Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
LONDON — The headstone at the grave of a British children's television host has
been removed after police said Jimmy Savile may have sexually assaulted more
than 20 girls over a 40-year period.
Funeral director Robert Morphit said Wednesday that Savile's family had asked
him to remove the stone to "protect the dignity and sanctity" of the cemetery in
Scarborough in northeastern England. He said the stone was removed in three
pieces and will be sent to a landfill.Savile, who died last year aged 84, was one of Britain's best-known TV
personalities.
The Metropolitan Police said Tuesday it had received eight criminal allegations
against Savile, including two of rape and six of indecent assault, primarily
against girls aged 13 to 16. The force believes there were up to 25 victims.
Why did nobody stop Savile?
Witnesses claim late TV presenter molested children at hospitals
Paul Peachey, Ian Herbert
Friday 12 October 2012
The Jimmy Savile child sex abuse inquiry was expanding last night into a wider scandal enveloping the public sector as new witnesses came forward to claim that the late presenter molested children at hospitals with the apparent knowledge of staff.
An MP demanded an independent inquiry as fresh allegations about Savile raised questions for three hospitals, the BBC, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police about the extent of their knowledge of historic child sex abuse claims. The three hospitals – Stoke Mandeville, Leeds General Infirmary, and Broadmoor – all said that they had not received complaints about Savile until after the screening last week of the ITV documentary that interviewed victims.
Stoke Mandeville Hospital faced demands for an independent public inquiry following claims that staff encouraged child patients to pretend to be asleep before Savile made his ward rounds because of fears that he could molest them.
...
It emerged yesterday that Jimmy Savile and his charity fundraisers were given their own room at Stoke Mandeville Hospital until he died last year at the age of 84.
However, in a letter to the hospital, Mr Wilson said there were claims that management and nurses were aware of suspicions about his behaviour and "little meaningful action was taken to protect the extremely vulnerable children and young people at the hospital from such horrific behaviour.
"We can now see evidence developing that not just the BBC is involved in this – we now have parts of the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service and some are even suggesting the police have some questions to answer," Mr Wilson told BBC Radio 4.
...
semper occultus wrote:
...& also for organised crime links - which - fwiw - he would have in common with the "third man" in the BBC allegations alongside Savile & Gary Glitter - comedian Freddie Starr....
Freddie Starr admits meeting girl who says he abused her: Comic backtracks after film emerges of 1974 meeting on Savile show
Freddie Starr was last night forced to admit being ‘mistaken’ after footage from 1974 showed him alongside the teenage girl who now claims he abused her.
Starr had strenuously denied ever meeting Karin Ward – who claims he tried to molest her in Sir Jimmy Savile’s BBC dressing room.
The comic had also insisted he only met Savile twice in his life, and had never even been to the BBC.
...
Branding Miss Ward a ‘liar’, he told his audience: ‘My brief is going to tear her to pieces. I’ve never been to the BBC.’
However, he changed his mind yesterday after the footage obtained by Channel 4 News showed him appearing as a ‘special guest’ of Savile during the BBC programme.
....
Calls for report on Staines school at centre of Jimmy Savile abuse claims
By mattcollison | Tuesday, October 09, 2012, 10:48
www.stainespeople.co.uk
The late television presenter was interviewed under caution by Surrey Police in 2007 about alleged abuse of girls at the now defunct Duncroft Approved School for Girls.
Liberal Democrat campaigner and Stanwell resident Andrew Mcluskey has called on Surrey County Council (SCC) to produce a report into the management of the former school in Moor Lane, Staines.
Speaking at the SCC local committee for Spelthorne on Monday evening (OctoberMr Mcluskey, of Diamedes Avenue, said: "Given the recent media and press reports suggesting serious irregularities at the former Duncroft Approved School for girls, will the officers agree to produce a full report for the next meeting of this committee of the management of the school in the 1970s?"
County councillor Denise Saliagopoulos, who represents the Staines ward, has also requested more information about the school.
The calls were made after the screening of an ITV documentary, presented by former Surrey Police detective Mark Williams-Thomas, which claimed Sir Jimmy sexually assaulted girls at the school during the 1970s.
One woman told how the former BBC DJ and broadcaster assaulted her in a caravan on the school grounds when she was 14-years-old.
Another former pupil claimed she was abused by Sir Jimmy whilst riding in his Rolls Royce.
