And she told how she had been warned about the “snake-pit atmosphere’” adding: “I was forever fearful of being deliberately tripped up.”
As a result, she decided to turn down an invitation to join this week’s 40th-anniversary celebrations for the programme.
Further explaining her decision, she said: “This despite the fact that I had launched the BBC’s Breakfast Time in 1983 as the lead female anchor and became the face of the programme for three years.
“I said no because I prefer to look forward rather than back, but also because so much of my time on the hideous red leather sofa made me feel I was a combatant in a war zone.
“Then, as now, breakfast television sought to conjure up a relaxed, sunny, cosy, non-confrontational, ‘all friends together’ vibe with its cheesy interviews and apparently unrehearsed chit-chat between the presenters and the morning’s guests.”
And she referred to how some of her time during her three years on the show, had been far from happy.
Scott said her late co-host, Bough, as well as disgraced BBC star Savile, “took liberties” with her, with the latter acting in an uncomfortable fashion while being interviewed by her.
“It wasn’t just Frank who took liberties. Jimmy Savile saw his appearance on the show as an ideal opportunity to play the eccentric, and I knew from the off that I was in for a rough ride,” she said.
“For more than two hours, he acted like a lovesick teenager as I tried to interview him.
“No matter how hard I tried to deflect his smutty innuendos, he kept coming back with more ‘wink wink, nudge nudge’ suggestions.”
And she told how during the interview, Savile told her he “wouldn’t answer any more questions unless I gave him a kiss,” after he failed to get a reaction from her with his repeated innuendos.
The sequence infamously ended with an awkward kiss between the pair.
Savile’s litany of horrific sex crimes was later brought to light in 2012, a year after his death at the age of 84.
Scott joined BBC Breakfast from the News At Ten on ITN aged 31 and admitted she quickly did not get on with her co-host Bough who she branded “Machiavellian”.
She also claimed Bough tried to “undermine” her on air and once “made a denigrating sexual comment about me”.
Scott added that the late former presenter of the show, who at the time was aged 50, would “butt” into her interviews and tried to appear like a “dominant partner”.
She described the environment on the show as “dangerous territory – full of backstabbing and manipulation”.
It was earlier this week that the corporation celebrated BBC Breakfast’s 40th anniversary by uniting presenters past and present to reminiscence about how the show has evolved over the years.
In a special episode on Tuesday, current hosts Sally Nugent and Jon Kay were joined by original presenters including newsreader Debbie Rix, weatherman Francis Wilson and astrologer Russell Grant, who featured on the formerly named Breakfast Time, which launched on January 17, 1983.
They also marked the occasion with the return of singer Leo Sayer, who was a guest on the first episode, and an aerobic workout in London’s Waterloo station led by the show’s original health and fitness guru Diana Moran.
During the episode, Sayer praised the show’s day one presenters, Bough and Scott, as “such stars”.
“To be interviewed by Selena Scott at that time, it was very special. She was the Princess Diana of TV so it was quite incredible to walk into the studio,” he said.
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