Reality TV programmes like Big Brother and The Apprentice have done “more for racial and ethnic understanding than any other media creation in recent years”, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality said today.

Trevor Phillips said the fly-on-the-wall shows allowed British people to get to know individuals of different ethnic backgrounds in a way they may never have done in life.

And they challenged the one-dimensional stereotypes of black and Asian people normally portrayed in the media.

Mr Phillips will spell out his view on the reality TV phenomenon at the CRE’s Race In The Media awards presentation later today.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that research showed few Britons had close friends from different racial backgrounds from their own.

“For most people, their experience of black or Asian or Chinese people is what they see or hear or read in the media, and historically, black and Asian people in the media have been rather one-dimensional stereotypes,” said Mr Phillips.

“What reality TV has done – whether you like it or not – is introduce the majority of the British public to people they would never normally meet.

“Some of the people are very normal – Tim Campbell, who was on The Apprentice – and others are on Big Brother, they are strange and it’s a different kind of reality.

“But what it also says is that someone who is black or Asian isn’t just one kind of person.

“Going back to The Apprentice, Saira Khan – who would ever say Asian women are sweet, submissive and silent after watching her in action?

“So I think it’s had a positive effect.”

Mr Phillips said that analysis of Big Brother voting patterns carried out by the show’s maker, Peter Bazalgette, suggested that young viewers were not voting along racial lines.