Comedian Harry Enfield has criticised former BBC director-general Mark Thompson, saying that he did not stand up for the corporation.

Thompson left the BBC in 2012 after eight years, in which the corporation suffered budget cuts and redundancies, and scandals including the Sachsgate affair.

Singling out the departure of BBC1 controller Peter Fincham after a documentary trailer shown at a media screening misrepresented the Queen, Enfield told Radio Times: " The problem is under Mark Thompson, [the BBC] didn't stand up for itself.

"It would just sack someone if anyone criticised it.

"Like Peter Fincham when he was sacked, when he so-called resigned, Thompson should have come out and said, 'OK, he said this thing that was slightly inaccurate about the Queen because he was briefed by a private company that's come in because everything has to be private now."

"I'll get him to resign once any of your [newspaper] editors who have written anything inaccurate about the royal family resign.'

"You know, come out fighting instead of whingeing. He didn't do that. It was a bad thing for the BBC and put it on a bad footing for the future..."

Meanwhile, John Lloyd , the producer and writer whose credits include Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI, said programmes were suffering because TV executives have never made a programme.

"The people in charge of television haven't actually made any television. Most of them haven't produced, directed, written, edited, designed or acted in a single programme," he told the magazine.

"This is not a BBC problem. It's endemic to the whole of television, not just here but all over the world."