Sara Cox tells how she was hounded by sleazy perverts while working as a model

Sara Cox has told how she was preyed on by sleazy men during a modelling assignment in the early stages of her career.

Now 44, the Radio 2 presenter, was working in Italy when she encountered a string of unwanted advances.

In her new book Till the Cows Come Home by Sara Cox, she said: “To say the men we encountered there were perverts is a little like saying a Premiership footballer is on a decent wage.

“It may have changed now, but back then it was as if my visit coincided with the annual month-long sex pest convention.

“Wherever we walked in our little gang of girls, grown men reacted as if they’d been in solitary confinement and not clapped eyes on the female form for decades.

“They’d look at us like a starving dog would look at a T-bone steak."

Sara says working in Italy was a drag because of sexist attitudes (Getty Images)

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Sara told how men hissed and clicked their fingers at her and her mates in the street and on public transport.

She said: “In the street, on the tube, they would make this strange hissing noise, the same one you’d make to get the attention of a cat.

“I don’t know how any woman was supposed to react to being literally cat-called like that – ‘Oh, how perfectly charming! You’re hissing at me and clicking your fingers – we simply must have dinner some time.’”

“We found it ludicrous and insulting."

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But despite being plagued by unwanted attention, she said women did not offer them any support either.

She recalled: “There was no support from the sisterhood when we were getting blatantly ogled or harassed. Women on public transport didn’t offer empathetic glances, they just glared disdainfully at us.

“I like to think if a man was being openly predatory towards a clutch of young ladies on the London tube now I’d at least, as a 43-year-old mum, keep an eye on the girls and make it obvious I disapproved of the man’s behaviour.

“When we were in groups of two or more and getting unwanted attention we’d use our new Italian phrase and tell the pervert to F off, but on the whole we hurried on and kept our heads down.”