Picture the scene. It is the late 1990s and I am a senior executive within a national newspaper group. This means I attend the weekly board meeting – I am the only woman who does – and one day, I get there early to find the room empty. A minute or so later, another senior editorial figure within the group appears and takes the seat next to me, whereupon he proceeds to casually – as if he were merely straightening his pen on the table or reading the very newspaper we produce – slip his hand up my skirt and grope my thigh.
![[Amanda Platell, pictured in 2001, has kept a detailed diary of her more than 40 years in journalism]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/15/16/93169475-14195019-image-a-29_1734280236383.jpg)
‘I just wanted to check if you’re wearing stockings,’ he said. ‘I never trust a woman in tights. How can a man have sex on his office desk if you’re wearing tights?’. Frankly I was mortified. I should have felt proud, rightly taking my place at the board table, but instead he left me feeling grubby, humiliated and incandescent with rage.
I replied: ‘I have your wife’s phone number. Touch me ever again and she’s the first person I will report you to.’. I was outraged, yes, and baffled by the man’s assumption that this was in any way acceptable behaviour – for God’s sake, did he think I’d think it was sexy? – but I wasn’t shocked.
Amanda Platell says some of the harassment she experienced was so beyond the pale, the incidents have stayed with her for years. To be honest, this sort of incident had been happening to me at the hands, literally, of various men for years – and to many (most?), other women, too.
