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.

As a child I thought he was weird and scary and worried why I thought that when everybody else seemed to think he was so wonderful. Then as an adult I found my sisters felt the same. It was the format of the programme we liked.

I definately didnt have any pervert radar when I was a kid. I dont think I liked HIM particuarly but I loved Jim fix it show and it was a family favourite TV show in our house in the 70's. He was just the man on the show. Other TV shows at the time like CHIPs - I kind of had a kiddy crush on one of the bike cops - with Saville - that kind of thought didnt even enter my head at all.

I recall my mum referring him to him as odd or weird but to this day I assume (that back then in 70's) she was referring to his eccentricity not that she thought he was a peadophile or anything sinister.

She certainly let me write to him several times in my bid to get on the show - which thankfully I never made.

I think when you go way back to the 60's and 70's people knew there were peados ( I dont think I did as young child - but I mean adults knew) but I think people just assumed it was the odd bloke in his rain mac down the road who still lived at home aged 45 rather than a TV celebrity. Things were just so different then. Can you imagine a kid TV presenter smoking a cigar on a kids show today????

Really its all very sad. Although there are plenty of people on this thread saying they just knew something was up with him there are loads like me that had no idea at all. In retrospect whats really disturbing is how he groomed a nation really.

He got away with what he did for so long by grooming nearly everyone he dealt with - even the public.

The whole thing is just so sickeningly sad and vile.

"Bluebirdy the 70s were an odd time...I remember a LOT of fear as a child."

Well, I don't remember a lot of fear in the 70s. I was pretty scared about IRA bombs on the tube, I was quite worried about crossing roads, I didn't like Catweazle much and I once had a nasty experience with a bag of Bovril crisps. Oh, and there was that time I got stuck on the top of the climbing frame in the park and thought I might starve to death. But a lot of fear? Not in my childhood.

I had no strong feelings about JS - he was just a TV personality who dressed flamboyantly and said "Now then now then now then". But I would have loved to have been on the show. I wanted him to take me back to Victorian times, but knew he couldn't do it, so never wrote in.

I read threads like this and I wonder why I'm posting, honestly.

I didn't like Catweazle much
me neither, perhaps js modeled himself on Catweazel and worzell Gummidge?
There is a tradition of eccentric characters in childrens fiction...with whom children have secret friendships

Well then why ARE you posting? singer's you've not said much...just scoffed at my recollection of a fearful childhood...which is insensitive of you.

Maybe I was just a weird kid, but I do recall in the 70s that many of us at school seemed (by today’s standards anyway) to scare the living bejesus out of each other talking of all the horrors happening at the time. The Yorkshire Ripper, Dennis Nielsen, Hindley and Brady weren’t that far in history at that time either and people were always using them as the bogey men/women figures we had to look out for, the massacre at the Munich Olympics, the IRA and the climate of fear they created in the UK, all the other international terrorist organisations operating profusely at that time (Bader Meinhoff, Red Army, Red Brigade etc), incidents of kidnap and ransom were very common during the 70s, many airliners were hijacked, trains were hijacked on the continent, the “cold war” and the fact we lived very close to an American nuclear base which would have been used to attack the USSR from British soil. I remember being particularly affected (well for a kid of about 7 or 8) with what was happening with the killing fields in Cambodia at that time (I even remember the Blue Peter appeals for Cambodia, vividly remember them).

Oh I don’t know, maybe I was just a weird kid surrounded by even weirder kids, in that we did seem to enjoy scaring each other, but there was a lot of very scary shit going down in the 70s. Add to the real stuff going down the fact that we were scared of Dracula, vampires in general, Frankenstein AND his bride, Jekyll and Hyde, and went out of our ways to read these books and see these movies, oh we had a rare old scary time watching Hammer House of Horror, or the Saturday late night horror double bill, then being scared all week after it. It all seems silly now, and maybe kids do just rejoice in scary shit, but I do kind of agree with the poster who said the 70s seemed scary. Though maybe today’s kids will look back on this decade, with wars in the middle east, genocides in Africa, annexing of neighbouring areas by Russia etc, as being equally scary.

I wish I could remember who Cat Weasle was, lol, I can't. I just know we called a secondary school teacher that name behind his back. I did adore Wurzle Gummidge though. He wasn't scarey, he was cute. lol. (I know it's in the eye of the beholder). Les Dawson though did scare me, never quite worked out why.

Bloody hell singersgirl. That was almost identical to my '70s childhood fears, though my uneasiness about crisps wasn't confined to Bovril ones - green ones of any flavour set me off. I didn't like the Cybermen either.

My other obsession was rabies.

I went on a school trip abroad and my mum forbade me to touch animals. I stroked a dog and it licked my hand and I fretted endlessly that I would die in a convulsing, slobbering heap. But I was more scared of my mum to confess to disobeying her, so I kept quiet.

It's been nearly forty years. I think I may have passed the incubation period, but I'm still unsure.

I have to say that Jim'll Fix It held no terrors. What a fool I was.

Catweazle was a TV programme about a magician. I can't remember very much about it, but you can google it for images and more information than I can provide.

