TV chef James Martin claims BBC discriminated against his Yorkshire accent
The BBC clapped back by listing Martin's shows with them
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TV james martin
TV chef James Martin has claimed the BBC rejected him because of his Yorkshire accent. The presenter, born in Malton, explained that “I didn’t get two jobs from the BBC because of my accent”, Radio Times reports. “I can’t say what jobs they were, but it was before I moved to ITV” Matin said, adding that “It happened more than two years ago. I know because they told me [it was because of my accent]”.
James Martin left the BBC in 2016, transitioning to rival channel ITV. There, he presented ‘Saturday Morning with James Martin’. He claimed that the discrimination wasn’t the reason he left, “but you’d be wrong if you said they don’t discriminate against people because of their accents”. The BBC responded by releasing a statement highlighting Martin’s work with the network. They noted that they have a diverse range of presenters from different backgrounds.
“The fact that James presented ‘Saturday Kitchen’, ‘Home Comforts’, ‘Kitchen Invaders’, ‘Stately Suppers’, ‘Operation Meet the Street’, ‘Operation Hospital Food’, ‘Ready Steady Cook’, ‘The Box’, ‘The Real Italian Job’ and [...] others shows for the BBC shows that we have no problem with his accent”, the statement concluded, as reported up by Radio Times.