Bough, who died last week in a care home, aged 87, was a national treasure before Clare Balding was even born, a broadcasting colossus in a Fair Isle jumper. He was the face of BBC sport, interviewed prime ministers and made the breakfast TV sofa his own. Frank Bough: Tributes paid to ‘brilliant’ former Grandstand and BBC presenter following his death aged 87 Frank Bough was a sort of TV renaissance man, equally at home introducing rugby league from Castleford, doing a song-and-dance routine with Morecambe and Wise and politely challenging Ted Heath on foreign policy. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. He never set himself up as a beacon of family values. He had a weakness which was his own private business. Everybody in this country has a sex life. Surely they have a right to enjoy that?” So said the TV presenter Frank Bough in 1992, just after his long and illustrious career had been ended by the tabloid revelation that, in his time away from the screen and his devoted wife Nesta, he enjoyed the company of a woman called “Miss Whiplash” in a bondage parlour in Marylebone.

Leave aside the heinous double standards of the BBC, who dismissed Bough for night-time activities that harmed no one but himself and his family, yet for years turned a blind eye to the behaviour of Jimmy Savile, who ruined countless lives, the question I find myself asking in the wake of Bough’s death is whether, as a society, we have moved on in terms of the private morality of public figures. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{