Dave Lee Travis: ‘I was groped by famous women’

Dave Lee Travis gave evidence yesterday. Picture: Getty Images

The star said the women “stuck their hands down between my legs and squeezed me” but added that he saw each incident as a joke.

Earlier he told jurors it was “absolutely 100 per cent wrong” that he thought it acceptable to grab women’s breasts and bottoms during his 1970s and 1980s heyday.

Travis, now 68, has repeatedly denied indecently assaulting ten women and sexually assaulting another in incidents dating back to 1976.

Taking to the witness box at London’s Southwark Crown Court, he told jurors: “If patting somebody’s bottom was a crime in the 1970s, then half the country would be in jail by then, I suppose.”

Asked by prosecutor Miranda Moore, QC about comments he made to police and the press that “flirtatious” behaviour was the norm during the period, Travis said although he would have admitted it if he had touched women inappropriately, he had never done so.

He said: “These are things that have happened in the 1970s and 1980s and on that basis I said then, and I’m still saying it, it was just flirtatious behaviour at the time, not that it was just flirtatious at the time and I partook of it, because I still don’t like the idea of doing that.”

Travis went on to say that he too had been groped.

He said: “I can give you the names of four women who groped me, three of them whom [are] very, very famous.

“They stuck their hands down between my legs and squeezed me – for a joke.”

Asked about the attention he received from female fans, Travis admitted he had on occasion fallen to “temptation”.

“I don’t expect consensual sex or consensual kissing to be brought up in a case where I am accused of indecently assaulting women,” he said.

Ms Moore said: “Your public persona was big, hairy, jokey, hahaha, you were not really a sex symbol, were you?”

Travis replied: “I have never said… I am a sex symbol. No, I am a big hairy, cuddly bear.”

The trial continues.