Broadcaster, author and actor Stephen Fry has accused the BBC of creating a culture of .fear’ which is making the company’s creative output ‘incredibly bland’.

Speaking to the BBC’s Radio Times magazine, Fry said that executives within the BBC were afraid of taking risks and accused them of interfering.

“I do know of so many cases where executives would say ‘What we want is something new, something different, something extraordinary,’” explained Fry.

“And they’re brought something new, different and extraordinary and immediately the executive gets cold feet, falls back on something else and we end up with something incredibly bland.

“A lot of the adventure and excitement has gone out of television programming – and a lot of it is just down to fear,’ he added.

He concluded to say that it was ‘so much easier now in the BBC’ to say ‘no’ within the BBC and that would spell the death for it as a creative institution.