Jeremy Clarkson is the latest BBC star to criticise the relocation of key departments to Salford.
The 51-year-old presenter warned executives he would rather quit Top Gear than move to the MediaCity UK site.
There are no plans to shift production of Top Gear to the North at present, but the BBC is committed to ensuring at least 50 per cent of its programming is made outside London by 2016.
The BBC has said that the Salford site will cost £877million to build and run – with five departments including BBC Sport, Children’s, Radio Five Live and shows such as BBC Breakfast moving by next year.
Clarkson claimed the move, which will see 2,300 staff transfer to the Salford site, was ‘box-ticking’.
Writing in his Sunday Times column he described the town as a ‘small suburb with little to offer beyond a Starbucks and a canal with ducks on it’.
London, by contrast, was ‘the nation’s Oxbridge’, full of the nation’s brightest and the sharpest brains.
Clarkson, who described himself as a pure-blood northerner, wrote: ‘It [Salford] is nowhere near any court that matters and nowhere near a single politician.
‘Furthermore, if we ran the show from Salford, we’d be employing people from Salford.
‘People who were born there and thought “Yes, I like this. I see no reason to go anywhere else”.
‘And in the world of television that could be a genuine handicap. Every year we’d end up making a Christmas special from the Dog and Duck or the nearest Arndale Centre.’
You’d think the move would be a major problem for him however this is what he said during problems with his marriage,
Clarkson lives with his wife, Frances, in a £2million home in the Cotswolds, and the couple insisted that the flat in London was for use only while filming for the BBC in London.
Here’s some more images of Salford Quays for those that don’t know much about it, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s much nicer than the Television Centre area
