In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile

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Front Row has been offered “behind the scenes access” to the final recording of Top of the Pops , which is ending after 42 years. I go with a producer who can now only legally be identified as C23, her code in Janet Smith’s 2016 report into Jimmy Savile and the BBC. Jimmy Savile poses with a 'Honorary No.1 Manchester Taxi Driver' medal (Image: M.E.N./Chris Gleave) It would be a few more years until we would comprehend just how unsettling this icon of TV really was. The Savile series featuring Steve Coogan as the disgraced star is doubly fascinating for me. Two or three minutes later, I heard voices coming from the lift shaft. The wooden doors slid open, releasing a cloud of smoke and two large, unsmiling men in their 50s. "Frisk him," barked Jimmy Savile, who had stepped out of the lift behind them and was wearing a blue shell suit with chevrons of red and white on the shoulders.

Davies, Dan (9 October 2023). " 'Why was I so obsessed with him?': my seven years in search of Jimmy Savile's secrets". The Guardian . Retrieved 19 October 2023. 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 2007. 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. It wasn’t just a radio programme, it became an actual therapy session. The interview was meant to take around an hour, but we actually spoke for over two hours . . . Anthony could feel the pain that I was suffering and was extremely kind to me. After Georgie died, he wrote me a lovely letter saying that he felt he knew her, even though he had never met her, and how tragic her death at the age of 12 was.Interviewed off the record for my novel about Margaret Thatcher, a member of her retinue recalls Savile as a regular guest at Chequers, teasing and pranking the prime minister much as the Fool does King Lear. When this incident becomes public a decade later, the BBC line is that no action was taken because I failed to make a “formal” complaint. I have no recollection of ever being offered a choice of whistles to blow. My memory is that the BBC told me the matter could only be taken seriously if the complaint came from the victim. I will also later be informed that I am mistaken about the number of BBC managers among whom news of the 2006 assault was shared. BBC Broadcasting House , October 2012 In one of the most telling sections, Savile describes how six groupies once spent the night with him and his minder at a flat. The taxi turned into West Avenue in Leeds and continued a few hundred yards up a gentle incline before dropping me off outside Lake View Court. I got out and pressed the intercom button marked "Penthouse" and after a short pause, a voice: "Morning." The sound of the Yorkshire Dalek was unmistakable. The door buzzed, I pushed against it and took a seat in a small lobby that smelled of potpourri.

It wasn’t until other reports of Savile’s abuse emerged that Susan decided to come forward, reporting her experience to West Yorkshire police. How did she feel when she discovered there were hundreds of victims? “I realised I wasn’t alone,” she says. Her story was “part of the jigsaw” – the 70s are believed to have been within the peak of Savile’s abuse, though it would continue for another couple of decades – and once she heard the accounts of rape, she felt relief that her experience wasn’t worse. But this also left her with a kind of survivors’ guilt that makes her wish she had spoken out at the time. I thought he was a wonderful man. The two hours that I spent with him helped me to cope with the immense difficulties that I was facing at that time in my life and I was very grateful. It wasn’t just that he was a psychiatrist, he was also a father and he felt a deep empathy for me as I watched my darling daughter battling for life.” Waterson, Jim (28 February 2023). "BBC Jimmy Savile drama to air this year despite concerns". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 1 March 2023. The format of In the Psychiatrist’s Chair was that Clare would interview guests in considerable depth and without haste, in an effort to explore their childhoods, self-image and current motivations. People remain endlessly fascinating to me, and personality interviews are one of my favourite forms of journalism to produce. The piece was going to be a bit of colour - some journalistic whimsy to break up the more serious stuff.The role of court jester seems to have been Savile’s passport to the powerful. He played the part to Thatcher, the Prince of Wales (who released a statement about his “sadness” soon after Savile’s death), and to Cardinal George Basil Hume, leader of the English Catholic church from 1976 to 1999, who will successfully secure Savile a “Papal knighthood” from the Vatican in 1990 – the same year he becomes a knight of the British empire at the behest of Thatcher (overruling, it was subsequently revealed, civil service concern about his moral suitability). A London West End restaurant , late 1990s

He went to the funeral but the book languished. Publishers told him no one would be interested to read about the "darkness" at the heart of a national hero, "but I decided I had to keep on going anyway even if I self-published". And then, finally, it all came out. "After Newsnight's investigation was axed, I met with Meirion Jones [ Newsnight's investigations producer], who shared with me what was already in the public domain but only if you knew where to look…" The publication of the book this week marks what Davies hopes is the end of this "painful process", the culmination of a decade of obsession. He's weary rather than jubilant. It is a relief, finally, to get it out there, though even this he's doing cautiously. He didn't want to sell an extract from it, which is what would usually happen, because "I really didn't want to sensationalise it. I don't want it to be seen as a sensationalist book." I think it's deeply worrying that 114 files have gone missing or have been destroyed. I don't see how the establishment will ever allow a true understanding of what has happened to emerge." He added: “The officeress was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues for it was well known that were I to go, I would probably take half the station with me.” At the time, this man – whose first TV appearances on Juke Box Jury are probably watched by my parents – means nothing to me. But writing this piece, I have the feeling that my whole life is somehow heading from those Sunday mornings to a horrific encounter with Jimmy Savile 40 years later. Hertfordshire , 1973-75In addition to being a huge celebrity he also cultivated relationships at all levels of British society which included members of the Royal family, and Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister. He was also given the run of three hospitals and was able to lure children to his car, flats, caravans etc. No wonder he considered himself untouchable and, despite many a close call, and even dropping heavy hints in interviews, he got away with abuse on a horrendous scale. Writer Dan Davies interviews media personality Jimmy Savile to recount the story of his life. In the early 1960s, Savile is living in Salford with his friend Ray Teret. As a DJ, Savile runs sell-out dances for young people in the dance halls of Leeds and Manchester, and volunteers at Leeds General Infirmary – but is also able to exploit these positions by sexually abusing people, ranging from young women to children. He is invited to host a new BBC series, Top of the Pops, while victims of his abuse watch in horror. Of all the many places I interviewed Jimmy Savile, The Athenaeum Club in London was perhaps the most revealing. It was 2008 and I was researching a magazine story about the extraordinary influence he had and the connections he’d made and cultivated over the course of his 80-plus years. This cramped entrance hall opened right into a long, rectangular living room with electric blue shagpile carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. I fear another cover-up is inevitable. 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."