Edward Heath(former PM of the UK)
He is very well known for his perverted abuse of young boys. I spoke to one of his victims and he told me about others who were present, and more important, who was supplying the children to him. The person bringing children for him to abuse is Sir Jimmy Saville. He was seen by the witness, victim, taking young boys onboard Heaths yacht the morning cloud when they were at party conference. Saville is known for supplying a number of high profile MP's with children for them to sexually abuse.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=27562#p326675
as above says:
05/06/2012 at 6:02 pm
a relative who at that time wasa policeman told me some years back that edward heath was a pervert
who consorted with others including comedian frankie howard and DJ jimmy saville, known as
” mr james” to the boys, used to take parties of boys aged about 12 to the isle if wight aboard a large yacht for what he called “nobbing parties”
http://merovee.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/the-can-of-worms/
JERSEY:Children were loaned to rich paedophile yachtsmen
http://www.whale.to/c/jersey7.html
CHILDREN from the Jersey House of Horrors were loaned to rich paedophile yachtsmen as galley SEX SLAVES, a News of the World investigation reveals.
The youngsters were told by care staff the boat rides were treats—only to be assaulted and RAPED at sea by pervert toffs.
Details of the sick attacks emerged as we discovered even more blood has been found in a bath in the dungeon underneath the Haut de la Garenne home—and in the drains. And our reporters have been told how builders on renovations at the home were urged by staff to BURN any bones they dug up.
We also uncover the full extent of the dark forces of corruption hampering the police investigation. We can reveal worried cops feel under so much pressure over the abuse allegations they are preparing to BYPASS Jersey’s own legal system and hand their evidence to our government.
This could include files on up to seven social workers and carers who worked at the sinister home—including one nicknamed the ‘pinball wizard’ who HURLED kids against the walls to see how far they would BOUNCE. At least two previous senior employees of children’s services on the island are also under investigation despite the attempts of corrupt former policemen, politicians and businessmen to scupper the inquiry.
We understand that two weeks ago Jersey ministers SECRETLY VOTED to have senior police investigator Lenny Harper removed from the case because they believed he was too open with the media. But the Chief of Police Graham Power refused.
Explosive -A source told us: “Such important figures have been implicated in the cover-up of abuse on the island that the cops feel the evidence should now be passed to the British government
“The latest revelations are explosive. It is going to cause massive waves within the political and legal world and could bring the whole of Jersey’s infrastructure crashing down.” One of the most serious lines of inquiry in the investigation is that children were regularly loaned to wealthy yachtsmen to “do with them what they chose for the day,” according to our source close to the investigation.
Haut de la Garenne staff described the trips as a treat for children who spent long hours cooped up at the home. But in reality the kids were subjected to the vilest sexual abuse on board the luxury boats. Our source said: “The allegations about the yachting community have come in from a number of different people. It is a very strong line of inquiry and when the evidence is made public people will be horrified.” Meanwhile about a dozen bones found at the home have been sent to a DNA lab to find out how old they are —yet some bone fragments were too burnt to be tested.
Police have taken statements from local builders who were told: “If you find bones, get rid of them or burn them.” New blood spots have been discovered in cracks in a concrete bath in the underground chamber and have also been sent for tests and sniffer dogs trained to find blood have found scents in the drains underneath.
Forensic officers are now focusing on the wooden trapdoor leading to a second torture cellar in a bid to extract DNA or fingerprints. Our source said: “Detectives are doing everything they can to ensure every scrap of evidence is properly investigated. They are very aware that the home dates back to 1856 and some of these bones could be very old.
“This is going to be a long process but the officers have been presented with so many accounts of abuse and cover-ups it is crucial we get answers. People disclosing the abuse have been easy to ignore but finally they are getting a chance to be taken seriously.” The horrors being uncovered at Haut de la Garenne have revealed a Jersey tourists have never seen.
Former abused care home residents claim what happened to them has been covered up by those in high office, desperate not to tarnish Jersey’s good name or risk politicians in London reducing their power over the tiny, but extremely wealthy, island. Although Jersey is part of the British Isles and under the Queen’s rule, it has a separate government system dating back to King John’s reign, and makes its own rules and laws.
Jersey’s 53-member parliament has no political parties. Its politicians, judges, policemen and business leaders come from a small elite—often linked by friendship or family. The island’s equivalent of our Commons Speaker is also its top judge—so the system of checks and balances between politics and the law we have in the UK is almost non-existent.
