Jimmy Savile

[Andontothenextproblem]

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…

Wow that really opened my eyes to the series, you are absolutely right about the BBC doing their best to erase all culpability
Thank you for your input

Saville has a particular way of speaking, you can't gain purchase on him. He sort of speaks at you.
He's a one man show and that's it, he jollies people along and every thinks they should laugh along with him and it sort of builds.

He's beyond utterly repulsive so there must have been some charisma of some sort.

I also feel the drama lacks pace, it don't show the sheer vast volume of girls and stuff he had going on.
It was a whirl but the drama seems slow.. One girl here then somewhere else ages away another.

Thanks TurnerP.
When I say my stepdad hated him more than anybody else I mean more than he hated anyone not more than anyone hated Savile!
My stepdad had worked in hotels for decades and even as a child porter at train stations in London where he had been abused at times.

I think the bit that I found most upsetting is that we haven't learned from it.

Russell Brand. Huw Edwards. Phil Schofield. And that's just in the last few months... all enabled by those around them. They may not be pedaloes like Savile was .... but they were all still abusing their positions.

I also think it's generational to a degree. Mum was 14 in the late 1960's when she met my Dad... he was in his mid 20s. I'd have locked my DD's in the house rather than allow that - yet my grandparents were fine with it because they knew Dad's family.

Thanks for the links - I’ve just read it. It was written in 1974 and I wonder what more he would have written 10 or 20 years later.
It’s an interesting and appalling insight into the way he was thinking. He describes himself as “term time boyfriend” to the girls at Duncroft school, some of whom he abused quite horribly. He clearly thought that doing what he did to them was perfectly fine, because they made themselves available.

I’d like to see a major investigation into the sexual abuse that occurred in orphanages/care homes. I have a nasty feeling it was absolutely rife until well into the 1980s/90s. I once read a book by a British journalist who’d been raised in a Barnado’s home in the 1970s. The creature who ran it routinely raped the young girls, and his filthy, disgusting, subhuman wife would threaten to separate them from their siblings if they said anything. The overwhelming impression was that nobody cared. The author describes how a young nurse started working there, and caught her boss raping one of the children. Next day she was asked to leave. But here’s the shocking bit. She said goodbye to the kids, told them that they could contact her if they liked, and that was that. She sort of shrugged it off!

People just seemed to accept sexual violence in those days, especially against poor, working-class or marginalised girls. I remember reading something in the paper by a woman who’d grown up in a deprived part of London in the 1950s. When she was very young, she was sexually assaulted. I don’t think she was raped, but it was a serious assault. She recalled running home in tears, bursting through the door and telling her mum. But her mother’s attitude was very strange - she was sorry, gave her a hug, but then carried on with the washing up. There was this attitude that if you were a young girl, and living in a tough area, you were likely to be sexually assaulted. That it was a nasty but inevitable part of growing up. Tracey Emin said that in 1970s Kent, she often heard girls say that a friend had been “broken into” the night before (i.e raped). Again, it was just accepted.

I doubt Saville was as exceptional as we like to think. He just took it to an extreme.

@LakeTiticaca my friend was a nurse at Stoke Mandeville, on the children's ward at the time he was around. Her husband was also a nurse there. She's adamant nothing happened. I can't understand how she thinks that, given the evidence.

@JaneyGee

I lived in a children's home until 1984 and yes, it was definitely still happening then.

@FictionalCharacter @YokoOnosBigHat how exactly do you download? Says unavailable?

A person I knew well, and knew for most of my life, was a survivor of CSA.
He never met Saville but warned me on more than one occasion that the man was a paedophile . Also when we worked together as young teens our workplace was being filmed and Stuart Hall was presenting. This person absolutely refused to leave me alone with Hall - this was the mid '80s, well before the truth about him was known. I was utterly bemused at the time.
BUT, who would have believed his view of those men? At the time no one .

For everyone saying 'Oh weren't the 70s/80s awful', do you really think the culture has changed that much ahem Russell Brand/Epstein/Harvey Weinstein ahem? Powerful and famous men can pretty much get away with anything.

First link - you have to be a member and logged in. You can only “borrow” the book if nobody else is reading it.
Second link - choose one of the slow download options and wait. Worked for me but it took a long time to download.

Right about powerful men and cultures.
But people are more aware now. Words like paedo and perv weren't used that much before the late 80s. I remember then feeling empowered that you had words to describe the behaviour of these men. And people listening to kids.
No it's far from perfect but before that it was more of a put up and shut up culture.

He was repulsive inside and out. A thoroughly nasty piece of work. Well done to Steve Coogan for his portrayal; it must have made him feel grubby

I was 14 in 1978, from a small town near Leeds and the necrophilia rumours were widespread at school.
I remember a friend's father was in the West Yorkshire police and he wouldn't let her attend an event where Savile was going to be present. She said he hated him, in a way that was not clear why back then, but with hindsight, maybe he knew things about him. I remember that because my friend's father had also been involved in the Ripper investigation and was very overprotective of her and where she could go. She complained that his job made him not trust anyone!

@beguilingeyes yes it's definitely changed by far. People would be sacked on the spot for sexual harassment and so on. People are more likely to speak out as its not so much of a taboo.

I’m so sorry. God, it makes SO angry. Not only that it happened, but the way people just shrugged it off, or even made it into a joke. Sexually abusing an orphaned child is about as low as a human being can sink. God only knows what horrors went on in the workhouses and orphanages of Victorian Britain. Dickens and Thomas Hardy hint at it, but don’t dare be explicit.

Has anyone noticed the striking similarity between Saville and Brand? I mean the weird clothes, the strange voice, the artificial/fake personality. It’s like neither of them are real people -just masks.

It’s always struck me how these creeps use flamboyance and zaniness as a mask to hide behind. See also Gary Glitter.

He was the youngest of the siblings so maybe some of them were grown up and had moved away when he was born.

Horrifyingly, one of the brothers was clearly very similar, but on a lesser scale (upsetting link):

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/11820009.jimmy-saviles-brother-sexually-abused-patients-at-springfield-hospital-in-tooting-report-finds/

I found this the other day when I was looking for some background to the programme. It looked to me as if he was sacked a long time before the inquiry which was not held until after Jimmy Savile died.

I think The Reckoning is good at showing how some people were concerned at the time but the prevailing culture and Savile's domineering character shut down investigations into his behaviour.

I said this to my husband when we were watching. V similar aura about them, same gestures, energy etc.

Which of their novels would you say give the most hints at this?

I thought it was odd they got hardly a mention and wondered if JS himself had been sexually abused as a child. Not that this is an excuse for anything he did of course.

Fucking hell, he's more vile than I thought. It just proves how destructive a person can be towards others. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
I can't imagine how furious I'd be if he'd been interfering with my dead Grandma.
I wish so badly that he'd been caught and in the court of justice before he'd died. He escaped the easy way by death.
I am a survivor of paedophilia and I can definitely say that it ruins lives. It would have been better that he hadn't existed!!!!!