Daisy Goodwin, the creator of the ITV drama Victoria, has said she was groped by an official in David Cameron’s government while visiting 10 Downing Street.
Goodwin, a writer and TV producer, said the official put his hand on her breast during a meeting in Downing Street.
Goodwin declined to name the official but said he was a few years younger than her. It is understood he was an official during Cameron’s tenure in government – which lasted from 2010 to 2016.
The comments from Goodwin, 55, added to the sexual harassment allegations in Westminster and the media industry, which have cost Michael Fallon his job as defence secretary, with investigations under way into alleged inappropriate conduct by Damian Green, the first secretary of state, and Mark Garnier, the international trade minister.
She revealed the incident in an article for the Radio Times in which she also said that when she was 15 a guard on a train in London put his hands between her legs.
The Downing Street incident occurred after Goodwin met the official at a dinner and he followed up with an email to invite her to a meeting to discuss an idea for a television programme.
“The official, who was a few years younger than me, showed me into a room dominated by a portrait of Mrs T and we sat at a table carved, he told me, from one piece of wood. Then to my surprise he put his feet on my chair (we were sitting side by side) and said that my sunglasses made me look like a Bond girl,” Goodwin wrote in the Radio Times.
“I attempted to turn the conversation to turning exports into unmissable TV. At the end of the meeting we both stood up and the official, to my astonishment, put his hand on my breast. I looked at the hand and then in my best Lady Bracknell voice said, ‘Are you actually touching my breast?’”
Goodwin said that he then dropped his hand and “laughed nervously” and she left “in what can only be called high dudgeon”.
She added: “I wasn’t traumatised, I was cross, but by the next day it had become an anecdote, The Day I Was Groped in No 10 – an account of male delusion.
“It didn’t occur to me to report the incident, I was fine, after all, and who on earth would I report it to? I had learnt my lesson only too well. These things did happen and I had indeed learnt how to deal with them.”
Goodwin said that following the wave of stories about abuse by “men in power” that have emerged from Hollywood and Westminster she has reconsidered whether the incident should have been reported.
“The answer is, I am not sure,” she said “I think humiliating the official was probably the appropriate punishment, but suppose he tried it on with someone less able to defend themselves?
“All I do know is that in writing Victoria, I have created a heroine who is the ultimate retort to the Harvey Weinsteins and lecherous officials of this world, a woman who could never be humiliated by a powerful man.”
Goodwin began her career at the BBC making arts documentaries before joining production company Talkback, where she made Grand Designs. She then started Silver River Productions in 2005 before selling it to Sony in 2012 to focus on writing.
A spokesperson for 10 Downing Street said: “Allegations such as this are taken very seriously. The Cabinet Office would look into any formal complaint, should one be made.”
