IN A first for the Swindon Festival of Literature, a member of the audience was appointed ‘knicker monitor’.

That was one of the first items of business for broadcaster Esther Rantzen, who was determined not to get caught inappropriately flashing members of the audience having been caught out before.

“I lecture on cruises and on one my daughter came along with me,” she told the almost fully packed Arts Centre.

“At the end of the lecture this lady walked up to my daughter and said ‘I think your mother would like to know that we could see her knickers all the way through’.

“My daughter said ‘I think she would have liked to know sooner!’, so know I appoint a knicker monitor to shout knees at me, just in case.”

Despite the fairly serious topics of the talk, that was the first of many laughs through the 60 minutes that followed (including the offer to pose as if mid-talk for a lady taking her picture so that her teeth didn’t look so big).

Esther, spoke about her book, Running Out of Tears, which tells the tales of some of the children who have called ChildLine over the years and their stories since that call.

“Since it was launched, ChildLine has helped 2.67m kids,” she said.

“You can’t visualise that or know what each child got out of it which is why I wanted to tell their stories.”

But she did have a confession to make – she hates writing.

“I like writing 1,500 for the Daily Mail, that’s terrific and I am finished in two hours. It’s like a sprint,” she said.”

“But a book is a marathon. I wrote it though because I felt impelled.”

During the talk she answered questions about the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal and why it is so important for child victims to be given the right support to be able to come forward and know that they will be believed, as well as her thoughts on whether TV today has less substance than in the past, revealing that she loves Secret Millionaire.

However, you won’t see her standing for election again any time soon following a campaign in Luton South at the 2010 General Election.

“I lost my deposit, it was extremely expensive and I’m not going there again,” she laughed.