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Sitcom actress believes MeToo
TV STAR Arabella Weir has revealed male sexual “bullying” is rife in TV, theatre and film – and says she was a victim of “blokey culture”.
Arabella, 60, is best known for her work on the 90s comedy series The Fast Show and is starring in Scots BBC comedy Two Doors Down.
But she says she had to battle being objectified by male colleagues as she rose to prominence and that “lad culture” prevailed on The Fast Show.
Speaking to stand-up comedian Stuart Goldsmith on his podcast The Comedian’s Comedian, the mum of two said she felt “combatted” all the time on the BBC show.
Arabella said: “It was a very blokey atmosphere. It was like being with a minor rugby club.
“On the tour bus, there’d be porn mags and if I tried to say anything about it they’d say, ‘Oh come on, it’s a joke.’ I was expected to be one of the lads.
“That was exactly what went on in The Fast Show. We’d have a sketch with a naked girl in it and they would say, ‘Yeah, it’s a joke, it’s post-modern.’
“I think they all thought I was a bit stroppy and ghastly. There was one night where I had the most appalling screaming match with Simon Day and said, ‘I’m not having this.’
“He was just being a bully. And Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson said to me, ‘Can you just calm down’, and I said, ‘No, I haven’t done anything wrong.’”
Arabella’s experiences in the acting industry are reflected in the female sketch characters she created and acted for The Fast Show, which aired from 1994 until 1997.
These include Girl Men Can’t Hear, a woman who tries to pitch an idea to a group of men but is completely ignored, only for a man to later be congratulated for having the same idea.
And another regular was Insecure Woman, wellknown among audiences for her catchphrase “Does my bum look big in this?”
But Arabella reveals her experiences of a dominant male culture date back to decades before she was cast in The Fast Show.
She told Goldsmith: “Men wielding their power over women, in some way, to get what they want, is hardly a new thing.
“In all walks of life, women just don’t have the same power as men do and therefore they will have been more subject to abuse than if they had the same level of power.
“When I was a teenager and a young woman, it was much easier to just have sex with someone than to say, ‘I’m sorry, this date isn’t going well, I don’t fancy you.’
“And when you’re in a room with someone who’s got power over you, who could actually give you employment, how are you going to tell them you don’t actually find them attractive?” In a recent column, Arabella recalled walking on to her first TV set in 1979 to be met with a cry of: “Nice big t**s on this one, fellas,” from an electrician in the gantry.
She wrote: “This was met with much laughter from the rest of the (all-male) crew. I was surprised and embarrassed but not particularly shocked.”
On another occasion, she was auditioning for a national theatre tour and wearing a mid-calf length skirt.
A producer in his late 60s approached her from the stalls and said: “Lift your skirt up, I need to see your legs.”
Arabella added: “I declined – spurred, pathetically, not by righteous indignation but because I believe that if he saw my imperfect legs then I wouldn’t get the job.
“He barked at me, ‘What the f**k’s the matter with you? You’re a pretty girl.’”
And on a third occasion, in the mid-90s, she was at the British Comedy Awards with The Fast Show, when she found a “hugely successful producer” crawling on the carpet underneath her.
Arabella told how he then called back to his group, who were a few feet away: “I’m trying to see if she’s
On the tour bus they’d have porn mags and they’d say it was a joke ARABELLA