I was groped at No 10, says writer of TV’s Victoria
Victoria producer Daisy Goodwin reveals Downing Street official touched her breast during TV meeting
‘I swept out in high dudgeon’
THE writer of hit drama Victoria has revealed a government official touched her breast during a visit to Downing Street. Daisy Goodwin told of her ‘astonishment’ at the inappropriate actions of the unnamed official, who she was meeting to discuss an idea for a new programme.
She said her immediate reaction was to impersonate Lady Bracknell from The Importance of Being earnest and ask him ‘Are you actually touching my breast?’, which prompted him to ‘drop his hand and laugh nervously’.
Her ‘keep calm and carry on’ attitude meant she did not report the incident, which happened a ‘few years ago’.
However the 55-year-old producer says she is now reassessing her reaction in the light of recent revelations about inappropriate behaviour at Westminster.
Recalling the encounter, Miss Goodwin – who attended fee-paying Westminster School, which admits girls from age 16 – wrote in Radio Times: ‘A few years ago I was summoned to Downing Street during the Cameron administration to talk to an official about an idea for a television programme.
‘I had met the official at a dinner and he had followed up with an email.
‘As I waited to see him I drank in the aroma of Downing Street, which took me straight back to the boys’ public school I had attended – a sweaty combination of testosterone, socks and lust.
‘The official, who was a few years younger than me, showed me into a room dominated by a portrait of Mrs T and we sat at a table carved, he told me, from one piece of wood. Then to my surprise he put his feet on my chair (we were sitting side by side) and said that my sunglasses made me look like a Bond Girl. I attempted to turn the conversation to turning exports into unmissable TV.
‘At the end of the meeting we both stood up and the official, to my astonishment, put his hand on my breast. I looked at the hand and then in my best Lady Bracknell voice said, “Are you actually touching my breast?” He dropped his hand and laughed nervously.
‘I swept out in what can only be called high dudgeon. I wasn’t traumatised, I was cross, but by the next day it had become an anecdote, The Day I Was Groped In Number 10 – an account of male delusion.’ She added: ‘It didn’t occur to me to report the incident, I was fine, after all, and who on earth would I report it to? I had learnt my lesson only too well.
‘These things did happen and I had indeed learnt how to deal with them. But now in the light of all the really shocking stories that have come out about abusive behaviour by men in power from Hollywood to Westminster, I wonder if my Keep Calm and Carry On philosophy, inherited from my parents, was correct? The answer is, I am not sure.
‘I think humiliating the official was probably the appropriate punishment, but suppose he tried it on with someone less able to defend themselves?’
Before penning ITV drama Victoria, which stars Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes, Cambridge graduate Miss Goodwin spent ten years making arts documentaries for the BBC and also created Grand Designs, now in its eighteenth year on Channel 4.
In her article she also recalled a time when she was inappropriately touched by a train guard as a teenage schoolgirl.
She wrote: ‘In the late 1970s, when I was 15, I used to travel home from school on the east London line, and if the train was empty I sat in the guard’s carriage for safety. But one September day as I did my Greek homework I felt a hand between my legs. A hand, it turned out, that belonged to the guard.
‘Fortunately my Liddell and Scott Greek dictionary made a good weapon, so I was able to repel him without difficulty.’