Ben Elton has argued in his speech for the inaugural Ronnie Barker Comedy Lecture that sitcoms are dying out because of social media “snobbery”.

The 58 year old comedian and author, behind such successes as ‘The Young Ones’ and ‘Blackadder’, warned the audience that “we are in danger of losing something of real value in our culture”, pointing to the evolution of sitcoms now regarded as British television classics such as ‘Dad’s Army’, ‘Fawlty Towers’ and ‘Only Fools & Horses’.

The broadcast of Elton’s lecture will be going out at 10:35pm this evening on the BBC, and he believes that social media is having a poisonous effect on the high turnover and cancellation rate of new sitcoms, which are being axed before they’ve gotten a chance to get going.

Ben EltonBen Elton has critiqued social media's effect on scripted comedy

Elton admitted that he has a vested interest, as he writes sitcoms such as ‘Upstart Crow’ with David Mitchell, and has seen his 2013 sitcom ‘The Wright Way’ cancelled through exactly the same social media savaging he spoke of, but he defended other sitcoms that are routinely given a kicking by some critics, such as ‘Miranda’ and ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’.

He argued that, because sitcoms require heavy manpower to make them, as they are recorded live like a theatre show, if they are not given a chance beyond a first series they will die out. “All that [effort] makes these shows very, very expensive. An expense that frankly is easy to duck if you’re just going to get slagged off for doing it anyway.

“While there’s nothing we can do about shrinking budgets, fractured audiences and TV companies turning their precious facilities into prime real estate, it might help if commentator, critic and columnist alike stopped treating studio sitcoms with such thoughtless contempt.”

More: Tony Robinson thinks Ben Elton might have one more ‘Blackadder’ series up his sleeve [archive]

Elton pointed to the late Nineties and early Noughties with the evolution of non-studio comedies like ‘The Office’ and ‘The Royle Family’ leading to the traditional studio-based, canned-laughter sitcom becoming “overnight a by-word for critical contempt”.

Speaking of canned laughter, he believes that it has unfairly become a journalistic shorthand for laziness in comedy – or what he caustically called “the terrible British sin of ‘going for laughs’. Laughs which are clear evidence of the greatest comedic crime of all, the crime of ‘trying to be funny’.”

“The country’s biggest popular comic hits have always been accompanied by laughter. They form an abiding and affectionate collective memory. They are part of what it means to be British. And yet... the form is routinely dismissed and often despised.

“It really is a sort of snobbery and I say that reluctantly... but I make the charge nonetheless because I think we are discussing nothing less than a prejudice against joy. Corrosive, destructive and coloured I’m afraid by that ancient British cultural cancer – class.”

More: How Twitter got Ben Elton’s ‘The Wright Way’ axed from BBC One [archive]