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.

Are you for real? My GOD you're just coming across as weird! And Goady too. I really will ignore you now. Comment and goad all you like. I'll be back when you're gone and the interesting people have returned.

IMO, the single inverted commas imply a précis or summation of the sense of what someone has written, whereas the proper speech marks should be a word for word quote.

'have you had a drink'

Have you anything else smart arse to say to me?
Would you like to say how awful Saville was and how sorry you feel for his victims again?

Pag its very brave of you to speak out about the abuse you had, but to be fair, there may be others on here who were also abused or have experience of it too but may not want to speak out openly about it.

Just because you find it upsetting that some people are saying they had a weird feeling about him, in general other people may be finding it helpful and interesting for all sorts of reasons.

Speak for yourself but you do not know what other people have gone through on here or how they feel.

I am going.
You can sit and post how awful Saville was and how dreadful you feel about it. And then you can be fucking sneery to someone who actually lives with the issues you pretend to be affected and upset about.

Carpet
Forgive me - I am heading off. If I have expressed my experience as being typical, I apologise. I just am irritated by the 'how awful he was, I always spotted he was weird'.
It's a bit heartless when it is so 'only a fool wouldn't have known' - which it was on here.

I always dislike him but I never knew. If I was being abused at the very time he was on tv being fretted, I'm prepared to forgive others who were happily clueless.

I think the 'fuck off and stop commenting' line is illustrative of how people want to be right rather than empathetic,

I never liked Savile because he was rude and often came out with a snide cutting statement to his young guests on his show. I was young then, but I disliked him because of this rude, harsh streak which is unusual and which made him unpredictable so that you never knew what he would say or how he would act next.

I was never keen on Michael Barrymore many years later either because I found him rude and didn't like some of his sarcastic statements that he made to guests on his shows.

Are you for real? My GOD you're just coming across as weird! And Goady too.

That's such nasty thing to say.

And I didn't need special powers to work that out.

Can I just say a word in defence of Jeremy Clarkson?

He isn't in the same league imo - and I'll stand up and say that if it ever comes out that he is a true bastard and no one knew/everyone at the BBC knew.

I certainly didn't intend to congratulate myself on having hated JS when I was a child. I am just glad that I felt suspicious of his supposed 'love for children' and I was right to, because it means some part of my brain was working well, even though it didn't work so well as I got older and wasted time on some proper bastards I didn't realise were bastards till too late.

There is a lot of emphasis here and elsewhere on trusting ones instincts in regard to personal relationships, and fear being a gift, and the idea that if you sense someone is a freak or they are making you uncomfortable, it is generally best to leave their company.

So I don't see what is wrong about being glad to have had good instincts at some point in ones life. I don't feel I am better than other people because of this. Just more fortunate that I never encountered him myself, and was not abused by anyone during my childhood.

Sheer dumb luck if you like. You only had to be in the wrong place with the wrong person at the wrong time.

Back to Jeremy Clarkson and really, it isn't comparable because though people dislike his politics, and some dislike his humour, he's still funny, and he has a wife and family which suggests (perhaps) that he isn't a complete loner and hated by everyone (JS didn't have that even) and he also appears to be very good friends with the other presenters, on a genuine level, which stands in his favour, and also he isn't creepy. Rude, arrogant and sometimes wrong, yes - but not a creep.

JS was clearly even then not much liked by anyone on the programme, he was never humorous, never interesting, never looked like he had any friends. There always appeared to be dischord and a sense of uncomfortable silence around him. All he had was a misplaced self confidence that led to a sort of Emperor's New Clothes effect, with people around him believing he must be special basically because he acted like he was.

Delusional narcissist are the words that spring to mind - sociopath too. But I'm not a psychologist so those are just suggestions.

If Richard Hammond is party to any sort of cover up I'll eat my tyres.

'So I don't see what is wrong about being glad to have had good instincts at some point in ones life. I don't feel I am better than other people because of this. Just more fortunate that I never encountered him myself, and was not abused by anyone during my childhood.

Sheer dumb luck if you like. You only had to be in the wrong place with the wrong person at the wrong time.'

Sorry what I meant to say was, if I had been in that position, I am sure that I would have been just as vulnerable to him/another abusive person as those who were abused. I was at a safe distance, watching on television. I had no way of knowing what he was really doing. I just hated him. If I had met him I would have likely let him do what he wanted, because I was a child, and he was powerful compared to the children he abused.

I was just lucky. I expect many of those poor kids felt the same way about him, that he was revolting and creepy, but they were in no position to protect themselves from him and the collusion that went on around him.

