Killjoys: ITV boss warns that the PC brigade are taking the fun out of TV

Peter Fincham said Ofcom's fixation with 'cultural identity, diversity and alternative viewpoints' risked killing off shows such as The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.

Mr Fincham is now ITV's director of television, with the job of ensuring the success of the sort of shows he was championing.

'PC is ruining the industry': ITV boss Peter Fincham at the launch of Edinburgh's Television Festival

He quit as BBC1 controller in October last year after doctored footage of the Queen was used to suggest she had stormed out of a photo shoot.

Mr Fincham warned that a PC 'box ticking' mentality was in danger of suffocating much-loved entertainment programmes and threatening to make TV a joyless experience.

The executive, who made millions from independent production, also accused Ofcom of imagining ' television as a form of social engineering' and not living in the real world.

Giving the annual MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, Mr Fincham highlighted the watchdog's insistence on the importance of knowledge and learning in programmes.

'Television is a creative medium: it needs to be free to be creative,' he said.

'Its unique power lies in its popularity and, although I have great respect for those who regulate it, the medicine they are ministering may be as likely to kill it as cure it.

'It is not a branch of the education service. Wrap it up in the woolly words of political correctness and the short-term illusion of warmth will soon give way to the reality of suffocation.'

He said the regulators were ignoring the mantra of Lord Reith, founder of the BBC, that television's purpose was to entertain as well as inform and educate.

Ofcom's picture of the future was a 'recipe for the niche, the marginal, the worthy', Mr Fincham claimed.

He added: 'Try hanging them outside West End theatre. See who buys a ticket.'

Shows such as Britain's Got Talent, which entertained millions of viewers, are at risk from a PC society, said Peter Fincham

In a mocking passage, Mr Fincham said: 'Let's scrap Saturday nights completely. Drama's out and comedy too. No role for sport - the Champions League final, Euro 2008, the Olympics.

'The 14million people who tuned into the final of Britain's Got Talent weren't there to be entertained but to watch TV promote understanding of religions, culture and lifestyles.'

He warned that the constant meddling in what type of programmes should be made was in danger of turning off the public.

Mr Fincham added that Ofcom and Channel 4's recent suggestions on the future of public service TV had a 'language all of its own' and that they like to imagine 'television as a form of social engineering'.

He left the BBC after a scathing independent report into the so-called Queengate scandal.

The executive had claimed a trailer showed the monarch leaving the photo session when she was really arriving.