Seeing as most of the celebrities arrested involving historical sex abuse claims appear to be staunch and fairly outspoken in the espousing of right-wing ideology, I'm just mulling if they have some form of collective defect link?

Sir Jimmy
Hairy Monster
Nick-nick Davidson
Ken Barlow
Tie me Kangaroo Harris

It's possibly sheer coincidence but could there be something in it?

Well thats a whole new can of worms

I think its more to do with the era they were popular in and male attitudes to females during that time - there was no equality and its probably too simple an explanation to say that some so-called "stars" thought that it was a perk of the job - will be interesting to hear what the stories are behind the accusers of DLT as some of the incidents occurred within BBC property, I wonder if Esther Rantzen knew about those too ?

One is supposed to have occurred live on Top of the Pops according to the BBC. Should be easy to prove one way of the other if the tapes still exist.

Raises an interesting point – and one that Jerry has raised more than a few times here.

If that incident was, say, a goosing, is it yet another illustration of how attitudes have changed over the last, say, 40 years?

And is it right to be prosecuting cases on the basis of changed attitudes in the here and now?

I personally think that that is a very dangerous road to go down, what is considered to be a sexual assault today was, in the 1970s, for some men at least (and not insignificant in number), a "playful" nip or pat on the booty which may or may not have earned them a slap on the face - often not.

At least one of the allegations mentioned on radio news today states that one of the accusers felt in fear of being raped in a dressing room, which is something more serious, but working in an office from 1974 with what was described as a "dolly bird" receptionist (how quaint), I can certainly confirm that if the same thing was occurring today she would have a huge list of complaints for sexual harassment from our electricians every time they came into the office - she didn't complain and gave as good as she got back to them, with hindsight I don't know whether she ever felt uncomfortable or in fear but she didn't show it if so.

And of course you yourself as a young hack know all about trying to break into an all male "club" and probably having to put up with verbal abuse that would get the offender sacked today ?

I'd just lock them up because of their politics altough I'd prefer Davidson deported.
Guilt or innocence is irrelevant.

I completely agree.



I could count on the fingers of one hand (with fingers to spare) times when I ever personally faced such sh*t – and it really wasn't that bad, so let's not overdo how bad it was. As it happens, one was a bunch of tabloid hacks at a football match not doing their work but setting out to tell the sort of stories that were quite clearly intended to make me uncomfortable (not easy, but it was more the intention and less the stories themselves that did make me feel uncomfortable) and one was a football manager (a well-known one) treating me badly at a post-match press conference when I was the only hackette present.

But the other side of the coin is that the overwhelming majority of men that I dealt with as a female sports hack were respectful and helpful and absolutely fine.

Which is partly why – on an entirely personal level – I always struggle to deal with extrapolated stats on abuse, harassment etc – particularly as it is often portrayed as being regular and as most women facing it. The other reason being that, among all the women I know and have known, I am not aware of abuse having happened to them except in a single case.

I always thought he'd stomped off out of the country and gone to live in Dubai ?

Obviously found that a couple of years with no income in that part of the world is not maintainable ?

But then there's Stuart Hall (who did admit at least some of the claims against him).

He's apparently in C5's current Big Brother house.
I never knew, Ive been missing all his great jokes on a nightly basis.

Of his stay in the tax free haven of Dubai -
''I may as well go to Dubai and be an ethnic minority there than wait five years till I become one here'.