Your skirts are a bit short, Joan Bakewell tells Theresa
DAME Joan Bakewell has chided Theresa May for wearing skirts that are ‘a bit short’.
The 84-year- old Labour peer described the Prime Minister as ‘a capable woman’ but added: ‘I think her skirts are a bit short. Please don’t make a thing of that.’
The veteran broadcaster presented the BBC’s Late Night Line-Up in the late 60s and admitted that sexism was rife when she was starting to carve out a career for herself.
When asked if she was leered at by her male colleagues, she told the Radio Times: ‘Yes, of course. It was a way of life. There was no man who didn’t leer, or think of it. It was the tenor of the times, which is why, strangely enough, no one bothered with Jimmy Savile. He was just a strange man. There were plenty of them around.
‘The mood was there was nothing very offensive about it. As someone who was quite pretty in those days, you got pinched everywhere and, in a way, the thing was not to let it matter.’
The mother of two, who famously had an eight- year affair with the playwright Harold Pinter while she was married to producer Michael Bakewell, also spoke of never feeling guilty during her years of infidelity.
Dame Joan told how she deceived her husband by telling her she needed to be away filming. She said: ‘I went to Heathrow and got a flight to Paris to spend the day with Harold, who was filming there. I was back in time to cook supper for the children.
‘Guilt was something I had to deal with quite early on. I remember thinking, “If I’m going ahead with this, I’m not going to be racked by guilt...” ’
In fact, 50 years on, the veteran broadcaster looks back fondly on her rela- tionship with Pinter. The playwright, who died in 2008, based his play Betrayal on their romance. Dame Joan is releasing her own account of their affair called Keeping In Touch.
Last month, Theresa May’s legs were at the centre of controversy after the Daily Mail ran the headline ‘Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!’ alongside a front-page picture of Mrs May and Nicola Sturgeon both wearing short skirts at a meeting in Glasgow. Left-wing politicians complained it was sexist, but Mrs May dismissed the complaints and called it a ‘bit of fun’.