TV Talbot ‘assaulted me in tent’

Trial told of school trip shock

A MAN yesterday told the trial of former TV weatherman Fred Talbot he felt “shocked” and “repulsed” after being indecently assaulted in his tent on a school trip as a teenager.

The witness told a jury he “froze” after Talbot, then a teacher at his school, carried out the night time assault during an excursion to the south of Scotland in 1979.

“I thought this a betrayal of trust by somebody I regarded as a friend,” the man told Lanark Sheriff Court.

Talbot, 67, is on trial accused of indecently assaulting several teenage boys on school trips to Scotland between 1978 and 1981. He is also accused of lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour towards a boy aged 12 on a trip. Talbot denies the charges against him. The witness, the first to be called at the trial, told the court he was a pupil at a grammar school in Cheshire in the 1970s, where Talbot was a teacher.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, described how he went on a weekend camping excursion led by Talbot to Grey Mare’s Tail, near Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway, in the spring or summer of 1979.

The witness, now 54, said the group of boys on the trip had been allowed to buy alcohol and the atmosphere was initially “happy” and almost “joyful”.

But he claimed that Talbot tried to perform a sex act on him after asking if he could join him and a friend in the tent.

The trial, before Sheriff Nikola Stewart, continues.