TELEVISION weatherman Fred Talbot has pleaded not guilty to a series of alleged historic sex offences.
The 64-year-old, who was a regular on the floating weather map in Albert Dock, Liverpool, for ITV's This Morning, stood in the dock at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, with his hands clasped in front of him as he repeated "Not guilty" to each of the 10 charges put to him.
Mr Talbot is accused of nine counts of indecent assault and one relating to another alleged sexual offence.
The former teacher from Bowdon, Manchester, is alleged to have committed the offences between October 25, 1968 and August 2, 1983 against five male complainants, three of whom were under 16.
Mr Talbot, who is on bail, was seated in the dock for most of the 20-minute hearing, listening intently as lawyers set a date for his trial, scheduled for January 19 next year.
Judge Jeffrey Lewis granted Mr Talbot bail until a further preliminary hearing on May 27. Mr Talbot nodded before leaving the dock as he was told he was free to go.
His bail conditions are that he must live at his home address and have no contact with witnesses and alleged victims, nor any unsupervised contact with a child.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article