Television should be free to axe ageing stars, says Rowan Atkinson

British  actor Rowan Atkinson says the BBC should have been allowed to axe Miriam O’Reilly (pictured) from the program Countryfile without facing claims of age discrimination.

The Blackadder and Mr Bean star criticised the presenter’s landmark ageism tribunal victory last year, saying it was an ‘attack on creative free expression’.

The 57-year-old said ‘creative industries’ were ‘completely inappropriate environments’ for anti-discrimination legislation – and the ‘legal tools’ she used to win her case ‘should never have been available to her’.

 He said her complaint that she was axed from Countryfile due to her age – she was then 51 – was ‘no more sensible’ than Pierce Brosnan complaining he was dropped as James Bond for being too old, ‘which he was and which he is’.

In a letter to Radio 4’s The Media Show, Atkinson said if program-makers wanted to replace an ‘old person with a young person’ or ‘a white person with a black person’ or a ‘disabled straight with an able-bodied gay’ they should have the ‘creative freedom to do so’.