To think that Saville was NEVER a "Much loved family favourite"???

[MrsWinnibago]

Sorry to start a thread about this sick, awful animal but they just said on Radio 4 that he was a much loved family favourite.

I CLEARLY remember watching him on Jim'l Fix It and thinking "Oh he's HORRIBLE!"

I hated him...he was frightening and I could see that some children were very scared of him on that show.

Did ANYONE actually enjoy his "performances" and appearances?? I don't think so.

I think the establishment kept him where he was...on TV and in positions of power because he knew too much about THEIR activities.

And it's funny how it all came out once he was dead and couldn't name anyone else.

I challenge anyone to think back and remember how much they "loved" him at the time before his activities were known.

Reading with interest...

I was born mid-sixties, so the 1970s were 'my childhood'.

So, along with many of you I'm 'the Jim'll fix it' generation, in a manner of speaking.

Whether he was weird or not was never at issue in our household because television was disapproved of. We were grudgingly allowed BBC but not ITV - so clever of Saville to get on the BBC.

Suspect this was the same in many other households.

My aunt, uncle and cousins are, however, very different. leeds born and bred, uncle worked for Jimmy Saville in the 1960s. They hero-worshipped him. Uncle even went to the funeral. One of the lights of his life.

As I see it, Jimmy Saville was one of the BBCs ways of getting the working class - for want of a better word - on board - -as that was his roots. My Dad rejected his roots - which is why we weren't really allowed television - but my uncle didn't.

My Grandma probably loved him - like she loved all entertainers. Maybe the old styel entertainment from the music halls went sleazy on the television - because that is where Jimmy Saville came from.

Muddled thoughts, sorry - but probably the 'family favourite' stuff came from the working class.

I loved him as a kid, always wanted to be on Jim'll Fix It!

I watched that interview Louie Theroux did with him some years back and he was odd.....really odd!

Total naivety, but it was only in my adulthood that I clocked he wasn't right

I hated jfi as the fixes were shit. Can't remember any in partic but kind of like asking to ride a race horse and being given a go on a shetland pony.

I didn't like him at all although never suspected peado just didn't like him.

I think one of the reasons he got so many viewers was back then we only had 3 channels and bbc2 was mostly testcard. We used to watch all manner of crap because the only other thing on was darts or snooker or the news. That doesn't mean we would have watched it if monkey magic or take heart had been on at the same time.

That's a good point, Jjuice. It's so hard now to think yourself back to the days when there were only three TV channels and no way of recording stuff from the TV either, so you watched it live or you missed it. It would take a royal wedding or funeral now to get the sort of viewing figures any old midweek early evening rubbish could get back in the 70s.

Instincts, mmm, great, aren't they?

My parents gave me all the warnings about strangers enticing me with puppies but I instinctively trusted people with spectacles because they both wore them at a time when relatively young people didn't - apart from Ronnie Kray and Dennis Nilsen, that is.

Many's the time I'd toy with telling my mum that as a joke. But I didn't, because that would have horrified her, because like most parents she was so watchful and covered just about everything.

But sometimes everything isn't enough.

Even though nothing bad happened to me, the suggestion that she didn't cover the specs angle would have made her feel terrible. She would have thought it was her fault, when of course, it wasn't.

People who want to hurt you are determined. They have to get lucky once; you have to be lucky all the time.

Luckily, I was lucky. Some children aren't. I can only imagine the ordeals they've gone through and those of their parents and that are continuing and will until the days they die.

Hey-ho, if only they'd had spidey senses

That's why I find this OP and her supporters so offensive.

And complacent...

I was born in the mid 60s too, so I grew up watching the likes of Jim'll Fix It. I loved it at the time. I thought he was a bit crazy, but never picked up any sinister vibe.

Clearly he was sinister though. What a perv!! He hid behind the smokescreen of raising millions for charity in order to feed off and abuse children and young people.

He was indeed loved, and taken to be a 'national treasure' or 'institution'- a bit oddball but that's in keeping with great British characters.
The only person I knew who didn't like him was my dad, who said 'He's a funny feller, there's something funny about him.' He meant creepy.

Yes some bitter old telly cunt like Ted Rodgers was bemoaning the fact that he got 15 milliom for 3-2-1 and that since the oxbridge lot took over tv you're lucky if you got a million viewers for something it was hailed as a miracle.

Completely ignoring the fact this was pre home recording, pre multi-channel so the fact 15 million people watched whatever dreck he served up was not a marker of quality, but of the fact there was fuck all else to watch.

