A Conservative MP has apologised after he was filmed flashing his genitals in a pub.

James Grundy dropped his trousers at a private event in the bar, with onlookers encouraging him to expose himself. The incident took place more than a decade before Grundy was elected as MP for Leigh, Greater Manchester, in 2019.

He said: “I apologise for my actions and for any offence caused.”

Footage obtained by LBC shows Grundy taking down his trousers and a woman can be heard asking him to lift his shirt to show his genitals. In the video, he asks for assurance that his face can’t be seen: “We’re OK, aren’t we? There’s no way you can get my face in?”

All those involved in the event, which took place in 2007, are understood to have been over the age of 18 at the time.

LBC reported that the incident took place in the Rams Head Inn in Lowton, in what is now Grundy’s constituency.

Grundy, 41, became a councillor in 2008 before being elected as an MP in 2019, becoming the first Tory to represent Leigh.

He told the Guardian last week that he never expected to get elected and was surprised to win a majority of 1,965 on a 12% swing from Labour.

“I’ll be honest, it’s fair to say I never expected to win, and it’s fair to say nobody else did either,” he said, adding that he wrote his victory speech “in 30 seconds” just before the result was announced.

Jo Platt, the Labour candidate he defeated, said: “Is it wrong for me to feel sorry for him? I don’t think he ever imagined he would be the MP for the same pubs in the same area he liked to get his todger out.”

But Wigan’s Labour council leader, Cllr David Molyneux, suggested Grundy should resign: “In light of this incident, I would encourage James Grundy to consider his position as a councillor in Wigan,” he said.

But some constituents had sympathy for him, given how long ago the video was filmed, before he was a politician.

“So what, James Grundy had a mad night on the pop,” wrote one woman on the Absolute Leigh Facebook group. “Are you seriously telling me you have never been in a state, teachers? Lawyers? Nurses? Doctors? Just because ‘he got his bits out for the lads’ doesn’t make him a bad person, and now he’s apologised, what for? Being a human enjoying a night out. He wasn’t to know he was going to be in the public eye years down the line did he?”

Grundy lives on the family farm in Lowton with his parents and sister, where they keep horses.

Before becoming an MP in December he said he had only been to London three times and needed help navigating the capital on his arrival.

“When I got off the train in London [Labour MP for Wigan] Lisa Nandy was kind enough to show me from the train to the House of Commons because I had no idea how to get there on the tube. I think I had been to London three times in my entire life,” he said.



