More accuse ‘lewd’ TV Ant
Four female crew see union over Middleton behaviour on SAS set
FOUR women who worked with TV’s Ant Middleton have told a union he made “lewd and suggestive comments” to them on set.
The workers on Channel 4’s SAS Who Dares Wins made the allegations to Bectu. It comes after the broadcaster this week said it “will not be working with him again” after several women claimed he made “inappropriate comments” on set. Middleton, 40 – who served for 14 years in the Armed Forces – told ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Wednesday: “It’s obviously something that they’ve seen... a bit of military banter, they’ve seen a bit of military humour... and they really felt offended.” Four women then went to Bectu. The Daily Record’s sister paper, the Mirror, spoke to a separate female crew member, who claimed Middleton “overstepped the mark” in how he treated people on set. The media union claims “a number of women” have been in touch about Middleton. It said: “We will not be publishing the allegations. However, we want to set the record straight following an interview on Good Morning Britain. Despite Ant Middleton’s claims about the so-called ‘woke brigade’, Channel 4 clearly stated the decision to part ways with him was ‘solely based on his personal conduct off-camera and is not related to his on-screen persona’. This certainly corroborates with what our members have told us.
“Mr Middleton said SAS Who Dares Wins has now become a half-scripted reality show and cited ‘military banter’ as an excuse for his behaviour. This is no excuse. TV sets are workplaces and people working in TV deserve to have dignity at work.”
After being told crew members had gone to Bectu, a spokesman for Middleton said he “wholeheartedly and emphatically rejects” the allegations, adding: “Ant has worked on TV sets around the world and has never been accused of speaking inappropriately by anyone.”
Channel 4 said: “We take issues of welfare very seriously.”
Middleton last year faced a backlash over comments he made about Black Lives Matter protests and coronavirus. He has blamed a lot of criticism on the “PC patrol and woke patrol”.
‘Military banter’ is no excuse for his behaviour BECTU TV AND MEDIA UNION ON CLAIMS
THIS past week has felt a bit like a pantomime where I’ve found myself cast as the villain of the piece.
Cries of “boo!” have been resounding in my ears while I half expect someone to shout, “Oh no he isn’t” at me in the street.
Standing up against the court of public opinion on the back of a very biased television documentary has seen all manners of slurs, vitriol and downright rudeness slung my way across all forms of social media, telephone calls and emails.
Calls for my sacking, resignation and demands for apologies have been winging their way to Record Towers every day.
Why? What heinous crime have you committed this time, Hamilton?
Well, I dared to speak out against something I believed was wrong – and still do. At times over the past seven days, it has felt like I was the lone voice in the wilderness while all around me the baying mob were calling for my head while simultaneously declaring a convicted killer was innocent – because the telly said he was.
The furore over the Luke Mitchell documentary, Murder in a Small Town, on Channel 5 has not died down and I guess when I pulled no punches in this column last Saturday in showing my contempt for the one-sided narrative shown on screen, I became public enemy No1.
At least I was to the Facebook and Twitter army who screamed the media were responsible for Mitchell’s guilty verdict while, ironically, believing a documentary that declared him innocent. Say what?
Media storms surrounding trials and verdicts are not new but the rise of true crime and our obsession with it is setting dangerous precedents.
From podcasts to series such as Making A Murderer, the growth in the genre is inescapable but are we risking the very foundations of our justice system for shows that are very often simplistic and omit key information that gets in the way of telling the story visually? of justice or unsafe convictions is something journalists and broadcasters have done for years and in some cases they have uncovered or exposed appalling injustices.
The Daily Record has been a standard bearer for many such cases.
The system gets it wrong at times – nothing is perfect – but you’d hope that when watching these shows, the public would look at both sides and come to a sensible conclusion.
It seems incredible that people will believe things they read on Facebook or that a documentary MUST be right over highly skilled lawyers on both sides presenting the facts of a criminal case.
In Mitchell’s case, this was over more than 40 days, presided over by a judge and decided on by a jury who were carefully instructed not to look at the media but to decide only on facts heard in court.
Is it an anomaly that four appeal attempts have been knocked back, countless attempts by journalists – including yours truly – to investigate it as a possible wrongful conviction case and ALL reaching the same conclusion as the jury?
Does that count for anything? It would appear not. Not when a TV show had two ex-detectives, who came across as more Scot Squad than Line of Duty, tell the viewers they don’t believe police have the right man.
When the family of the victim expressed their distress at the TV show it seemed to enrage the mob and didn’t stop the clamour for what his supporters see as “justice”.
Names of innocent people were tossed into the public domain and labelled “suspects” without a care for common sense, decency or even fear of legal ramifications.
Anyone who called balance and fairness was drowned out by the screams and shouts of those wanting heads on a platter.
A petition calling for a review is unlikely to be heard. It’s doubtful a new appeal can be launched unless new evidence comes to light and Mitchell’s team have been looking for 17 years and have come up short.
Meanwhile, a heartbroken family have had their pain stamped on and a victim has been forgotten.
Her name is Jodi Jones.
When I pulled no punches I became public enemy No1 JANE HAMILTON ON REACTION TO HER COLUMN