I always told my daughter to trust her instincts, in the sense that if she feels that someone is creepy, keep away from them. She may be wrong, so she shouldn't be unpleasant, but..."

well you are doing her a disservice because paedophiles/rapists who seem really creepy are not so likely to get access to children.They have to be charming and personable.In fact the people most likely to molest your children is their step dad or other close family member.

I also used to love Jim'll Fix It. As I got older, especially in my teens, I found him quite sad and try-hard, not wanting to let go of his youth and be 'down with the kids'.

At no point, ever, even as an adult, did I find him creepy or imagine him capable of any of the stuff that's come to light.

And, to be honest, I don't believe half the people who say they 'knew' about him all along or had 'a feeling' about him (on here, or rl). From watching him on tv? Hardly. As they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I'm much more likely to believe people who actually had dealings with him or those who knew people who had dealings with him because it's based on something more akin to evidence that way.

But instinctual feelings as an 8-year-old that someone on a family tv show was 'off'? Not buying that, sorry. It's very much like when Joanna Yates was murdered (as already mentioned) and the newspapers immediately jumping on Chris Jeffries, despite him being completely innocent, because he was 'different'.

Different, in JS's case, is a co-incidence, not proof of a wrong 'un. It's a dangerous path to go down.

limited I had something similar in that the stranger danger adverts featured a bloke in a blue cortina estate. The net result was that I was nervous about people in blue cortina estates. As that was the 'stranger's car' but if they'd turned up in a red Morris Marina Saloon I'd have gone off completely happily. So in that case my instict to be fearful of men driving blue cortina estates was in no rational and like all ssupposedly instinctive thoughts and behaviour was actually learned behaviour.

Just like many others I liked Jim ll' Fix It but really did not like the man even as a child. He talked in a strange way. Not really talking 'to' anyone but always 'at' them. The weird way he walked, always wearing tracksuits. He always seemed false and odd to me as a child. Not normal and nice.

He lived near my parents and they loved him and his charity work as many others did.

3 channels, AllMimsy? Not in our house, where commercial TV was the Axis of Evil, and I had to sneak into the front room and have the volume right Dow, to watch General Hospital. And don't get me started on the utter unacceptability of children watching TV before 4pm, or - gasp, shock, horror - on a Saturday morning!!

My big tv highlight as a kid was being allowed to stay up for the Hammer horror double on a Friday night in the autumn/winter.

"Because I have an abuser in my family, I find the JS story and his part in my childhood to be very distressing actually."

I think you'll find that those of us who, as far as we know, don't have abusers in our families find the JS story and his part in our childhoods very distressing too.

I used to love watching Jim'll fix it and wrote several times to try and go on the show. Thank goodness I was never chosen, my thoughts go out to those unfortunate children who were.

I was indifferent to JS as a kid Didn't care about him.

But Back2 makes an interesting and valid point. There are still people out there who will automatically believe someone is nice just because they are on tv (yes DM I do mean you) and will also automatically believe everything someone says if they happen to be on tv (DM again)

IMO something like this could happen again. Probably not on the same scale and I really hope it doesn't but we live in an even worse celeb worship culture than there was back then

A quick google search will show you that a certain music mogul put up the bail money for Jonathan King.

Compos Blue Cortina, you say? For me and my '70s school contemporaries the Perv Patrol car was a white Escort van; windscreen and passenger and driver windows but no rear windows - really sinister, that.

Not a white Transit. That was reserved for bank blags.

Back2 - sometimes the humpty face gets posted instead of the sad one if you're using the MN app. I hope that is the case here otherwise I agree that that post was totally inappropriate. I hope you are not finding the press about this case too difficult and you are being supported.

limited: I agree that instincts aren't always great. Obviously there are lots of people who appear to be perfectly charming and pleasant but are actually psychopaths or abusers.

But Savile didn't fall into this category for me. He always seemed absurdly creepy. He made me shudder. I was completely unsurprised to discover that he was a serial sex abuser.

I have never understood why he was so popular. I honestly think that people who didn't find him creepy must have been terrible judges of character (I'm thinking adults rather than children).

I've only read the OP (sorry) but I felt the same about him when I was a child, as did my sister, and I vividly remember us laughing about how creepy he was as we watched his dubious TV show and got children to sit on his knee.

I'm sort of glad that our instincts proved right, in a way - does that sound wrong? Not glad for all those he abused, obviously

sorry my sentences don't make sense in that post. I hope it is clear what I meant. (The other place I post has an edit button, I LOVE it.)