Newsnight has taken a humorous and sarcastic swipe at The Sun over its front page showing BBC workers catching 40 winks at their desks.

Host Emily Maitlis claimed the paper’s exposing of the “scandal” was “just the tip of the iceberg” and staff in the broadcaster’s London HQ are in fact never awake.

She also revealed details of the creative process behind the BBC’s output, saying: “BBC output is quite literally dreamed up by producers in their sleep. Needless to say the Newsnight producers are hard at work conjuring up another fine program which we will bring you tomorrow with Kirsty.

“Goodnight.”

A montage of scandalously-lazy BBC staff then swept the screen. 

The Sun drew criticism on Thursday for its front page story entitled ‘here is the snooze’, which was illustrated with a pictures claiming to show BBC News Channel staff sleeping during night shifts at Broadcasting House.

The pictures were taken over a four year period.

It cited a source who claimed: “In a 12-hour shift I would estimate some staff do around an hour of work.” The same unnamed source added: “There are far too many managers so once they have delegated, there’s isn’t anything for them to do – so they go to sleep or watch Netflix.”

Earlier on Thursday the BBC Press Office also lashed out at the paper, backed up by some pretty damning stats.

Past and present BBC workers also hit out at the piece.

Nigel Farage, never one to miss a chance to indulge in some BBC-bashing, was apparently outraged by the scoop, tweeting: “What a joke! We’re paying for this!”