As Ricky Gervais' celebrity-culture bashing (and brilliant) Extras finale scores 5.3m viewers, Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn - as a guest editor on the BBC Today programme - has called for celebrity culture to be "dismantled". The cry comes as a recent in-house poll suggests the public are tired of the BBC's focus on celebrity and reality TV, after a year in which the Corporation was criticised for paying 'stars' such as Jonathan Ross £18m for a three year deal, while making thousands of news and current affairs staff redundant.

The current celebrity culture "sends out all the wrong messages" Albarn said. "It's creating a mindset that suggests you can getsomething for nothing and that it's easy to acquire status and fame,"he told BBC Radio 4. "It should be one of the hardest things to do."

"At some point in the very near future we are going to have to change our value system so dramatically, and what we deem as important and what we throw away," he said.

"We need to dismantle very significant parts of our culture and really re-examine them. I suppose you start with the celebrity thing."

He added: "There's just so many things I would alter. I think for a start you have to get rid of things like The X Factor immediately."

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