This is a place where the authorities allowed 43-year-old convicted paedophile Roger Holland to stand for election as an honorary constable officer— similar to a special cop in the UK, but with more powers. They knew that six years earlier he had indecently assaulted a mentally impaired 14-year-old girl and admitted molesting another girl. But he got the job and in 1997 rose to become vingtenier—the second most senior cop on the island’s volunteer force.
In 2001 he was jailed for indecently assaulting a young girl in the back of a police van. “Jersey has for too long been a law unto itself—it is time the truth came out,” says our source. Among those fighting for that is ex-health minister Senator Stuart Syvret, who resigned over the cover-up and has given statements to police claiming two senior legal figures were involved in the abuse.
Mr Syvret said: “I have given formal statements to the police concerning a number of establishment individuals. Officers I have spoken to are from a force external to Jersey police at the request of Jersey police.” Solicitor Nick le Cornu is also demanding change. “Jersey’s political class have for 60 years been ignoring and covering up poverty and injustice,” he claimed.
Police investigator Lenny Harper, an outsider from Northern Ireland, was the target of a hate campaign— including threats to torch his house —after a string of cops were sacked for corruption. Colleagues say Harper, 56, laughed it off, saying: “I had the IRA on my tail for years—so a few disgruntled people are not going to deter me from doing my job.” Now he’s facing the biggest test of his career—on the island of fear.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1603_jersey.shtml
Yesterday it emerged Savile had his own set of keys to Broadmoor mental hospital.
The gold-plated keys, understood to have been presented to him as a reward for volunteering and charity work, allowed him to gain access to the high security institution.
One victim, Alison Pink, told a newspaper Savile had molested her in Broadmoor in 1969, saying: “He definitely had his own keys – they were gold, especially for him.
“Both male and female patients thought it was very strange. He could access any of the girls’ bedrooms.”
Tory MP Rob Wilson, an aide to the Health Secretary, last night said: “I am astonished to learn Savile had keys to Broadmoor, one of the highest security hospitals in the country.
A former Radio 1 researcher tells Channel 4 News that during a meeting, Jimmy Savile said he "had just had 14-year-old girls" in his trailer.
Richard Pearson worked at the station as a 21-year old and was in a meeting with a senior producer when he said Savile arrived, "doing his comedy presenter routine, and one of the things he said, not particularly quietly was that he'd 'had' three 14-year-old girls in his trailer that morning.
...
Mr Pearson said Savile explained that having sex with teenagers "kept him young" but that he had been "pretty shocked" at the revelation.
Meanwhile, the former controller of Radio 1, Derek Chinnery, has told Channel 4 News he knew nothing of the rumours surrounding Savile.... "I never felt any need to think we had a monster in our midst."
Church's regret over entertainer's papal knighthood
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A spokesman for the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said the Church would not have awarded Sir Jimmy the honour if it "had been aware of the allegations and the allegations had proved to be true".
Irvine Welsh on Jimmy Savile (the Savile necrophilia rumors)
Like many thousands of others, I was anything but surprised by the recent Jimmy Savile “revelations” – personally, I had long been convinced of the presenter’s profound unwholesomeness ever since reading Irvine Welsh’s 1996 Ecstasy as a teenager, a collection of three mid-length narratives the first of which, “Lorraine Goes to Livingston,” features a character called Freddy Royle, a pedophile, TV presenter and transparent (for want of a better word) homage to Savile. Fiction it may well have been, but I took it very much as fact, which was arguably rather credulous of me, though it looks more and more intuitive with every passing day.
“Freddy Royle had had, by his standards, a tiring day prior to his late afternoon arrival at St. Hubbin’s. He had been in the television studios all morning filming an episode of From Fred With Love. A young boy, whom Fred had sorted out to swim with dolphins at Morecambe’s Marineland, while his grandparents were brought back to the scene of their honeymoon, was all excited in the studio and writhed around in his lap, getting Freddie so aroused and excited that they had to do several takes.”
Due to certain additional aspects of Welsh’s portrait, however, I have continuously expected further revelations regarding Savile, specifically relating to his hospital work. In Welsh’s tale (and I know this detail was consistent with many corresponding rumors about Savile), Royle is a necrophiliac as well as a pederast.
...
“Yes, the trustees knew all about Freddy Royle, Glen reflected bitterly. They knew the real secrets of the chat-show host, the authors of several books, including Howzat! – Freddy Royle On Cricket, Freddy Royle’s Somerset, Somerset With a Z: The Wit of the West Country, West Country Walks With Freddy Royle and Freddy Royle’s 101 Magic Party Tricks. Yes, those trustee bastards knew what this distinguished friend, this favorite caring, laconic uncle to the nation did with the stiffs they got in here. The thing was, Freddy brought millions of pounds into the place with his fund-raising activities. This brought kudos to the trustees, and made St Hubbin’s Hospital a flagship for the arm’s-length trusts from the NHS. All they had to do was keep schtumm and indulge Sir Freddy with the odd body.”
