BBC Oxbridge snobs stop radio star presenting Today programme 'because he is an Essex boy'

Friends of Allen – who left school at 18 to work for his local newspaper and did not go to university – believe he is a victim of "Oxbridge snobs" who control the BBC.

Allen, a passionate Tottenham Hotspur fan and golf enthusiast, presents Five Live's drive-time show, where he has won plaudits for his punchy interviewing.

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The Mail on Sunday has learned that he was poised to move to Radio 4 as a potential successor to John Humphrys, Today's hard-hitting presenter who, at 64, is expected to retire soon.

However, as details of Allen's new job were being finalised, it was mysteriously vetoed by BBC management.

A friend of Allen, said: "Peter had been told the job was his. He thought it would be a great way to cap his career. But at the last moment it was called off.

"The BBC – and Radio 4 in particular – is run by Oxbridge snobs. Peter is a brilliant broadcaster but he never went to university and worked his way up the hard way.

"His Essex background also counted against him.

"He has a blokey, populist style, so the liberals who run the BBC probably assume wrongly that he is a Tory. He is in fact fiercely independent."

Like Allen, Humphrys joined his local newspaper as a school-leaver and missed university.

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But other regular Today presenters have much grander backgrounds. Ed Stourton, nicknamed Posh Ed, went to the elite Catholic public school Ampleforth and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He is a descendant of the 19th century Baron Stourton and his cousin is Baron Mowbray. He sent his own son Ivo, a writer, to Eton.

Sarah Montague was brought up in the tax haven of Guernsey where she attended Blanchelande Girls' College, a fee-paying convent school.

She went on to the ultra-Sloaney Bristol University and worked as a stockbroker before moving into journalism.

James Naughtie went to the selective Keith Grammar School, Aberdeen University and Syracuse University in New York.

But Allen, 61, is perhaps not as common as he sounds. He went to minor public school Brentwood, where he was a contemporary of Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who once teased him live on air for being a "swot at Latin".

The BBC declined to comment.