TV presenter Melanie Sykes hits out at BBC in sweary rant

Melanie Sykes has blasted the BBC in an expletive-filled rant posted on YouTube.

The TV presenter let her feelings be known about the public-funded broadcaster in a nearly 30-minute video, in which she claimed that people within the corporation call viewers ‘the great unwashed’.

In the upload, which was shared to state her intention to step away from the platform to focus on ‘loves, life, desires and missions’, Melanie revealed her claimed experiences.

‘I’ve heard people in power at the BBC talk about the audience as the great unwashed,’ she alleged.

‘That’s how much they respect you, literally zero, just so you know, turn out is s**t for people they don’t give a f**k about.’

Mel has presented multiple programmes for the BBC on both radio and TV including Gene Detectives and as a co-host of Radio 2’s Not Going Out with Alan Carr. Most recently she fronted Shop Well for Less in 2021 with Joanna Page and was a competitor on Celebrity MasterChef in the same year.

She added in her YouTube video: ‘If they think they are making fantastic television they are deluded.

‘Remember they do their own programmes to big themselves up and to give themselves awards for what they do as well. It’s patting their own back. It’s generating the money and they’re happy but you’re left feeling like you’ve been entertained, are you f**king kidding me?

‘That’s the power of television, isn’t it, to seduce you.’

Mel first came to public attention while starring in Boddingtons Bitter beer advertisements in the mid-1990s, and soon she began TV work with Sky One’s Real TV UK and The Big Breakfast on Channel 4.

Speaking about her opinion on the industry in general after decades working within it, Mel said that people get into the jobs for what she perceives as the wrong reasons.

‘There is no creativity in television, there are people within positions of power within television who haven’t done the work to get those positions.

‘I see people who want to get into media because they want to be famous, or because they want to be around famous people instead of creating meaningful programmes.

‘I’m tired. I just back out of it, but most of the world don’t,’ she concluded.

Melanie has also worked for ITV on programmes such as The Vault, Today with Des and Mel with Des O’Connor and Let’s Do Lunch with Gino D’Acampo. She finished in third place during the 2014 I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, but decided to boycott its host channel eight years later.

‘I boycotted ITV when they put Matt Hancock in the jungle. Believe you, me, I wasn’t particularly watching that channel anyway because I don’t really watch much TV and having worked there a lot I know the ins and out of what that’s like,’ she stated.

The disgraced former Health Secretary’s inclusion angered some people due to his past. He resigned from his position in Boris Johnson’s cabinet in 2021 after breaching Covid social distancing rules. The married father-of-three was seen kissing a colleague, Gina Coladangelo, in government offices.

Mel’s comments about the BBC come as one of its most popular shows, Strictly Come Dancing, is facing its biggest crisis in 20 years.

Metro.co.uk has contacted BBC for comment.