Rigg tells of MeToo moment
DAME Esther Rantzen says she would not have been good-looking enough to start in showbiz now.
The former That’s Life! presenter and producer, 78, was a trailblazer for female broadcasters and her TV show attracted 20million viewers.
But she told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “A few generations earlier, I don’t think I could have done it. A few generations later, I wasn’t nearly pretty enough, so I think I’ve been very lucky.”
The broadcaster also told the programme the need for Childline – the counselling service she set up in 1986, which has helped nearly five million children – is as great today as ever.
Calls then were mainly about “horrible things people were doing to children, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, bullying”, she said.
“Now so much of it is about unhappiness, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders. And bullying has changed and become cyberbullying that you can’t escape from.
“So I think the need is great as ever... I reckon that we are going to have to be there forever.”
Dame Esther also told Lauren Laverne about the sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager, which she revealed for the first time in 2011.
She said of her abuser: “I can see him to this day. He used to call me ‘bright eyes’. He had one of these creepy smiles and he took me out to buy me a IZZY DICKINSON
present. He found a way of getting me alone and he sexually abused me, not the most serious assault but still horrible.
“Then he told me not to tell anyone and I told my lovely mum and she didn’t really believe me, so that was educational.
“Whether I blocked it or whether I chose to forget it, is that the same thing maybe?
“It really didn’t occur to me, even after we set up Childline, even after those children were talking to me about terrible things that had happened to them.
But then someone asked me the question and the answer was, ‘Yes, I have been’.
She said it was taken for granted earlier in her career that she would not be promoted because of her sex.
Speaking of getting her job on That’s Life!, Esther added: “I was aware that if I didn’t do a job well, preferably better than a man would, then I would make it much harder for the next generation of women.” DIANA Rigg has revealed that she suffered a MeToo moment early in her career at the hands of a “powerful” film director.
The star of Game Of Thrones and the Avengers, 80, told Newsnight: “I had one experience, which I’m not about to talk about but when I was very young, with a director who was very powerful.
“I simply, hardly acknowledged it was happening. I think scorn is quite a powerful tool.
“I would urge women to use scorn whenever possible, because it sort of scorches the gentleman.
“I’m all for the women who speak out, and I’m very glad that they now have a platform to speak out.”
Dame Diana has also said that equal pay is a powerful way of gaining equal treatment.
She discovered that she was being paid less than her male Avengers co-stars and crew, despite being a key character.
The actress said: “I was a lone voice in the wilderness, nobody backed me up.
“Pat Macnee kept his head well below the parapet when I stepped forward and said, ‘I think it’s quite wrong that I’m being paid less than the cameraman’.
“I’ve always thought that equal pay gets you a long way to being treated equally by a man.”