It was a fairly standard assignment – the press launch day on the eve of the nationwide Strictly Come Dancing live tour – and I wasn’t expecting too much drama.
But then I reached for my phone and started filming. I had a feeling, some hard-to-fathom instinct, that something was going to happen.
Perhaps it was the way Welsh tenor Wynne Evans, the man who sang those irritating Go Compare jingles, was strutting around Birmingham Arena with his beautiful Russian dance partner, Katya Jones, on his arm.
For one thing 52-year-old Evans was being boorishly loud and boisterous, his appetite for attention insatiable, cracking a string of unfunny jokes at his Strictly peers’ expense. Certainly the tension in the air was down to him.
Then, as I filmed, he made a deeply abhorrent sexual comment about a female colleague. It was frankly disgusting – and, as a young woman, I was appalled on her behalf and deeply offended myself.
Turning to the 30-year-old EastEnders actor Jamie Borthwick as they posed for a group photo, Evans suggested – joking, if you can call it that – a three-way sex act.
It was directed at Janette Manrara, 41, the presenter of Strictly’s spin-off show, It Takes Two, who is hosting the live tour, and who stood between them.
What made it worse, if it could be much worse, was that Evans used the appalling term ‘spit-roast’. The word rang out around the near-empty 15,000-seat auditorium like the crack of a bullet from a gun.
Turning to the 30-year-old EastEnders actor Jamie Borthwick as they posed for a group photo, Wynne Evans suggested – joking, if you can call it that – a three-way sex act
Those controversies contributed to an annus horribilis at the BBC, battered by Jermaine Jenas’s sexting
The BBC has been embroiled in controversy with Huw Edwards’s fall from grace
Gregg Wallace’s sexual comments have also caused issues for the BBC
Then everything seemed to go silent. And I felt immediately uncomfortable.
Then it dawned on me that Evans hadn’t grasped the severity of the situation. As usual, he laughed it off.
But this wasn’t a man making an off-colour joke about a woman as he knocked back the pints with his mate in a pub.
He was at work, at the centre of a scrum of high-profile stars, 12 of them women – and within earshot of more than 20 members of the press. What’s more, Ms Manrara’s husband, fellow pro dancer Aljaz Skorjanec, was just feet away.
Scandal-hit Strictly really didn’t need this following Amanda Abbington’s complaints of bullying by her dance partner, Giovanni Pernice, Graziano Di Prima kicking celebrity partner Zara McDermott and allegations of a ‘toxic’ behind-the-scenes culture.
Those controversies contributed to an annus horribilis at the BBC, battered by Jermaine Jenas’s sexting, Gregg Wallace’s sexual comments, and Huw Edwards’s fall from grace.
Whether Ms Manrara heard Evans’ so-called ‘joke’ or not, there is absolutely no place in today’s society for degrading sexual comments about women.
Some of the dancers grouped around Evans during the photocall nearly lost their jobs last year due to the Strictly scandals. Facing the cameras, they were left to grin and bear it. I can only imagine what was going through their minds.
