A chef has been awarded £80,000 after his boss sexually harassed him by singing at him in a suggestive way.
Sam Nunns won the huge payout after his manager Andrew Wilson serendaded him with a rendition of Victoria Wood’s “Ball of Barry and Freeda”.
Wilson made several “disconcerting gestures” as he lingered on the lyric “Let’s do it”, which Wood famously sang on the BBC back in the 1980s.
A tribunal in July heard that Nunns’ boss at the Windermere Manor Hotel tried to make eye contact with him whilst singing the song, which tells the story of a woman propositioning her shy husband for sex.
The song features lyrics such as: “Let’s do it, let’s do it, do it while the mood is right/ I’m feeling appealing, I’ve really got an appetite/I’m on fire, with desire, I could handle half the tenors in a Male Voice Choir/Let’s do it, let’s do it tonight.”
Nunns said that his manager at the £170-a-night hotel repeatedly touched his thigh and bum and held a hug longer than appropriate when they were saying goodbye.
The chef at the Lake District hotel also claimed that Wilson indicated towards a cucumber and asked him “Do you need some time alone dear” and “I’ll put olive oil on the orders list again”.
Wilson also “faked an orgasm” whilst eating the chef’s food then embraced him and “mildly dramatised dry-humping” him.
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The string of incidents resulted in Nunns deciding to quit.
Nunns said: “He repeatedly attempted to make eye contact with [me] and made disconcerting gestures towards [me], particularly when singing the repeated words ‘Let’s do it’.”
Whilst the tribunal ruled that multiple of the incidents did not constitute sexual harassment, the judge said the song was humiliating and “violated his dignity”.
Judge Phil Allen said that “someone singing a song in a work environment would not normally amount to unlawful harassment. In another context, the singing of a particular song would not have amounted to harassment.”
Wood famously sang on the song on the BBC back in the 1980s
PA
The £170-a-night hotel is located in the Lake District
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He said the song was about “someone propositioning someone else for sex” and it was clear from Nunns’ evidence that the song was sung in a way that fostered a humiliating and offensive environment for the chef.
The behaviour therefore qualified as unwanted sexual conduct and as a result Nunns has been awarded more than £79,000.
A spokesman for Windermere Manor, a former nursing home that was converted into a hotel in 1996, said: “This was an isolated incident, and the matter has now been settled.”