"I think it is important to say very many people found him creepy and very many knew he was unsavoury at best and abusive and everyone turned a blind eye. The blind eye is what's most shocking in all of these cases e.g. the Catholic Church etc. People knew and did nothing. To me, that is far more abhorrent than the existence of a lone monster. People knew and did nothing and let his star ascend despite it all."

This is a very important point. But I think what concerns me is the fact of his "creepiness" is overshadowing the extraordinary blind eye turning and collusion that must have happened to allow him to live the life he did. I wish he hadn't been "creepy" looking at all- because mostly abusers aren't.

Only on Mumsnet could an innocent question beget such negativity and accusations of smugness.

My original question was asking if others felt the same as me...that they'd never considered him a favourite. I honestly didn't think I'd offend anyone asking that!

I shouldn't have bitten back at Pagwatch who was obviously affected by the thread....but she was commenting along with others...and then when I addressed her in a normal fashion she told me off and said not to talk to her!

I was taken aback by that...didn't know why she was directing her negativity at me.

I am of course sorry if people thought I was being insensitive but I still don't think my question was bad.

I will say again...as an 8 year old I never "knew" he was anything....I never Claimed to know he was a "wrongun" or that I had "instincts"

My negaive feelings about him came as a result of on particular episode of JFI where he was openly mean, shouty and grumpy towards a child who was on the show. I saw clearly the child was afraid of him and then decided I didn't like him. That's all. How is that smug?

I don't think you were smug Mrswinnibago. I felt exactly the same way about him and could never understand how he was on TV.

my negaive feelings about him came as a result of on particular episode of JFI where he was openly mean, shouty and grumpy towards a child who was on the show. I saw clearly the child was afraid of him and then decided I didn't like him. That's all. How is that smug?

Doesn't seem at all smug to me!
I don't recall seeing anything like that.
For me it's very difficult to stop my memories of jfi being tainted by these revelations, it's hard to say what I really thought of him because I can't put aside what I now know.

Infact 'tainted' is the wrong word, swamped may be better.

Your question is not bad at all.

Its important to talk about these things.

People on TV are merely another product like coke, bread that our being sold to us.

Hakluyt not everyone found him creepy, some saw him as a sort of grandpa figure who devoted his life to charity and his mum.

In the 70's I only had eyes for David Cassidy, js himself just wasn't all that interesting since he wasn't in any way a 'heart throb'

"Hakluyt not everyone found him creepy, some saw him as a sort of grandpa figure who devoted his life to charity and his mum."

I agree. And as someone much older than most on here, I am prepared to stick my neck out and say that was the prevailing view of him at the time- coupled with the "typical English eccentric" tag. The "creep" thing is pure retrospectoscope viewing.

In the 70's I only had eyes for David Cassidy, js himself just wasn't all that interesting since he wasn't in any way a 'heart throb'

Susanne If you swap "Robert Plant" for "David Cassidy", me too.

I'm far more upset about the accusations against Paul Gambaccini. He is someone I admire; an urbane, articulate, liberal American with excellent taste in music.

Hakluyt seriously I'm astonished that anyone at any time didn't look at Savile and think "yuk"

He was hideously unattractive. There's no retrospective rewriting of history going on in my house. Of course we didn't think "sexual predator" but we definitely thought "ugh"

I can't believe the lack of sensitivity and tact towards people who were actually victims in this thread. Some of you need to take a long hard look at yourselves.

I haven't read every single post (probably just as well) but I really don't understand the turn this thread has taken either. Savile was very very weird - he never came across as a normal person.

What bothers me now is that lots of us clearly found him deeply repellent, yet alarm bells never sounded, it seems, for many people in power. What was it that led senior politicians and civil servants to give him the keys to Broadmoor? That is an extraordinary thing to do: Broadmoor was and is a high-security psychiatric institution housing, among others, the Yorkshire Ripper. Why would you let anyone have the keys to it unless they were a mental health professional? Let alone someone whose persona was as decidedly odd as Savile's.

Oh and "typical English eccentrics" for me are Lord Longford, Lucinda Lambton, Edith Sitwell, the Marquis of Bath, Ivor Cutler and the like- not an inarticulate show-off in a shiny, nylon track-suit.

I can't believe the lack of sensitivity and tact towards people who were actually victims in this thread

I don't believe in closing down discussion and debate, why wasn't saville caught earlier.... people afraid to speak out.....people squashed, people being hidden and told to shut up.

when people are allowed to talk and join up, things happen.

Places like North Korea go to great lengths to stop people from communicating.