Moment pregnant Helen Skelton is ‘groped’ on live TV by darts player Ross Montgomery as wife sits in crowd
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This is the moment pregnant Helen Skelton felt she was ‘groped’ live on air as she spoke to darts players Ross Montgomery.
Presenter Helen has revealed she was left ‘intimidated’ after she was ‘groped’ by an interviewee during a sporting event in 2014. She was pregnant at the time.
The video from the BDO World Darts Championship in Hampshire, which did the rounds online at the time, shows Helen looking down with a seemingly irritated expression after darts player Montgomery touches her.
Montgomery has said he was pulled up about the incident and insisted it was ‘nothing more than a friendly slap on the bottom.’
He told Mail Online: ‘I was spoken to at the time. She was apologised to and she didn’t make a big deal of it.
‘But using the word grope, that’s a bit much. My wife was in the crowd and it wasn’t a grope.’
Helen told The Telegraph on Thursday that she felt she couldn’t speak up about it because she didn’t want to come across as ‘difficult and awkward’.
She said: ‘Basically this guy grabbed me on the arse when I was presenting live telly.
‘I felt really awkward about it. I was pregnant at the time as well. I didn’t really know what to do.
‘It’s intimidating and you don’t want to be the person who is being difficult and awkward. That’s just the culture that television breeds. No one wants to be difficult.
‘You want to bring solutions, not problems. We are all “happy, happy…”.’
Helen added that she felt reassured when her co-presenter Colin Murray ‘kicked off’ and the man was punished.
The Countryfile host is adamant that she doesn’t want the upsetting moment to ‘become my identity’.
She also addressed the recent BBC pay gap, saying it needs to stay relevant to ‘keep the argument sexy’.
‘We have to keep it in the public eye,’ she added.
Helen Skelton’s publicist declined to comment when contacted by Metro.co.uk.
MORE: Helen Skelton hits back at claims she’s been ‘axed’ from BBC Commonwealth Games over ‘risque attire’
