TV presenter Helen Skelton has revealed that she was groped by a male interviewee during a live broadcast back in 2014.

The 34 year old ‘Countryfile’ presenter said in a new interview that a male sports star touched her backside while she was interviewing him during a sporting event four years ago, when she was pregnant with her first child.

“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,” she told the Telegraph on Friday (March 16th).

“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 SkeltonHelen Skelton has revealed she was groped during a live interview

Skelton did not disclose the identity of the man in question, and neither did she say what show she was hosting or which event it was covering when the incident took place. However, she did reveal that her co-host, Colin Murray, “kicked off” when she told him about what had happened.

“It was handled brilliantly because of that. I’d never thought about complaining. I don’t want it to become my identity,” she concluded. “The man in question was punished. There was a line drawn under it, and that was that.”

Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Skelton, who became the focus of social media attention in 2016 during the BBC’s coverage of the Rio Olympic Games for her wardrobe choices during the swimming coverage, spoke about the gender pay-gap issue that has been prominent in the media for several months.

“We have to be very careful that this doesn’t become a whingeing old boring argument. It needs to remain relevant,” she said. “We need to – and I know this sounds awful – keep the argument sexy. We have to keep it in the public eye.”

More: Helen Skelton laughs off reports that she’s been “fired” from BBC’s athletics coverage