton Du Beke had referred off-screen to his dance partner Laila Rouass as a "Paki". Du Beke apologised and the BBC tried to draw a line under the incident.

But the show's presenter Bruce Forsyth said yesterday the nation should get a "sense of humour" over Du Beke's "slip up".

Forsyth was later forced to clarify his views in a statement issued through the BBC, in which he said that "racially offensive language is never either funny or acceptable".

In his column Clarkson went on to defend women drivers and ask why there are not more of them in Formula One. He said: "Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the differences.

"At work, girls are just people. It's the same story at parties and it's especially the same on the road. The worst driver in the world is Top Gear's studio director ... He cannot park without kerbing the wheels and he cannot get into his own drive without crashing into his house. And he has a scrotum."

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