TV writer reveals: ‘I was groped in 10 Downing Street’
THE writer who created hit TV drama Victoria has told how she was groped by a top civil servant during an official trip to Downing Street.
Daisy Goodwin said the aide touched her breast as she waited in a conference room that was dominated by a portrait of Baroness Thatcher.
Ms Goodwin, who produced and co-wrote the ITV royal blockbuster, said she did not report the incident – which happened during David Cameron’s premiership.
But after the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal, the mother-of-two wondered whether she did the right thing by simply trying to embarrass her molester.
She said: “The answer is, I am not sure. Humiliating the official was probably the appropriate punishment, but suppose he tried it on with someone less able to defend themselves?
“It didn’t occur to me to report the incident. I was fine, after all, and who on earth would I report it to?
“I had learnt my lesson only too well. These things did happen and I had indeed learnt how to deal with them.”
Describing the incident in the latest edition of Radio Times, she told how the unwelcome attention came after she was “summoned to Downing Street” to discuss an idea for a TV programme.
Ms Goodwin, 55, had previously met the official at dinner and was struck by the atmosphere of “testosterone, socks and lust” when she attended the follow-up meeting.
She said: “The official, who was a few years younger than me, showed me into a room dominated by a portrait of Mrs T and we sat at a table carved, he told me, from one piece of wood.
“Then to my surprise he put his feet on my chair (we were sitting side by side) and said that my sunglasses made me look like a Bond Girl.
“At the end of the meeting we both stood up and the official, to my astonishment, put his hand on my breast.”
She looked at the hand and spoke to him witheringly “in my best Lady Bracknell voice” – a reference to Oscar Wilde’s formidable Victorian character in The Importance Of Being Earnest – and said: “Are you actually touching my breast?”
Ms Goodwin added: “He dropped his hand and laughed nervously. I swept out in what can only be called high dudgeon. I wasn’t traumatised – I was cross.
“But by the next day it had become an anecdote, The Day I Was Groped In Number 10 – An Account Of Male Delusion.”
Ms Goodwin, who is married to TV executive Marcus Wilford, added that her show’s feisty heroine, Queen Victoria, is “the perfect answer to the Harvey Weinsteins and lecherous officials of this world”.