‘Travis got weird sexual thrill out of groping me’

A FEMALE television personality has told a court that veteran DJ Dave Lee Travis got a “weird sexual thrill” as he indecently assaulted her while she worked on the Mrs Merton Show.
Dave Lee Travis denies the charges against him. Picture: GettyDave Lee Travis denies the charges against him. Picture: Getty
Dave Lee Travis denies the charges against him. Picture: Getty

She said the former Radio 1 star approached her in the corridor of a BBC studio where she was smoking and commented on her “poor little lungs”, before he squeezed her breasts.

The woman, who cannot be named, told Travis’ retrial at Southwark Crown Court in London that the alleged assault in the mid-1990s was “unbelievably weird” and the former Top Of The Pops presenter had an “intense stare” during the incident.

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She said: “I started smoking my cigarette and he came out of his dressing room and said, ‘You shouldn’t be smoking. Think about your poor little lungs’. He started to touch the bottom of my ribcage. Without saying anything else, he slid his hand up to my breasts and then left them there and started squeezing.”

Asked by prosecutor Miranda Moore QC how she felt at the time, the woman replied: “Shocked. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was just unbelievably weird.”

The woman, who was 
working as part of the production crew, said she “froze” as she was pinned against the wall by Travis before he let go of her breasts after ten to 15 seconds.

The alleged victim said she reported the incident to a senior producer.

She told the court: “I absolutely know he had some weird sexual thrill from this.”

The woman, in her early 20s at the time of the alleged incident, said she did not contact police because she was young and did not want to make a fuss.

Peter Kessler, a producer on the Mrs Merton Show, told the court he had worked with around 200 celebrity guests during his career but this was the only incident of a “sexual nature”.

He said he and the alleged victim decided not to take the matter any further. “He [Travis] was going to be gone. We would never see him again.”

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Mr Kessler said he initially contacted police without the alleged victim’s knowledge after seeing a press report in 2012 about an unnamed Radio 1 DJ who had groped a woman.

He was prompted to act by his wife, a barrister, who worked on a BBC review in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Stephen Vullo QC, defending Travis, told the court his client had “no recollection” of the alleged victim.

Travis, 69, who is charged under his real name David Griffin, denies two counts of indecent assault and one of sexual assault.

The court also heard from two women who are not complainants in the case but claim they were touched inappropriately by Travis.

One, who cannot be named, said Travis put his hand between her legs as she served him drinks in the 1980s. Meanwhile, a journalist told the court she was “embarrassed” when Travis touched her “inappropriately” during an interview at his house in August 2005.

The woman said the DJ ran his hand down her back and touched her lower hip. “To me it was a very embarrassing situation,” said the woman, who cannot be named. “It’s too intimate a gesture to just be friendly.”

Travis, of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, is facing a retrial on two counts – one of indecent assault of a woman between 1 November 1990 and 31 January 1991, and another of sexual assault on a different woman between 1 June 2008 and 30 November 2008 – on which a jury was unable to reach verdicts at a trial earlier this year. He has also pleaded not guilty to an additional count of indecent assault on 17 January 1995.

The trial continues.