She is one of the most recognisable faces on TV but Gabby Logan has revealed how she was subjected to vile sexist taunts at the start of her sports presenting career. Behind the confident screen persona, Gabby was just as determined behind the camera not to be knocked off course by some who she said seemed to feel threatened by a young woman entering male-dominated territory.
Gabby said she finds it hard to say she was subjected to discrimination at the start of her career at Sky Sports in the 1990s, but was “occasionally the butt of comments and scenarios that my male peers might not have had to endure.”
The sports commentator and presenter recalled one stand-out taunt at the start of her career when she was a 23-year-old: “As I wandered through the office one afternoon, one male shouted: 'Oi, Yorath! How many Premier League footballers have you notched up on your bedpost?' At 23 years old, I lacked the verbal elasticity to knock him out with a witty retort. His gang of cronies giggled. I smiled and carried on walking. Inside, I was dying.” You can get more news like this and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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On another occasion the broadcaster described how another man stopped her in the corridor one day and said: “Your a*** is amazing right now, but sadly for you, it’s one of those a**** that will be by your knees when you hit 30.” This time the young sports presenter had a retort: “Well, you might find out – if you’re even still around when I’m 30,” she told him.
Gabby was newly graduated with a law degree from Durham University and working on the Newcastle radio station Metro FM when Sky approached her to work for them. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and a sign that they wanted more women presenters in sport.
In her memoir, Gabby, serialised in the Mail on Sunday, the broadcaster recalled her embarrassment when she dropped a pair of pants on the floor of the office on one of her first days in the job.
“My initiation into live TV was memorable, to say the least. I’d opted for a pale taupe Prada two-piece – part of a glorious wardrobe of designer clothes bought for me by Sky – for my first day. As I was leaving my flat, I decided at the last minute that I should bring a spare pair of pants, as I was wearing black underwear, and if the pale suit was in any way see-through, my knickers would show. You wouldn’t actually see them on set, as I’d be seated, but I didn’t want to be walking round an open-plan office filled with alpha blokes flashing a black G-string.
“The pants I grabbed and put in my bag were nice, sensible M&S nude ones. When I got to the wardrobe department, I was in a bit of a flap and couldn’t find the spare nude pants, but it turned out I didn’t need them, so I didn’t think any more about it.
“The bulletin went off well, and I made my way back up to the office to get some feedback from the editor, Nick, and the deputy editor, a brutally honest Northern Irish ex-hack who took no prisoners. It was his booming voice I heard as I headed into the huge office where all the sports departments were based.
“Does anyone know where these pants have come from?,” he was asking, “He had my knickers held aloft on the end of a pen and was parading them around the room, making sure everybody in all the sports departments could see.
“I panicked. ‘They’re mine – but they are clean!” I shouted. “There were gales of laughter from my new colleagues as I grabbed the pants and stuffed them into my bag. I never figured out how they fell out – but I decided that, on balance, my rite of passage into this macho world could have been a lot worse.”
Looking back, Gabby said sports TV “wasn’t an island of filth while the rest of the world and society circled around being virtuous”. She said in the mid to late 1990s she believed she would have seen and heard the “same kind of idiotically sexist stuff” if she’d been working in a top law firm or investment bank.
“It was just a very male ego-driven environment. I am sure there were quite a few men there who also found the alpha atmosphere a bit too much. It was male-dominated behind the camera, too. The camera operators, sound technicians, statisticians, directors and producers were 90 per cent male.
“My attitude was, being there and doing the job, being visible and trying to be good at it, was as powerful as anything else I could do to speed up the change.”
- The First Half, by Gabby Logan, is published by Piatkus on October 13 at £20 and is serialised in the Mail on Sunday.
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