BBC Reporter: Grabbing Woman’s Boob on Air Was ‘Completely Unintentional’

A BBC reporter tried to push aside a woman who interrupted him in the middle of a live, on-camera interview and wound up grabbing her breast.

BBC reporter Ben Brown was being interviewed by BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith about the Labour Party’s general election manifesto when a woman walked into the shot, looked directly into the camera, and said, “Absolutely fantastic,” the New York Post reports.

According to video footage of the incident, Brown placed his right hand on the unidentified woman’s breast to push her out of the frame.

“Just give us one sec, please,” Smith said.

The woman smacked him on the shoulder in response and walked away.

Brown claimed on Twitter that it was “completely unintentional” and that he was merely trying to “minimize disruption” of the broadcast.

The social media reaction, however, was not forgiving.

One woman wrote on Twitter that he “looked first” before putting his hand on her breast.

“You looked first at where you were putting your hand! How can that be unintentional?” she wrote.

“I just watched it several times,” another Twitter user wrote. “You had a good squeeze of her breast; sexual assault in my book. Disgusting.”

The Guardian reports that BBC officials would not take any action against Brown since the situation was “clearly an accident.”