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Why is catcalling so common in the UK? | James O'Brien on LBC
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Aug 15, 2025
James O’Brien reacts to a Times article revealing female runners in Australia rarely face street harassment a stark contrast to the UK, where catcalling appears to be rife. It comes after LBC gained exclusive access to a Surrey Police operation deploying undercover officers in running gear to catch men targeting women on jogging routes, leading to multiple arrests. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #jamesobrien #streetharassment #catcalling #womensafety #runningsafety #lbc #uknews #australia #surreypolice #uknews LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
It's not often I do a sort of double take at a newspaper article, unless it's an unhinged headline
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But this just, and I should probably apologise in advance to Australian listeners
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because it obviously means I subscribe to some stereotypes about Australians that are deeply unfair and completely untrue
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I presumed, when we were having this conversation yesterday, that it was an almost universal condition
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that it was not i know we're only supposed to be concerned about the men in this country that
0:31
robert jenrich is xenophobic about um but obviously this is a problem that is endemic
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to masculinity and because it's endemic to masculinity i thought it was universal
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so if you'd said to me i am in bordeaux it would be as likely that you'd get harassed while running
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as if you were in birmingham if you were in barcelona i'm thinking of various cities that
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begin with B, if you were in Bonn. If you were in anything else
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Brighton? I think we had a caller from Brighton, actually. So, I just
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caught myself this morning realising that I presumed this was happening everywhere
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And the Times has a really interesting piece by a journalist called Katie
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Strick, who moved to Australia quite recently, where she has experienced this
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sort of harassment precisely never. it's extraordinary. She says, I ran past my first white van after moving to Sydney
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and I didn't hear a single comment about my looks, my speed or needing to cheer up
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Then it happened again, this time in the most classic of catcalling spots
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or at least it would have been back in London, a row of large stationary vehicles
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waiting for the traffic lights, complete silence. For my third run, I did something I'd rarely felt brave enough to do
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back in my days running the circumference of Clapham Common. I wore shorts
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still nothing i was almost offended that's obviously tongue-in-cheek um but you begin
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to wonder whether it personal or whether it actually cultural in australia and listen the plural of anecdote is not data but she raised these observations with a mixture of expats and aussies all in their 20s and 30s and they all reported
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that they never get harassed while out running they can be carefree in short shorts and sports
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bras um learning that they didn't need to tense up anymore whenever a large vehicle came past and um
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And Australian boyfriends of British girls were very surprised to hear about what experiences happened to them at home
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It's, again, I've apologised to my Australian listeners, Brisbane, Birkenhead, Belfast. Thank you, everybody, for sending in cities that begin with B
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And it prompts this question, what is it about British culture exactly that seems to have allowed behaviour like this to become the accepted norm
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and Spain is cited as well um in Spain whether it's because of Catholic culture and they introduced
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a law in 2022 but so did the French and the French law hasn't really worked you're much you're much
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more likely to experience this sort of behavior in France than you are in other European cities
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Spain almost overnight has gone from being worse than Germany France Italy and the UK
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to having next to none of it, because it has introduced a change in law
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But I think for the purposes of our conversation, we'll confine it mostly to a comparison of Australia and Britain
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And it is... So we covered yesterday the anatomy of this kind of abuse
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the anatomy of this kind of behaviour. The Times also features a couple of first-person pieces
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by female journalists based in Britain about what they routinely encounter. and it's identical to what we were hearing yesterday
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you know, from the relatively routine and borderline innocuous, but the attention is unwanted, so it's never innocuous
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right through to the really unpleasant. One thing I didn't even know was a thing where you rev the engine of your car
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as a woman is jogging across the road as a sort of threat or an announcement and then you laugh uproariously with your mates in the vehicle if she if she flinches or jumps but the question of why it doesn happen in Australia and it does happen here
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is uh absolutely fascinating to me because perhaps unfairly I think of Australia as quite a
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knock about place I think of Australians as being a little less uh enlightened perhaps in in I guess
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setting too much store by Crocodile Dundee. But that's what I want to know
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What is it about British culture that makes this sort of behaviour normal
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an accepted norm, specifically about British culture? Because we have so much in common
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with our Australian cousins that this one really sticks out like a sore thumb
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What is it about British culture that has created generations of men
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who think that a woman jogging in public is fair game or an acceptable target for language and behaviour
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that they would never inflict upon a woman that they actually know or a woman that they're related to
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0345 6060 973. I want to dig into the reasons for it as opposed to the reality of it
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So we did the reality of it yesterday. Today, the reasons for it
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And it would seem from this article that it is not unique but peculiar to Britain
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that Britain has a particularly difficult relationship with men harassing female joggers and female runners
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Why? Because if Australia, if it never ever happens in Australia, that means we can easily create a culture
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in which it would never ever happen here. Or if not easily, then it is achievable
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I think I felt yesterday that it was a bit like trying to climb Mount Everest or turn an oil tanker around
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I got a few messages saying the only way you're ever going to do this is by asking men what they can do to stop men from behaving like this
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And I think that's probably true. But I thought it was an unachievable goal
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I thought it was an unattainable ideal, the idea that you could actually wipe out this sort of behaviour entirely
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which is why this morning when I read this article in The Times about Australia not about a country that we don know much about or a country that we don have much connection with and australia gets more or less the same telly
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that we get as well which i think is also pertinent because you can't blame it all on benny hill
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australia it never ever happens and here it happens all the flipping time 80 or 90 percent
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of women reporting that it happens to them not just occasionally but routinely and i want you
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to tell me why you think that is why would britain be a particularly unpleasant hotbed
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of men harassing women when they are out jogging or exercising with this extraordinary condition
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that in australia it never happens at all i suppose in some ways the most pertinent contribution
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will be from people who've got a foot in both cultures but i don't think you need to be you
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You could be, you could have a foot only in one culture. You could explain to me why Australian men do not do this
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In fact, let's make that question too. Why do Australian men not harass women in public when they're out jogging
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Why do British men do it more than almost anybody else in the world
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03456060973. And how can one, i.e. us, learn from the other, i.e. the Aussies
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in order to create a country in which women can go about their exercise unmolested, unharassed and uninsulted
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And listen, I'm not having it. You can't. My inbox is pinging with Benny Hills and Carry On films
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but they will be as familiar to an Australian television viewer as they are to a British television viewer
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What is it about this country, about the United Kingdom, that makes this behaviour
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that has allowed this sort of behaviour to become the norm? I find it absolutely fascinating
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and it becomes even more fascinating. It moves into a whole new dimension of interesting
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when you discover that it never ever happens in Australia. I'm equally interested, actually, in these two questions
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Why does it never happen in Australia? 034560973. And why does it happen so much here
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