...
His closest relationship was with his mother, Agnes, whom Savile called “the Duchess”.
After her death in 1973, Savile sequestered himself with her body for five days, which he subsequently claimed were the “best five days of my life … She looked marvellous. She belonged to me. It’s wonderful, is death.” In later years he felt obliged to explain that he had not buried her sooner “because the ground was icy”. He continued to keep her room exactly as it was, and would have her clothes dry-cleaned once a year.
Sir Jimmy Savile
Sir Jimmy Savile, who has died aged 84, was a disc jockey, television presenter and charity fundraiser who became an eccentric adornment to British public life.
4:02PM BST 29 Oct 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8857428/Sir-Jimmy-Savile.html
For almost 30 years, as the presenter of Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It, Savile was an ubiquitous and distinctive face on television — an improbable figure with a helmet of platinum hair, dressed in a lurid track suit and bedecked in ostentatious jewellery. As he waggled an outsize cigar, he would utter a series of catchphrases (“Howzabout that then”, “Now then, now then…”) which were usually punctuated by a bizarre yodel, and were a gift to even the most limited of television and nightclub impressionists.
His trademark mixture of gurning and garrulity, pioneered on Top of the Pops, inspired an entirely new genre of television presentation — what one observer called the “attention-seeking, nutty-prankster school” — but Savile also saw himself in a more serious role as the King Solomon of pop, dispensing words of wisdom and advice to young musicians. “I never forgot they were the talent and we were just presenters,” he explained.
Savile was chosen to host what turned out be the world’s longest-running television music show in 1963. The producer, Johnny Stewart, had heard him host The Teen And Twenty Disc Club on Radio Luxembourg, and although the head of variety at the BBC, Bill Cotton, had reservations, Stewart thought he was the perfect man for the job. Savile also claimed credit for thinking up the new show’s title.
Initially scheduled for a modest six-week run, Top Of The Pops was broadcast live from a converted church in Dickenson Road, Longsight, a run-down area of Manchester. The first edition went out on New Year’s Day 1964, with chart stars miming to their singles live in the studio. From the outset Savile strove to make the show his own, and became its longest-serving host.
Although he shrank from presenting every programme, fearing overexposure, Savile quickly established himself as the face of the show. With his stripy Dada-like outfits, wobbly spiel and clownish persona — he once dyed his hair tartan — nothing quite like him had been seen on television before. He soon became, as one of the show’s chroniclers noted, “charmingly certifiable”.
Savile’s arsenal of sartorial and verbal oddities was also vividly deployed when he presented Jim’ll Fix It, which ran from 1975 until 1994, and in which he played the role of benevolent uncle, granting wishes to the nation’s children.
Savile’s ability to make dreams come true made him a powerful and mysterious figure. At the height of the programme’s popularity, up to 20,000 children a week would write in, asking Jim to “fix it” for them to sing with their favourite pop group, meet the Prime Minister or play for Liverpool.
Savile’s role as cheery national benefactor was further reflected in his tireless charity work.
It was once estimated that he had personally raised more than £40 million for various charitable causes, and that up to 90 per cent of his own income was given away, although Savile never disclosed the extent of his charitable donations. He took part in more than 200 marathons and innumerable “fun runs” for charity, without ever bothering to train: “I just turn up and run.” He completed the London Marathon in 2005.
He worked as a volunteer porter at the Leeds Royal Infirmary, and enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the Stoke Mandeville hospital near Aylesbury, raising £12 million to contribute to the rebuilding of the hospital’s National Spinal Injuries Centre, which opened in 1983.
He also worked as a volunteer at Broadmoor, the hospital for the criminally insane, where he was given his own room, and referred to the staff and patients at the hospital as “my people” and himself as “the Godfather”.
Savile once described his role at the hospital as honorary entertainments officer: “I ask them, what do you want to go round strangling crumpet for?” But his flippancy belied a shrewd understanding of inmates’ problems and how best to win their trust. In 1988 he was chosen to head a Department of Health task force to advise on the running of the hospital when it suffered a crisis of management and a nursing dispute. By some accounts, he ended up virtually running the place.
