Jimmy Savile

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Just finished The Reckoning on BBC and despite watching countless documentaries, interviews and reading dozens of articles it’s really left me with more questions and intrigue (in a completely disgusted way) than ever.

What a disturbed an complex person he was but I find myself wanting to know why and how he managed to end up the way he was.

In particular his weird and verging on inappropriate views and relationship with his mother…

His dislike and cold view of children…was he a paedophile or someone who was just addicted to sex.

Was there any proof of him actually committing necrophilia or just a rumour..

Did he think his good deeds outweighed his bad or was everything he did done so with ulterior motives?

What was his relationship with the mayor had Ice cream man in Scarborough?

What did locals really think of him..

And how did he manage to worm his way to the top (royalty, politicians, head consultants) from near enough nothing…

How could someone be so narcissistic and a social path but such a loner and never have a wife/partner to mask…

My list of questions is absolutely endless…

I doubt any of them are alive. He was the youngest of seven and would have been in his late 90s now if he where alive

@catbla2957 very true.

I seem to remember that the press hounded one of his brothers when the story broke - something about a memorial or statue.

It's often the case that family members don't know - I'm not sure how close a family they were. He always talked about his mother, but I don't remember him talking about anyone else.

Coogan was so accurate, he must have studied Savile very closely to get the mannerisms and the creepiness.

And why did the BBC make him a national celebrity, give him a platform, enable his abusing for decades then cover it all up, even after he had died and their own staff tried to expose him?

Savile was a very clever and very manipulative man, but he didn’t act alone, and the full truth about those in positions of power who helped him and covered up for him is yet to be told.

I seem to remember one of his nieces speaking out about abuse. I could be wrong though. I'm sure his family want nothing to do with his memory.

Both his brothers were abusers. One was sacked from his job in a hospital for abusing a patient I think. The other did something too. Very creepy. Savile abused his niece and his sister did nothing because he paid her off. According to the niece. You have to wonder how three
brothers all ended up as such horrible lecherous power hungry creeps. Were they abused themselves?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jimmy-saviles-brother-raped-complaint-7001231.amp

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681719/amp/The-making-monster-Can-sordid-sexual-depravity-run-family-In-ground-breaking-analysis-writer-spent-ten-years-probing-dark-twisted-mind-Jimmy-Savile-reveals-deeply-disturbing-truths-all.html

When I was a child we shared a 6 compartment from Euston to Birmingham with Gemma Jones. She'd brought her knitting. My nan was totally star-struck (Duchess of Duke St related) and spoke of her fondly for years.

I would urge anyone interested to read In Plain Sight by Dan Davies, the book on which this series was based. Goes into far more detail about his family and upbringing and also details his corrupt relationship with the Police which wasn’t dealt with in this show - explains why any complaints that were made were not followed up. But as PP have said his “success” in not being outed was largely due to the culture of the times in which he rose to prominence.

It's such a weird and awful history. My MIL was a Gogo dancer back in the day. She regularly performed at the same clubs as him, and says girls and women threw themselves at him. Teenage girls apparently were particularly keen, and he enjoyed that advantage to the full🤢

I just don’t understand why. He was repulsive:

That's horrible about his brother. I can only
Imagine some terrible things happened to them as children, but who knows.

Not that's that's any sort of excuse of course.

DH worked in a hospital in aylesbury and knew nurses from Stoke Mandeville. Twenty years ago he told me that when Savile died everything would come out. Just like it has.

Did he have a view / did the nurses say why things weren’t reported at the time?

did the nurses say why things weren’t reported at the time?

In Leeds many nurses reported him, but it was always dismissed as he raised so much money for the hospital. They also reported managers for allowing him access, but this was also ignored.

The focus is, quite rightly, on Saville, but there were many organisations that allowed it to go on: hospitals, TV companies, police ... While it's right that this corruption should be examined and lessons learned, I do feel it's hard on the people who worked for these organisations. Often they, the individuals, didn't know, or they did but feared for their jobs, or weren't listened to - but the people who were willing to turn a blind eye, those who could have stopped him are now dead. And, as others have said, so much of what is recognised as criminal now was, then, regarded as 'just how it is'.

