The organisation has strongly denied all of the accusations, made at a Cardiff industrial tribunal on Tuesday.

Radio presenter Annand Jasani, who was awarded an MBE for being a "cultural ambassador", is claiming racial discrimination against the BBC.

I am living with insidious racial discrimination.

Annand Jasani

Mrs Jasani said: "It is as if I'm an unintelligent native from the Raj years."

Mrs Jasani has interviewed Tony Blair, the Dalai Lama and Vanessa Redgrave on her Asian magazine show A Voice For All on Radio Wales.

But she told an employment tribunal how she had to buy her own records and pay for competition prizes out of her £267 weekly wages.

And the 53-year-old journalist told the tribunal her husband and daughter had to answer listeners' phone calls on the show broadcast on BBC Radio Wales.

She told the hearing she had been "slowly and subtly bullied by male-dominated management."

Asian music

She said: "Is it right that I should have to pay for prizes out of my own pocket?

"For 15 years I have had to purchase music for the show myself - I now have nearly £10,000 of Asian music."

She told the tribunal how her BBC portrait photo was taken down from the walls of Broadcasting House in Cardiff.

But she claimed it was put back up as a show of "petty tokenism" for the visit of John Birt, the BBC's Director General at the time.

"Graveyard shift"

She said: "I am living with insidious racial discrimination."

Her live show was relegated to a "graveyard shift" at 10.30pm to midnight on Sunday nights - and claims the commissioning editor Daniel Jones refused to move it.

She claims Mr Jones told her: "I'm not making my Welsh listeners suffer by putting their programmes on at 10 o'clock."

Mrs Jasani sobbed as she told the hearing how her health has suffered as a result of the case - triggering diabetes.

Mrs Jasani, from Penarth, south Wales, is claiming racial discrimination and detriment against the BBC who deny the claim.

The hearing in Cardiff continues.