James Wilson Vincent Savile was born in Leeds on October 31 1926, the youngest of seven children in a Roman Catholic family. His father, Vincent, was a bookmaker’s clerk. Savile would later claim that the family were so impoverished that his Christmas present was to be taken simply to look at the toys in a Leeds department store; he never expected to be given one himself.
At the age of two Jimmy fell desperately ill, probably with pneumonia, although he was never sure of the exact diagnosis – “in those days if you were poor you just died”. In anticipation of his demise, the doctor left a signed death certificate on the sideboard. Jimmy’s mother, Agnes, hurried to Leeds Cathedral to pray, and by the time she returned home the child had started showing signs of recovery. His sister Joan always believed it to be a miracle.
He attended the local school, St Anne’s Roman Catholic School, where he was taught “the 4 Rs: reading, ‘riting, reckoning up and the difference between right from wrong”. He left school at 14 and began work as an office boy. At the outbreak of war, he hoped to go into the RAF, but instead was sent to work in the mines as a Bevin Boy under the Emergency Powers Act, earning £1.1s a week for six shifts. He might have remained there for the rest of his life but for an accident that was to prove strangely fortuitous. An explosion intended to dislodge a rock face almost killed him, and he was told he would never walk properly again.
A passion for music and a talent for entrepreneurship provided a fresh start. With a collection of swing records and a turntable, Savile began putting on shows at local parties and pubs, and in 1948 he organised what he would later claim was Britain’s first disco, in an upstairs room in Leeds owned by the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds, where customers were charged a shilling each to dance to records by Glenn Miller and Harry James.
This led to Savile’s becoming a Mecca dance-hall manager, and by the late 1950s he was responsible for the entertainment at 45 Mecca ballrooms across the country. At that time, Musicians’ Union regulations stipulated that entertainment in dance-halls should be provided by live bands, with records played only in the interval between performances. Realising that the records were invariably more popular than the band, Savile would circumvent the rules by paying the musicians not to perform. His policy of what he described as “zero tolerance” towards drunks and troublemakers revealed him in a somewhat less benevolent light. In later years, he admitted that they would be taken to the boiler-room, tied up and left for a few hours to reflect on their misdemeanours.
At various times Savile also worked as a professional cyclist and professional wrestler. But he first came to broader public attention in the early 1960s as a Radio Luxembourg disc-jockey. Then, in 1964, he presented the first ever edition of Top of the Pops on BBC Television. He would go on to host 300 episodes over the next 20 years.
It was here that Savile developed his uniform of track suit and jewellery, and the exaggerated vocal mannerisms that were to be become his trademarks. The yodel was to prove a particularly useful device in the event of Savile’s script falling short; he could fill any embarrassing silences by the expedient of making a lot of noise without saying anything much at all, while furiously waggling his cigar.
Savile’s popularity as a disc-jockey lent him an apparently oracular power, and he worked as a consultant for a number of a companies advising on teenage trends and tastes. He also found himself in great demand for personal appearances. He described himself as “a self-punter”: he had no manager or agent and would negotiate all his own contracts. A favoured ploy in his early days was never to quote a fee, but simply to tell his clients to pay “whatever you think I’m worth”. The remuneration was invariably generous. In later years he refused to appear anywhere for less than £10,000, arguing that a large fee would ensure that the event was properly organised.
But it was Jim’ll Fix It that made Savile a national institution. Over the course of 19 years, the programme received more than three million requests.
Savile always claimed that the key to his success on Jim’ll Fix It was that he actually disliked children, although in later years he maintained that he had offered this explanation to allay any untoward suspicions that he liked them too much. Rumours of under-age sex circulated for some years, although the fact that no allegations of impropriety ever appeared in print seemed to confirm Savile’s own insistence that he had “no past, no nothing”.
But he was always careful to guard against the possibilities of any misunderstandings, and the predatory intentions of parents or the press. When children knocked on his door for autographs, he would refuse to open it, instead passing the signed photographs and scraps of paper back through the letter box. In later years he even refused to have a computer in his home, explaining that he did not want anybody thinking he was downloading child pornography.
Savile never married — claiming variously that the bad marital experiences of his siblings had discouraged him from matrimony, and that he was “married to the whole bleeding country, and it’s marvellous”.