His way of getting parental consent was really disturbing

I saw him in the bar coach of a sleeper train. The first time I walked through he was alone at a table, wearing one of his tracksuits and smoking a cigar. He stared sideways at me as I walked past, without turning his head. The next time, he was surrounded by young women at his table and was holding forth while they listened attentively. I was astonished because he was so, so repulsive.

His autobiography is quite something. I had to get a copy for an essay I was writing a ew years ago and ordered it from The British Library. I didn't intend to sit in the reading room and read it all afternoon but I did... it's an utterly insane book. He's operating in plain sight- there are so many moments in it where he's more or less telling you what he is and what he's done. It's called 'Love is an Uphill Thing' and you can read it all online via Internet Archive. You have to sign up to see the full thing, but it's free (and a great resource generally). There's also a PDF copy available here.

I think they just felt as junior hospital managers they wouldn't be listened to. He said all the nurses knew to stay out of his way.

I thought he was exaggerating- but it's all come out exactly as he said. He said he wonders now if he could/should have done more.

I've just got episode 4 left to watch but these things have struck me about it.

I feel they haven't shown enough of how people threw themselves at him.
I think Steve Coogan is superb and must feel like forever showering this character off him.
I feel this drama is a bit like the BBC putting all the blame on Savile and not accepting that it was their culture that made him thrive.
I feel there is too much made of the relationship with Peter Jaconelli in this. Although this happened and there is even a chance the two vile perverts had a sexual relationship with each other, there isn't enough focus on the BBC or the police who visited him at his flat every Friday morning or Prince Charles as he was then.

My mum went to the Convent school in Scarborough from the late 50s to early 60s Savile was given free reign there by the evil Catholic nuns. He used to pick a 14 year old friend of my mum's up in his Rolls-Royce. And that was accepted. I feel on the programme it's showing he was an abuser every time but there were so many who were willing. Which obviously we know if they were underage was abuse but it doesn't show his popularity enough.
My stepdad hated the man more than anybody else ever the way he lauded himself about. He was head porter in the hotel next door to Savile's Scarborough apartment. Everybody knew what he was like and either hated him or let him be like that.
Then the charity work. It was like a Catholic paying penance or was it a cover up.
When I was at school it was common knowledge that Jaconelli would put money on the floor and sexually assault boys who worked for him and many of those boys came from the local bad boys home. We had a lad in our class and as was normal in the 80s we would shout at him when he walked in the classroom Have you been bummed by Jaconelli this weekend? Not one teacher ever asked a child why this would get shouted.
Kids would walk past his ice cream kiosks and shout what a pervert he was and nothing ever got done about either of them. Why?
All these institutions - the BBC, various police forces, the home office, Prime Ministers, members of the Royal family the NHS. They all enabled Savile's behaviour and this programme has made me more angry about that than Savile who as previous posters have said didn't really cover up his behaviour.
The programme didn't even mention he had been questioned as a suspect for the Yorkshire Ripper.
A lot was missing really. So I'm not criticising the actors but it lacked some substance. I feel it was the BBC cleansing itself but they have a lot to answer.

I know this as a fact. My then 19 year old son was on the spinal injuries unit in Pinderfields hospital in 2010 when Savile was invited to open the new unit.
My son said to me when I went to visit later that day I don't know who that fuckin* weird pervert was but he kept coming over to me and kept getting my chair and pushing me about then he tried to lunge at me
Luckily for my son he could move his arms and wheel off but that is how he worked. And that was a year before he died. So it is my belief he never stopped praying in people. There were so many vulnerable people who couldn't get away from him and he had been a strong man in his day - a wrestler!

Has anyone seen "the long shadow" about Peter Sutcliffe. The police are discussing being discreet during questioning because "we don't want to do upset the men" ( who may have used prostitutes). Zero consideration for the women and this is in an slighted society with so called equal rights for women.

Re Saville from what I've previously read I think it was quite tame!
He was literally running absolutely riot!!