“The Prince Harry of the TV Royal Family.”

That is how BBC comedy boss Jon Petrie characterized his genre competing with the popularity and big budgets of high-end drama, with comedy “having to fight harder than it should for attention, for status and sometimes for survival.”

Petrie was opening the annual BBC Comedy Festival in Liverpool as he made the claim that comedy is the “rebel sibling” versus drama. “The Prince Harry of the TV Royal Family if you will,” he joked. “I won’t say who’s Andrew [Mountbatten-Windsor].”

Petrie said he therefore “intends to camp outside” new BBC Director General Matt Brittin’s office when he starts next week to “make sure he understands just how vital it is that the BBC keeps backing comedy.”

While flagging that scripted comedy is “going through a tough patch and has been for a long time,” he said the producers in the room “keep delivering” with breakout hits like Amandaland, just renewed for a third season, and Mackenzie Crook’s Small Prophets, which recently became the BBC’s biggest scripted launch of the year.

Petrie didn’t only celebrate his own hits but pointed to rival shows like Sky’s Saturday Night Live UK and Prime Video’s Last One Laughing as proof that British comedy is in rude health.

But he said “what sets the BBC apart is that we are Britain’s biggest comedy backer by far.” “Because the BBC does not back comedy to make money. We back it for laughs,” he added. “And if we weren’t here to support comedy properly, the simple truth is there would be a lot less of it.”

The likes of James Corden, Ruth Jones and Diane Morgan are speaking at the BBC Comedy Fest. The BBC has just renewed six shows including Daisy May Cooper’s Am I Being Unreasonable?, Black Ops and Such Brave Girls.