Anne Robinson has revealed how she had to rebuff the ‘pathetic’ advances of trade union leaders and drunk MPs when she was a young journalist.
The 73-year-old TV presenter said union bosses would try to get into her hotel bedroom at conferences, while inebriated MPs would ‘lose all their inhibitions’.
Miss Robinson said that she found it ‘terribly funny’ and rather than ‘crying in the loo’, she focused on climbing the career ladder so she would no longer have to put up with men’s ‘nonsense’.
The former Weakest Link presenter added that women had to accept that workplaces are ‘sexually treacherous’.
According to the 73-year-old presenter union bosses and MPs made several attempts to sleep with her
Miss Robinson, who began her career as a newspaper journalist in the 1960s, said: ‘I never actually clouted a man if he tried to pat my bum because I never attached that much importance to it.
‘I just used to sigh and curtly say, “Look, I’m very busy, please don’t waste my time.” I certainly didn’t run crying to the loo.
‘I just thought the quicker I got to the top, the sooner I wouldn’t have to put up with this nonsense.’
Speaking to Radio Times magazine, she revealed how she had to run away from men at conferences.
‘I’d have trade union leaders chasing me up the stairs of Brighton’s Grand Hotel. It sounds ghastly but I just thought it terribly funny,’ she said. ‘The same powerful guys who could call the country to a halt were the ones pathetically trying to get into my hotel bedroom.
‘Tory and Labour conferences were exactly the same. MPs would drink too much at parties and lose all their inhibitions. Fortunately, I was far too quick for any of them.’ She suggested that while women could now become prime ministers and heads of companies, little progress had been made to protect them from harassment.
‘We’re still having to put up with inappropriate behaviour from men while not doing anything about it,’ she said.
Miss Robinson, who has made a new BBC TV documentary that explores issues related to equality, including recent sexual harassment controversies, said it ‘angers’ her that such behaviour continues. But she added: ‘Workplaces are politically and sexually treacherous and I’m afraid women do have to accept that.
Miss Robinson said it ‘angers’ her that such behaviour continues to exist in the modern workplace
‘You have a choice. Do I get off the train and spend my life complaining and making a fuss, or do I stay on the train and make sure it never happens to me again?
‘I always chose the latter, but maybe I’m just a different sort of warrior.
‘It’s important for women to show their strength and make it clear they’re not going to put up with this rubbish.’
Miss Robinson was criticised at the height of last year’s sexual harassment controversies for discussing the ‘fragility of women who aren’t able to cope with the treachery of the workplace’.
She told Radio 4’s Today programme that ‘in the early days, 40 years ago, there were very few of us women in power and we had a much more robust attitude to men behaving badly’.