Rachel Riley has revealed she was once upskirted by a male celebrity at a party.
The term upskirting refers to someone taking photographs underneath another person’s clothing, without their consent.
The Countdown host recalled how the star – who she did not name – put his phone under her skirt while she was playing table tennis with her husband, former Strictly Come Dancing professional Pasha Kovalev.
Speaking on the Dirty Mother Pukka podcast, Rachel said: “He just got an Apple Watch, and at a party at a friend’s house, I was playing table tennis with Pash, and this guy, in full view of everyone, came, put his phone on the floor under my skirt where I was playing table tennis, and went and sat back down a couple of metres away while him and all his mates looked at his watch.
“It was like a video basically. So he went and put his phone down so he could look up and went two metres away to go and look at his phone, look up my skirt.”
Rachel said she had been “too polite” at the time, adding: “Now, being able to digest it and think about it, if someone tried to do that to me again I would break their phone.
“If they’ve got a problem with that, they can go to the police and we can deal with it in the public.
“That a man obviously thought he could get away with blatantly, brazenly putting his phone, upskirting me on a video for his friends on his phone, and it would be fine!
“Now I would just break his phone and deal with it afterwards,” she said.
“I think the days of being polite, meek and mild, to someone who wants to grab you, nah, done with that.”
During the interview, Rachel also reiterated her calls for social media bosses to do more to protect women on their platforms, as she spoke of how she had been sent unsolicited sexual content online.
She also discusses the trolling she has experienced, revealing that after speaking publicly on a podcast about it she faced a stream of abuse during her birthday week which left her in tears.
She said: “Early doors, I had no idea how to deal with it. I took everyone at face value and tried to use education and be reasonable and explain and engage.
“At one stage I spoke publicly on a podcast, and it was like a tap had been turned on. Literally, it felt like someone’s pressed a button and sent them all in my direction all at once.”
The TV star admitted the trolling was “overwhelming” and led to one of the only times she has argued with Kovalev as he was frustrated to see the “horrible people” getting to her.
The full interview with Rachel Riley on the Dirty Mother Pukka podcast with Anna Whitehouse and Polly Hazlewood is available on the Global player.