The veteran dramatist Stephen Poliakoff hit out at the “Kafkaesque” rule-obsessed BBC today, which he accused of lecturing writers in how to make risk-averse programming.

The writer behind The Lost Prince, a story of the youngest child of George V, accused the public broadcaster of losing its nerve following a wave of phone-in scandals and the Jonathan Ross prank calls row.

His intervention came the morning after Mark Thompson, the BBC’s Director-General, spoke in front of a gathering of broadcasting stars in an attempt to tell them “creative risk-taking” was alive at the corporation.

Writing in the Radio Times, Mr Poliakoff said that the BBC’s new “Safeguarding Trust policy” — introduced after the phone-in crisis — had “resulted in writers and producers having to receive strange letters about how to make factually based drama”.

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He added that it was “difficult enough writing drama without being given suggestions and rules devised by Kafkaesque committees” and said that the BBC had become concerned that it could be “accused of deceiving the audience” if a historial drama relied on dramatic licence for part of its story.

“I stagger to think how I’d fare with The Lost Prince if I tried to make it now. There was virtually nothing in the public domain about Prince John, youngest child of George V and Queen Mary, and I had to make many educated guesses to reclaim his life from obscurity,” the producer and screenwriter added.

Last month, the BBC Trust rebuked the comedian Frankie Boyle for insulting Rebecca Adlington, the double Olympic gold medalist, on Mock The Week. Mr Boyle refused to apologise and said the Trust’s decision was “b*****ks".

Mr Thompson last night told an audience of “top talent” that the BBC was prepared to stand by controversial decisions, such as the decision to invite the BNP on Question Time, despite recurring complaints from writers and comedians that a culture of political correctness has emerged.

On-screen names such as Clive Anderson, Rick Stein and Claudia Winkleman were told that the BBC valued risky comedy. Mr Thompson defended Mock the Week in particular, saying that he wanted it to be on "the edge". Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the Trust, who was also present, said that the rebuke to Mr Boyle was a one-off. He said, in response to a question, that the decision did not mark "the beginning of a BBC Taleban".

In his article, Polikiaoff defended the importance of risk-taking: “It’s very important that writers in television tackle unfamiliar stories rather than being made to recycle the same ones endlessly. They can’t do this if they are artificially restricted. There’s a danger we are going to regress into a much safer world and I’m not sure the audience want that.”

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