Angela Rippon has told for the first time of the moment when a famous newsman “flashed” her as she read the Nine O’clock News.
She was live on air to 10million BBC viewers when a reporter entered the studio and stood near the camera.
“Out of the corner of my eye I realised that he was unzipping his flies,” said Angela.
“And as he was doing that suddenly there was something white in his hand being wriggled around.”
Because she could not look away from the camera she did not realise at first that he was not actually exposing himself.
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“We went to a film and I looked across and what he had actually done was unzipped his flies and taken out the bottom of his shirt,” she said.
“Obviously I was supposed to think he was wiggling his penis at me.”
Angela, who was Britain’s first regular female newsreader on national TV, did not report the incident despite her horror.
“At that time he would have got a slap on the wrist and it would have gone round the newsroom in no time that Rippon can’t take a joke,” she said.
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“I was angry because I felt this was so disrespectful. I have never named him and I won’t, but he was one of the BBC’s highly respected reporters.
“I just said, ‘For crying out loud... his name... grow up and just get out.’”
Angela, now 74, who first read the national TV news in 1974, revealed her story in a radio discussion on the problems faced by the female broadcasters of that era.
Former newsreader and Desert Island Discs presenter Sue Lawley, 72, said much of the flak came from other women – including those who wrote: “What are you doing occupying a job that a man could have?"
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The Reunion: Pioneering Women Newsreaders, which also features Jan Leeming and Julia Somerville, goes out on Radio 4 today at 11.15am