In his early years as a dance-hall disc-jockey, Savile displayed an indefatigable enthusiasm for the opposite sex, employing a faux-gallant approach to seduction which would involve him ostentatiously kissing a woman’s hand, turning it over and planting a kiss on the palm, then slowly running his eyes up the arm until meeting his intended victim’s eyes. “It worked like a charm,” remembered one assistant. But he professed never to have been in love, nor to have spent so much as a night with a woman. “My logic,” he once explained, “has always been to sip at the cup of life and never gulp at it.” Women, he maintained, were “lovely if you sip at them. They will enjoy you enormously, you will enjoy them enormously. Then you go to bed on your own and you wake up not disillusioned. You wake up with no brain damage.”
His closest relationship was with his mother, Agnes, whom Savile called “the Duchess”. Following the death of his father in 1953, Savile continued to live with his mother, first in a terraced house in Leeds and then in a flat at Scarborough, keeping a caravan parked nearby where he would entertain lady friends.
Agnes was his constant companion, at film premieres and on holidays at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay, where her favourite pastime was playing the one-armed bandits in amusement arcades. Despite their closeness, Savile always maintained that she never watched him on television or congratulated him on his achievements, and lived in constant fear of the police knocking at the door: “She thought I was stealing all the money.”
After her death in 1973, Savile sequestered himself with her body for five days, which he subsequently claimed were the “best five days of my life … She looked marvellous. She belonged to me. It’s wonderful, is death.” In later years he felt obliged to explain that he had not buried her sooner “because the ground was icy”. He continued to keep her room exactly as it was, and would have her clothes dry-cleaned once a year.
For 25 years between 1973 and 1998 Savile was the patron of the ACROSS Trust, a charity that takes the sick and dying to Lourdes. By persuading the Green Shield trading stamp firm to donate 60p to charity for every complete book of stamps, he raised many thousands of pounds for good causes. Savile was appointed OBE in 1971 and knighted for services to charity and the entertainment business in 1990. It was also in 1990 that he received the honour of Knight Commander of St Gregory the Great from the Vatican.
He relished his association with pillars of the establishment. He referred to the Duke of Edinburgh, with cosy familiarity, as “the Boss”, and once reportedly asked the Queen Mother: “Will you send me to the Tower if I said you were beautiful?” He also formed an improbable friendship with Margaret Thatcher, and was a frequent visitor to Chequers for Christmas and the New Year during her tenure — although he claimed to have no political allegiance and explained that he and Mrs Thatcher had “marvellous arguments”.
Savile spent copiously on jewellery and holiday cruises, and owned a succession of Rolls-Royces, which he seldom drove, but otherwise led a spartan, almost ascetic life. He maintained a series of residences throughout Britain although he seldom spent more than two consecutive nights in any of them, using them as mere stopovers in his endless round of engagements.
Cleaners would come in once a week and leave a basket of food, but Savile claimed that if he was catering for himself his favoured meal was a tin of baked beans microwaved in the same pint mug which he would also use to wash his hair. He dressed only in tracksuits, and claimed to have just one formal suit, for wearing to the Athenaeum Club, of which he was a member. When travelling, he would carry only one pair of underpants, which he would wash each night.
Savile always insisted that, left to his own devices, he would happily sit in a chair, smoking a cigar and watching Teletext; his peripatetic lifestyle and ferocious activity were merely the consequence of the endless requests for public appearances and good deeds.
He claimed to have “thousands” of acquaintances, yet seemed to have few close friends. Away from public view, he could be prickly, impatient with journalists who attempted to get too close or pried too deeply into his affairs. He was a man who distrusted displays of emotion, and eschewed introspection or self-analysis, which he regarded as “soft”.
A member of Mensa, Savile prided himself on being “logical”: in his own words, “the essence of boring common sense”.
His public persona was his best camouflage. Long after his television fame had waned, Savile continued to give the impression of being instantly animated by the spotlight, no matter how dim it may have become, a man who regarded it as his duty to brighten everybody’s day, collaring passers-by to whom he was at best a distant memory and regaling them with his jokes and catchphrases, making a beeline for anybody in a wheelchair.
A man who divided opinion without ever appearing to care much what anyone thought of him, he was simply an odd chap.
Sir Jimmy Savile, born October 31 1926, died October 29 2011
semper occultus wrote:.....OK I'll raise you .....
Sir Jimmy Savile sexually assaulted a 10-year-old boy while he was at the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey, a lawyer has claimed.
Alan Collins, a lawyer for the alleged victim, said the "vulnerable" boy had been subjected to a serious assault.
Savile has been named several times by people claiming to have been victims of child abuse in Jersey, he said.
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