The television presenter Helen Skelton has said she was groped live on air by an interviewee while she was pregnant.

Skelton, who appears on BBC1’s Countryfile and presents BBC swimming coverage, said she felt “really awkward” about the incident but she was too intimidated to complain.

In an interview with the Telegraph, which reports that the incident happened during coverage of a sporting event in 2014, she said: “Basically, this guy grabbed me on the a** when I was presenting live telly. I felt really awkward about it. I was pregnant at the time as well. I didn’t really know what to do. 

“It’s intimidating and you don’t want to be the person who is being difficult and awkward. That’s just the culture that television breeds. No one wants to be difficult. You want to bring solutions, not problems. We are all ‘happy, happy…’”

Skelton, who did not say when the incident happened or what programme she was presenting, said fellow presenter Colin Murray raised the issue and the man was punished.

“[Colin] kicked off and said that needs dealing with,” she said. “It was handled brilliantly because of that. I’d never thought about complaining. I don’t want it to become my identity. The man in question was punished. There was a line drawn under it, and that was that.”

Skelton, who contributed to BBC’s 2016 Rio Olympic Games coverage, and has previously worked on Newsround and Blue Peter, also discussed the gender pay gap in the interview.

Skelton said the industry was “inherently unfair” and she was not happy with what she and female colleagues had been paid. She said: “But I signed that contract because, the minute you don’t, there are 10 people behind you that will.”

She warned that coverage of the pay row needed to remain relevant otherwise the public could switch off. She said: “We have to be very careful that this doesn’t become a whingeing old boring argument. It needs to remain relevant. We need to – and I know this sounds awful – keep the argument sexy. We have to keep it in the public eye.”

In October, a pay review at the BBC showed men were being paid 10.7% more than women on average, with nearly 500 employees potentially getting paid less than colleagues in a similar role simply because of their gender.

On Wednesday, ITN released its figures that showed a mean pay gap of 19.6% and a mean bonus gap of 77%.