Who is Daisy Goodwin? TV producer accusing Tory mayoral hopeful of groping
Ms Goodwin is a successful screenwriter and TV producer as well as a best-selling novelist
A TV producer and writer has accused Tory mayoral candidate Daniel Korski of groping her a decade ago.
Daisy Goodwin alleged the former No 10 adviser - who made the shortlist to be the Conservative Party’s candidate for next year’s London mayoral race - groped her at a meeting in Downing Street in 2013.
This is not the first time Ms Goodwin has made the allegations, but she said that she now wanted to name Mr Korski given the fact he is a mayoral contender.
Mr Korski has denied the 61-year-old’s accusations “in the strongest possible terms”.
Below, we take a look at who Ms Goodwin is and the allegations she is making.
Who is Daisy Goodwin?
Ms Goodwin, creator of TV series Victoria, is a successful screenwriter and TV producer as well as a best-selling novelist.
She has written multiple New York Times bestselling novels, including My Last Duchess (UK)/The America Heiress (US) and The Fortune Hunter, as well as the memoir Silver River.
In a 2019 interview in The Telegraph, Ms Goodwin said: “I grew up surrounded by creative people. I would often come home to find Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman sat on the sofa having tea.”
Born in London on 19 December 1961, she still lives in the capital with her husband - the television executive Marcus Wilford - their two daughters, and the family’s three dogs.
She studied history at Cambridge, before attending Columbia Film School and then spent a decade at the BBC making arts documentaries.
She next moved to the independent sector, creating many programmes, including the hugely popular and long-running shows Grand Designs and Escape to the Country. In 2005, she started her own production company, Silver River productions, which she sold to Sony seven years later.
She writes on her website that in 2014 she “decided to concentrate on writing full-time”, and she was commissioned to write her first screenplay, Victoria, which is about the early life of Queen Victoria. Its first season aired on ITV in 2016 and was followed by two more.
What are Ms Goodwin’s allegations?
Ms Goodwin, who used an article in the Times to name Mr Korski, spoke of a meeting in Downing Street in 2013 when she alleged Mr Korski “stepped towards me and suddenly put his hand on my breast”.
She wrote: “When we both stood up at the end of the meeting and went to the door, the spad stepped towards me and suddenly put his hand on my breast. Astonished, I said loudly, ‘Are you really touching my breast?’ The spad sprang away from me and I left.”
Ms Goodwin said she felt more surprised and humiliated than frightened.
She wrote: “Although I suppose legally his action could be called sexual assault, I have to say that I did not feel frightened. I was older, taller and very possibly wiser than the spad, and having worked for the BBC in the Eighties I knew how to deal with gropers.
“What I felt was surprise and some humiliation. I was a successful award-winning TV producer with 40 or so people working for me; this was not behaviour that I would have tolerated in my office.
“By the time I got back to work I had framed it as an anecdote about the spad who groped me in No 10. His behaviour was so bizarre that I couldn’t help seeing the humour in it. It was as if I had walked into Carry On Downing Street.”
Why is Ms Goodwin naming Mr Korski now?
After first making the allegations in a Radio Times article back in 2017 in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Ms Goodwin said that she now wanted to name Mr Korski given the fact he was in the running to become the Conservative mayoral candidate.
She wrote: “Naively I assumed that if everyone already knew then his egregious behaviour would not be tolerated any more.
“But now the spad who groped me, aka Daniel Korski, is running to be the Tory candidate for mayor of London. This I think is a reason to name him.”
What has Mr Korski said in response?
Mr Korski has denied groping Ms Goodwin at that Downing Street meeting “in the strongest possible terms”.
A spokesperson for the former No 10 adviser said: “In the strongest possible terms, Dan categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour whatsoever.”