Iain Duncan Smith should follow his beliefs if the Tories are to appeal to the young, says the man behind TV's Big Brother phenomenon.

In an ePolitix.com interview, TV producer and media boss, Peter Bazalgette, warned the Conservative leader against making a short-term bid for the youth vote.

"My advice to them would be my advice to any politician. And that is talk about what you believe in, in that way you will impress people," he told this website.

"You don't chase voters by telling them things that you think they might like, they just feel patronised, they see through you. You have to talk about the things that you believe in."

As the Tories continue to develop new policies, Bazalgette cautions "they shouldn't start by saying 'how shall we chase Big Brother viewers', 'oh lets be trendy'."

"They should talk about things they believe in," he says.

He argues that "discussing issues that young people care about in a sincere way" is the way forward for politicians seeking to engage the young.

And Bazalgette highlights drugs policy and the environment as key issues - areas where politicians have a poor track record.

"All parties have been pretty cynical on the environment, certainly we have a very unenlightened drugs policy in this country, mostly because the current government is afraid of offending middle Britain that they won over 1997," he said.

"They are afraid of offending the Daily Mail. They are obsessed by the Daily Mail in Downing Street, but the Daily Mail is of no interest to young people, because it's such a narrow-minded right-wing newspaper."

Bazalgette's Big Brother took 22 million votes in the last series, using the latest interactive technology to register viewers' opinions.

The reality television programme, where viewers use interactive technology to vote unpopular contestants off the show, has become hugely popular among the young.

The Conservative spokesman on youth issues, Charles Hendry, recently said the Tories had "lessons" to learn from a media phenomenon that sees more young people voting in TV shows than general elections.

But Bazalgette suggests that it would be a mistake to think e-voting is a quick fix.

"If people think bringing in modern methods of voting in the technological sense are the answer they're wrong. That's just technology and technology has got nothing to do with it," he stresses.

"It would be a mistake to become obsessed with technology over substance. At the end of the day people are not voting general elections because they are not engaged by politics."

As a producer in the vanguard of broadcasting's shift to reality TV and lifestyle programming, Bazalgette also defends the BBC's plans to modernise political coverage.

He claims that talk of dumbing down is "just prejudice".

"Politicians who kneejerk against the BBC's current wish to modernise or spruce up some of their political programmes by saying that the BBC is dumbing down politics are talking the purest drivel," he insists.

"Anybody who uses the phrase dumbing down should be locked in a darkened room for a couple of years. Anyone who uses the phrase dumbed down is normally offering some kneejerk view not backed up by any evidence or statistics at all - just prejudice."