BBC DJ Dave Lee Travis 'mad as hell' at allegations of indecent assault made against him
Former BBC Radio 1 disc jockey tells court: ‘If patting somebody’s bottom was a crime in 1970s half the country would be in jail’
Former national radio broadcaster Dave Lee Travis has told a London court it is “absolutely 100 per cent wrong” that he thought it acceptable to grab women’s bottoms during the 1970s, but said if it was a crime then “half the country would be in jail”.
In an often animated cross-examination at Southwark crown court in London on Wednesday, the former BBC Radio 1 disc jockey, whose real name is David Patrick Griffin, said it was a “different world in the 70s” but that he never indecently assaulted women.
“Put any person on the stand and ask them about those days and they will say it was flirtatious, you could touch someone on their shoulder and they wouldn’t get arrested for it,” he told jurors. “You could put your arm around someone’s waist and it wasn’t misread as an attack.”
The former Top of the Pops host maintained that he was “totally innocent” of the sexual assault charges against him, telling the court he would have admitted touching a woman’s bottom in the 1970s.
“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.”
He told jurors: “If in 1973 or 1981 or 1982 I had grabbed somebody’s bottom and I was asked about that by the police I would say: ‘Yes, I did that,’ because it’s not … you’re not attacking someone. I’m not saying it’s right, wrong or indifferent.
