Sir Cliff might get..........................

What about the distress I endure when Misteltoe & Wine plays repeatedly during December?

Surely he should be claiming from the police.  The BBC wouldn't have been there if they hadn't been tipped off.  But then again the police often tip off the media about 'a series of dawn raids' on terror/drug suspects.  But having said that, the alleged perpatrators aren't identified in those cases, are they?  I don't know.  I really don't.   Sometimes my @rse gets sore from sitting on this fence.

Joanna Lumley    April 2014

Joanna Lumley has hit out at the wave of historic sexual assault claims against veteran TV stars, saying being ‘patted on the bottom’ is not assault.


The 67-year-old actress suggested unwanted male advances were often the fault of women who lead them on, adding: ‘It just became what men did.’

Miss Lumley’s career began as a model in the Sixties, when much of the alleged showbusiness abuse was said to have happened.

Miss Lumley began her career as a model in the Sixties, when many of the alleged abuses by showbusiness stars were said to have been carried out.

But while she defended the victims of the most serious assaults, she said many have been blown out of proportion and questioned why victims have taken so long to speak out.


She told the Times: ‘This is not dissing the women who have had their lives wrecked, although why some took 50 years to say it, I don’t know. It’s difficult.

'Of course we want people who have been raped to be treated seriously at the police station, which I don’t think they were [back then], but I think it could have gone quite far now.


‘Being patted on the bottom, no. It’s not assault.’

Miss Lumley said she was taught how to reject the advances of men by a teacher called Sister Elizabeth when she attended St Mary’s Convent School in Sussex when she was a young girl.


She said: 'She had never known a man in the biblical sense, but was tremendously wise and when we were in the fifth or sixth form, she said, "Don’t lead men on because they get to a point when they really can’t stop, and it’s not fair, so don’t do it and don’t be silly. They are different from us in that way."


‘I thought, “What a wise thing.”’


She added: ‘In those days, there used to be men whose hands would linger on your waist. That always went on. As for being insulted, you learn graceful ways to get round it.’

Many of the allegations date back decades to when they were in their showbusiness heydays.


Last summer, former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall, 84, who presented It’s A Knockout in the Seventies and Eighties, was jailed for 30-months for abusing girls.


He admitted committing 14 offences between 1967 and 1985, including an assault on a nine-year-old girl.


Former Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis, 68, was cleared of 12 counts of indecent assault in February, but faces a retrial on two outstanding charges on which the jury was unable to decide, and was charged with another assault last month.


And two ITV stars - Coronation Street actors Michael Le Vell, 49, and 81-year-old William Roache - were also prosecuted for historic abuses but were acquitted at their trials.


During Roache’s trial earlier this year, the actor’s legal team argued that the police investigation against him was ‘infected’ by the abuse allegations made against Jimmy Savile, meaning he had been tarred with the same brush.


And some have claimed new Crown Prosecution Service guidelines on sex abuse cases have made prosecutors too eager to press charges even where the evidence is thin.


Earlier this year, Miss Lumley angered feminist groups when she said young women made themselves vulnerable to sexual assaults by binge drinking and dressing ‘like trash’.


At the time, Vivienne Hayes of the Women’s Resource Centre said ‘Such comments frighteningly normalise “victim blaming”. They re-allocate blame from the perpetrator to the victim.


‘It is horrifying that Ms Lumley would claim that “something in our society” has caused young women to behave badly; the focus here is entirely upon the women who have experienced rape and other forms of violence at the hands of male perpetrators, as opposed to condemning a society which breeds male rapists.’

There was a time when I usted to see her most mornings..........shes very aloof ..................

Then again Facts, as a woman who has lived through the era in question and probably been subject to inordinate amounts of male attention, you would think she would have some idea of what she was talking about.

Therefore I would have to conclude, not for the first time, that the only idiot is you.

Naydam, I'm not arguing that it has ever been decent behaviour, but 'acceptable' is a different thing altogether. It clearly was acceptable, since it was accepted by victim, perpetrator and the Law for decades.

Acceptable or decent doesn't really matter anyway, prosecutions are being brought - at a cost into the tens of millions and counting - to judge yesterday's offenders by today's social mores for political purposes, and to enable prosecutors and other agents of the Law to grandstand to no great purpose.

I cannot be the only person who thinks that dragging old men through the courts for minor indiscretions that happened forty years ago is a step too far, and fair play to Lumley for pointing this out, even if her fellow old woman Facts disagrees with her voicing her opinion.

" saying being ‘patted on the bottom’ is not assault."

It may not have been in the 60's...... but do that now in the work place and it's sexual assault. 

But these historic sex cases are a lot more serious than a pat on the bottom - although not saying that should be tolerated as acceptable behaviour.  And trying to press charges now with more serious allegations is difficult, evidence is thin, no witnesses, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

^ how would Wyman feel if one of his daughters at 14-years-old started a relationship with a man who is near 50 ? double standards !  However, they did end up getting married, not saying it was right, but still a big difference between that and child abuse. 

Still an under-age girl..... but didn't Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis also meet their wives when they were about 14.