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One Question Time audience member’s attempt to prove the BBC’s bias against Brexit backfired spectacularly, when he inadvertently suggested the leading lights of the leave campaign weren’t very bright.

While the panel were discussing whether the broadcaster and Bank of England governor Mark Carney were damaging our chances of a good deal with pessimism, he came up with an inspired observation.

He said: “With respect, I think the BBC have been biased against Brexit.

“I think that during the referendum campaign what you often did was you got someone very intelligent to speak on behalf of Remain, and you got someone less intelligent to speak on behalf of Leave.”

His intervention was met with uproarious laughter from the rest of the audience.

Meanwhile, Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg - the only elected MP on last night’s panel - said the BBC behaved “very well” during the referendum campaign.

He said: ‘It tried very hard to be independent.”

But he went on: “It got such a shock when we voted to leave that since then it has behaved very badly.”

But Labour’s Shami Chakrabarti branded complaints about the behaviour of the beeb a “sideshow”.

She said: “I do think that on this one the Bank of England and the BBC are a distraction from the real problem here. They are not negotiating Brexit, it’s the government. And it’s the Government that is failing in that responsibility.

“We know that David Dimbleby is all powerful, but he is not negotiating Britain’s exit from the EU.”