TV weatherman Fred Talbot used 'extrovert personality to gain trust of victims he sexually abused'
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Version 0 of 1. Television weatherman Fred Talbot used his "boundless energy" and "extrovert personality" to help gain the affection and trust of five schoolboys he sexually abused, a jury has heard. Mr Talbot, 65, is said to have indecently assaulted his alleged victims between the late 1960s and the early 1980s during his former career as a teacher. Four of the complainants were teenage pupils at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, where Mr Talbot taught biology. Opening the case at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, prosecutor Neil Usher said: "The very qualities that made Fred Talbot so successful as a TV celebrity - his boundless energy, his infectious enthusiasm, his extrovert personality - helped him gain, we say, the trust of these boys." The jury of nine women and three men were told that many if not all of them would know the defendant as "Fred the Weatherman". He had appeared on local and national television since the mid-1980s until recently, and has appeared in various other ITV programmes, the court heard. Outlining the allegations, Mr Usher said they centred around two distinct periods of time - firstly when Mr Talbot was a trainee teacher in Newcastle in the late 1960s and early 1970s and secondly from the mid-70s to 1984 when Mr Talbot taught in Altrincham. The prosecutor said Mr Talbot says nothing sexual or even inappropriate occurred between himself and the Altrincham pupils, while he states that sexual activity with the complainant during his teacher training only happened when the boy turned 16. Mr Talbot, of Bowdon, Greater Mancehster, who was a regular on the floating weather map in Liverpool's Albert Dock for ITV's top-rating This Morning show, denies 10 counts of indecent assault. The trial continues. Press Association |