A lot of ugly beasts stalk beauties...

HERE we go again. Surely hardly anyone was shocked or amazed to read about film producer Harvey Weinstein’s unwanted sexual advances on beautiful young actresses? I mean, even if you’ve never really thought about it, when you found out didn’t you subconsciously realise that you already knew?

All those touchy-feely photos of this large, unprepossessing man with an enormous belly and a sweaty, ugly face, posing with his arms around a gorgeous young Hollywood actress, he looking entitled and smug, she like an unwilling frozen rabbit.

Subliminally I knew, although I’ve never met the man or any of his victims. But I knew at the subconscious level because that is simply the way rich, powerful, unattractive men like to show off their beautiful helpless prizes. In fact I can think of one or two other men of similar wealth and physical stature who are forever in the news gripping some lovely young thing and leering at the cameras.

Virtually every woman involved in the wider media has had experience of these beasts. It has happened to me. An influential TV boss who was a household name once emerged from “making THE deranged jogger who pushed a woman in front of a moving bus on Putney Bridge in May, damn nearly killing her, is still being sought by police. I hope they get him and when they do I trust he’ll get 10 years. Similarly, I hope that the well-built jogger who aggressively barged both me and a pensioner aside in Regent’s Park last week will one day get their own comeuppance. What is it with these Lycra-clad loonies? Do they think they own the pavements?

I was helping an elderly woman cope with a recalcitrant parking-payment machine. We were pressing dead buttons that sullenly refused to beep when I was shoved face-first into the park fence and my elderly companion elbowed into the gutter by a muscular young jogger who robotically, relentlessly, and ruthlessly powered through both of us from behind.

I glimpsed a digital stopwatch coffee” in the kitchen of his flat (which I’d stupidly agreed to visit at the end of a large dinner party – well, I was only 22) with his dangly bits released from his open fly. Charming, it was. When I told him to get lost and that I was going straight home, he replied angrily that I was obviously frigid.

Naturally I feel sorry for Weinstein’s victims, particularly the very young ones. But I admire the girls who got away, such as the actress Rosanna Arquette who bluntly told Weinstein: “I am not that [sort of] girl.”

I don’t really blame the Hollywood royalty, such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, who have only just come forward. It’s not their sacred sisterly duty to involve themselves in a scandalous publicityfest in the name of shaming Weinstein. These stars get endless publicity, a lot of it barbed, jealous and nasty. Who can blame them for protecting themselves in a tankful of piranhas?

However it’s crucial that Weinstein is properly punished. So far he’s lost his job, his membership of Bafta, his reputation and his wife. Good. By the time you read this, he may well have been arrested. That should scare men like him off.

Until the next time.

nastiness of the long distance runner

strapped to one thigh, presumably counting down to a potentially personalbest run through the park. But we were expendable. We were in the way. The runner drove between us with the brutal efficiency of a Tiger tank.

And guess what? She was a woman. Jogging fascists aren’t confined to the male of the species.

My God, but I was tempted to sprint after her (I’m not that old and she wasn’t going that fast); grab her by the scruff of her Lycra’d neck; bring her to account.

But of course I didn’t. Then I’d probably have been the one up on a charge of assault, wouldn’t I? Anyway, most of us Brits don’t behave like that. We just glare. Count to 10. Carry on.

But I park in that spot most weeks when I’m guest-hosting Radio 2’s Sunday brunch slot. And if it happens again… perhaps I won’t be quite so restrained. Jog on? Hmm. Maybe not next time.