Stephen Fry defends "enriching" BBC

Stephen Fry has leapt to the defence of the BBC, the Press Association reports.

Speaking in response to Ofcom's public service broadcasting review, the actor and writer said it would be a "tragedy" if the company were forced to cut jobs due to dwindling profits.

Fry said: "The BBC enriches the country in ways we will only discover when it is gone and it is too late to build it up again.

"We actually can afford the BBC, because we can't afford not to."

The 50-year-old attacked Channel 4 for broadcasting "freak show documentaries: The Man With A Nose Growing Out of his Bottom, The Girl With 14 Nipples, and that kind of embarrassment for all concerned.

"So much so that C4's very existence and right to continue is being questioned."

Fry added that the innovative iPlayer service was making the BBC enemies because of pressure to "monetise" online programming.

"Streaming? Hardly: Anything that can be played on your computer can be stored on it and shared. A digital copy is a perfect copy... at the moment it's relying on the fact that you have to be slightly dorky to record from the iPlayer, but believe me that will change," Fry said.

Sir David Attenborough recently criticised the BBC for flooding its schedules with lifestyle TV.