Poet Ian McMillan want the news to be read in a northern accent

Writing in the Radio Times, he said that although the North is now central to the news agenda, people from the area "can't be trusted with t'autocue".

He added that while TV commissioners understand the importance of representing the North in drama they are hesitant to employ people with northern accents to read the news.

He said: "Seismic and nuanced shifts in political culture are happening at the top end of England and this historic earth tremor will be rattling the pots on the sideboard for years to come."

McMillan added that "the North is a ventriloquist's dummy and the South is in control of the speaking mouth".

"Newsreaders from the North aren't reading the news about themselves because, well, there aren't any," he said.

"And there haven't been since the sainted Wilfred Pickles, unmistakably from Halifax, last read a bulletin on the Home Service during the Second World War."

The poet said that people from the North should not just be limited to appearing on local broadcasts.

"So come on, people in charge: let a northern voice read the news, and not just the news about the North," he said.

"Let's pervade the airwaves like bindweed on an allotment."

He added that the lack of northern voices on the news is nothing new.

McMillan said: "This isn't a new phenomenon, of course, the idea that the flat vowel equals a flat cap equals a flattening of gravitas, and that in the words of the late, great Scottish writer Tom Leonard, the news can't be read by 'wanna yoo scruff'."

Read the full interview in this week's Radio Times.