The BBC is so preoccupied with diversity and gender balance that it has become less representative of the country it serves, according to Michael Buerk.

The former foreign correspondent and news anchor said the corporation spends too much time worrying about paying women as “fabulously” as men.

It is dominated by a metropolitan middle class, he claimed, adding that the imminent departure of John Humphrys from Radio 4’s Today programme is a loss because he is that rare thing: a BBC presenter from a working class background with no university education.

“When John goes, all four of the Today programme’s regular presenters will have been privately educated, like a quite remarkable proportion of other people working for the BBC, on both sides of the microphone.

“The same is true across the media as a whole. Even tabloids newspaper hacks have been to Westminster and Cambridge these days,” Buerk writes in this week’s Radio Times.

Buerk, who went to the independent Solihull School in the West Midlands, described the remaining Today presenters Mishal Husain, Nick Robinon and Martha Kearney as “brilliant”.