I think probably enigma is a good word for it. A sad loss indeed. We are proud to have someone like him, who did so much for so many, come from Leeds. He made the smooth transfer from Radio Luxembourg to the BBC in the late s and from moved his broadcasts to commercial radio where he continued to be successful and well respected by radio audiences around the UK.
He will be fondly remembered and his death will be marked at a special session on Tuesday morning. Sir Jimmy Savile 'was no loner'. Jimmy Savile: Your memories. In pictures: Sir Jimmy Savile. Obituary: Sir Jimmy Savile. DJ and TV presenter Savile dies. Savile: 'I've always been a bit odd'. Sir Jimmy Savile: "A larger-than-life character and an inspiration to many.
David Hamilton, DJ. Paul Bruce, who appeared on Jim'll Fix It. What becomes clear is that it's not just Savile who's in the frame here. It's celebrity. Our attitude towards it. The way we treat it. The adulation we afford it. He was somebody who said: 'I can't sing, I can't dance, I don't tell jokes — what do I do? But he came out of an era in which this sort of fame was a new phenomenon.
That morphed into the 70s and 80s, when celebrity culture solidified and cemented to the point that when people might have been thinking, 'Hold a second, that's a bit dodgy', he was untouchable. But this has gone largely uninterrogated, though it's Savile's untouchability that comes across so strongly in the book.
One of the most enraging, bleakest moments of all is the transcript of the interview two police officers conducted with him in Victims had come forward — former pupils from Duncroft approved school. Their allegations were taken seriously. But even getting an interview with Savile had been an obstacle-strewn course.
Files vanished. The CPS delayed for months. When the interview did, finally, take place Savile ensured it was conducted on his home turf. They were calling him Jimmy. The investigation was dropped. People did try and report him but a lot of the reckoning that we are going through now is an understanding that the victims have a real issue with authority too.
Has there really been a reckoning, though? Have we actually processed the fact that a serial sex offender was at the heart of our culture, our national institutions, for 50 years? Or have we managed to simply write him off as a weirdo? I think it just feels like inquiry after inquiry. We need to get to the bottom of why it happened.
Why it was allowed to happen. Why people didn't feel that they could speak up, why they weren't believed when they did speak up, why they weren't listened to. If something good is to come out of this then, hopefully, that will be what it is.
In fact, it seems increasingly clear that we haven't truly reckoned with the past. There have been inquiries into the police investigation of Savile. There have been, or are ongoing, NHS inquiries into 28 hospitals he had a connection with. A new BBC inquiry led by Dame Janet Smith has yet to be published but it's believed it will show there were 1, victims there.
It rolls on and on. And yet. Savile is dead. There was no trial. No verdict. He got away with it. None of the victims have seen justice done. More and more information about what he did and how he did it is coming to light, but it doesn't change this one simple, irrevocable, unsurpassable fact. And it's this, more than anything else, that perhaps makes Savile so difficult to process. We are all affected by it. He was part of the wallpaper of our lives. And none of us have had our day in court.
He got to die on his bed at home, which is what he wanted to do, and he got to have his big funeral. I think he would have seen that as the ultimate win.
The police investigation was dropped. Celebrity won. In November , in an article for the London Review of Books that quoted Davies at length, Andrew O'Hagan wrote about Savile and his place in the "creepy" culture of British light entertainment. He made the point that we get the celebrities we deserve. That our culture is paedophiliac. That Savile was our creature. We created him. And the deference that we accord celebrities, the privileges they enjoy, the thrall in which they hold us, remains unexamined.
Savile's victims ranged in age from five to 75, came from every social class and both sexes; his offending was as prolific and indiscriminate as his charm, his magical aura. The effect of the book, and the most recent NHS inquiries — which contained the most shocking revelations so far but which didn't make it into the book — is that everything in Savile's life was structured around committing these crimes.
I was thinking, God, is that actually possible? But then you read those NHS reports — particularly the Leeds one — and he is literally taking opportunities as they arise.
And not just taking them but engineering them… He targeted people at the top and bottom of institutions. He was very, very clever. So he would make a beeline for the house governor, the top person at the hospital, and then the humble porters. So he'd have both ends of the spectrum covered. And he had Mrs Thatcher in his debt. And you, Dan? When you found out about his crimes, did you ever feel that he'd also made you complicit?
But Davies admits that he did "throw me off balance. He did suck me into this kaleidoscopic world of anecdote and well-polished stories that he'd told many times. But then he talked about other stuff as well that was just intriguing. But he never completely won me over. It's a strange coincidence to be published in a week like this one, I say, when historical sex abuse has dominated the headlines again. When two new inquiries have been launched.
What do you make of those? I don't see how the establishment will ever allow a true understanding of what has happened to emerge. I am astonished — well, I'm not astonished, I'm a Hillsborough survivor so I'm never particularly astonished by cover-ups.
One hundred and fourteen files go missing implicating supposedly some prominent figures within the political establishment. The circles moving out from that will be considerable. In Savile's case, there are numerous incidents of clumsy cover-ups. Davies is scathing about West Yorkshire police's inquiry into its conduct regarding Savile. He notes how a telephone conversation between Margaret Thatcher and Savile has "gone back into the vault".
How Surrey police redacted the name of Princess Alexandra from a report into Duncroft approved school. For more information on cookies please refer to our cookies policy. News images provided by Press Association and Photocall Ireland unless otherwise stated.
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