´óÏó´«Ã½

Veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby has criticised broadcasters for rarely employing older women in front of the camera.

In a Radio Times interview, the 74-year-old host of ´óÏó´«Ã½ One's Question Time said: "Why should age matter with women? Women mature elegantly and better than men, very often.

"I don't think age should be a factor for women appearing on TV.

"I agree that it is demeaning to women and... it's a crazy loss of talent."

In 2011, former ´óÏó´«Ã½ newsreader Anna Ford described Dimbleby as a "charming dinosaur".

Ford, who left the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in 2006, said: "I wonder how these charming dinosaurs such as Mr Dimbleby and [´óÏó´«Ã½ world affairs editor] John Simpson continue to procure contracts with the ´óÏó´«Ã½, when, however hard I look, I fail to see any woman of the same age, the same intelligence and the same rather baggy looks."

Dimbleby - who has been the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s main presenter of election coverage since 1979 - said the problem was due to the pressures to get big audiences.

"There is a section among television executives who are always being hammered - quite wrongly in my view - to get the biggest possible audience, and they are told attractive young women will bring in a bigger audience than less attractive, older women - to say nothing of less attractive older men, like me.

"That's the way the TV - not just the ´óÏó´«Ã½ - industry works. And I think it's wrong," he added.

Former Countryfile presenter Miriam O'Reilly won an age discrimination case against the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in 2011 after she was dropped from the rural affairs show when it moved to a primetime Sunday evening slot in 2009.

Other TV figures including Dame Joan Bakewell and Selina Scott have also spoken out against broadcasters on the same issue.