BBC bosses ran away from a confrontation with Wings Over Scotland blogger Stu Campbell on Wednesday morning.

The acerbic, and sometime controversial writer was on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland, discussing the corporation’s successful attempt to shut down his YouTube channel.

However, despite journalists on the show repeatedly asking for colleagues in the BBC’s legal department to come on air and explain their position, Auntie’s lawyers stayed away.

It was left to Good Morning Scotland host Gary Robertson to explain that the programme had “repeatedly asked for someone in the relevant department in the BBC in London to come on air and explain the process”.

He said the programme had also “unsuccessfully” tried to get more detail about what had happened.

Channels operated by Wings Over Scotland and prominent pro-independence commentator Peter Curran were closed over the weekend, after YouTube were sent takedown requests by the BBC’s lawyers.

Campbell, who said he had “hundreds” of videos with BBC content on his YouTube channel, argued that though the corporation had only asked for 13 videos to be taken down, they knew this would have led to the entire channel being “killed”.

He told Robertson: "I'm sure the takedown notice the BBC sent didn't specifically say 'and please shut the entire channel down,' but that's because it didn't have to.

"The person that signed that notice ... is a specialist intellectual property lawyer at the BBC's legal department in London.

"And unless they're a completely incompetent idiot, they know perfectly well that YouTube has a three strikes policy and it operates a presumption of guilt.

"It's their job to know that, and everyone with a YouTube channel knows that.

“So they know fine that if they file 13 take down demands that will definitely lead to the entire channel being killed, because 13 is more than three and so it will happen automatically.”

The blogger also argued that the corporation had targeted independence supporters. Told that the BBC disputed that, Campbell accused them of lying.

“If they can produce any evidence to the contrary I'm sure we'd all like to see it,” he said.

Wings Over Scotland and Curran argue that they can use BBC content on their channels as it falls under “fair use” regulations.

“There are exemptions to copyright law for criticism, review and the reporting of current events. Clearly pretty much any news broadcast falls under that category," Campbell said.

He added: “Politicians’ comments are public domain and I think it would be a very uncomfortable situation if a state-funded broadcaster was able to effectively suppress any politician’s comments that it liked just because they happened to be the ones who recorded them.”

In a statement released over the weekend, the BBC said: “Whenever we receive complaints about large volumes of our material being posted or used without authorisation we look to take action to protect our copyright. This action is normally limited to asking for individual videos to be removed and the BBC did not ask or demand for these whole channels to be taken down. That was a decision for YouTube alone.

"We act irrespective of the political views of the infringing YouTube channels and have taken action against the use of our material by individuals or organisations from across the political spectrum. There is a standard process in place if these channels wish to challenge the take down orders and we will consider any representations carefully.”