Catweazle was also the nickname of Leslie Bailey, one of the paedophiles in the nasty little gang that murdered Jason Swift and Mark Tildesley, among others. He was murdered in prison by some other inmates.
The gang included Sidney Cooke and Robert Oliver.

I remember both things around the name of Catweazle very well tootanith.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is except I'd go a bit further than calling the murderers a 'nasty little gang'.

Having mad hair doesn't mark you out as a paedophile. If only it did. Then we could all go home early.

I think I had a pretty sheltered childhood, as far as knowledge of the awful things going on in the world was concerned (I wasn't sheltered from the people who bullied me, but that is a whole different thread). As far as I can recall, I did not know about paedophiles or child abuse - maybe it was partly because I lived in a very rural area, and went to a small-ish comprehensive, but I do not recall any talk about it either at home or at school. No rumours about teachers, nothing.

Maybe it is also because I was so excluded by my classmates - I was out of pretty much every loop.

We watched the BBC news, and had a daily paper (The Guardian), but apart from a story about Satanic abuse in the Scottish Islands, I don't remember any child abuse stories.

I do remember being shocked when a friend who,I was doing my nurse training with told me about an incident where she and a friend were flashed at - I think I was kept in ignorance by my parents.

I was child of 70's and rememeber being left in cars for hours whislt the adults drank, a few of my friends were left in cars too.

I saw a comedy series the other night, forget name, set in 60 or 70, a young boy approaches his dad in the pub and says he is tired his dad just says " here are the keys son".

SDTG I had older siblings....older by at least 5 years and I do think that I heard stuff I never would have otherwise. But my childhood was happy and I had no idea about pedophiles....just knew people weren't all good.

Some of The people that forced him into our lives and encouraged popular culture to respect him were the ones that knew he was a piece of shit. It's them that need the judging

Y ^^

I saw the Boat that Rocked the other day for the second time, I really enjoyed first viewing but second time round, the girls flooding onto the boat....made me feel uncomfortable.

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

I cant remember what my mum thought about him although I do have vague recollections of her pulling a yuk face when he came on...and we would laugh at him, and his horrid get up....

But he was someone who didn't inspire us to delve into his life, his world and so on. He was just a back ground figure on TV. Oh look there is that yuk looking man again.

However I do remember my Dad speaking in awe of his charity work, particularly as we had a disabled family member and lived in the vicinity of Stoke Mandeville.

Back2Two... I think you're back-tracking in your latest post. You said this and I left the thread then because your judgement jarred, you were essentially saying that any adult who didn't act - purely on gut feeling - with no solid information whatsoever, and protect their children from JS and his ilk, were deficient in some way.

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Back2Two Fri 27-Jun-14 13:07:45

We were never allowed to watch Jim'll Fix It. My mum wouldn't let us-she always said, even then that there was something deeply nasty about him and that he wasn't right somehow.

I SO respect your mum for this. She did what adults should have done and she protected you.

I was child of 70's and remember being left in cars for hours whislt the adults drank, a few of my friends were left in cars too

I saw a comedy series the other night, forget name, set in 60 or 70, a young boy approaches his dad in the pub and says he is tired his dad just says " here are the keys son"

That kind of neglect/abuse was rife where I grew up in the 70s. So rife it was more the norm than the exception really. Maybe not left in cars while the parents drank, but many of us kids were left home alone practically every weekend night when our parents went out to drink. Many of those kids were left babysitting younger siblings. I distinctly remember my childhood best friend was left babysitting her 2 year younger sister, and her 6 year younger brother, definitely when she (we) were 9 or 10, and possibly even earlier than that, but my memory isn’t as accurate the further back I go – but definitely a 10 yr old left in charge of an 8 and 4 year old. When I was 11 I was left with a newborn for 5 hour stretches at a time. I would guess that at least a third of my school class didn’t have a mother or father who even got up out of bed of a morning to make them a breakfast or help them wash and dress. If they had breakfasts, they made it themselves, that was if there was any food left in the house, which often wasn’t the case as too much money was spent in the pubs and clubs. This was all common knowledge in the school and nothing was ever done about it as long as the kids didn’t turn up late for class. They could turn up unfed, unwashed, and unkempt, that didn’t matter as long as they weren’t late.

The good old 70s. lol

And here we go again!

I am not making a point, Limited; I am merely answering Blubirdy's question!

I didn't feel neglected though, I was well fed, dressed, but just occasionally I would be left in the car for very long periods, so long, once, I was desperate for the loo, and was too scared to go into the pub to get my DS and DBIL, so I peed on the car seat.

He was second hand car dealer due to sell car that week, so that was a little bit of divine retribution. It was just the done thing.

Why can't we get back to discussion.
I think most of us are on the same page.

Never could stand him. Even as a kid he gave me the creeps.

I apologise tanith. I should have realised that you were merely explaining. Sorry about that

Psst, Limitedperiodonly, I was terrified of rabies too. We went to Greece when I was 10 and I ran away from all the cats and had nightmares about being bitten by them. But JS? No.

Of course things were different 40 years ago. Many of us walked home from school and let ourselves in at 8 or 9years old. It wasn't scary , though - it was just life.

Not to worry, Limited :)

one thing that struck me was JS's constant drivel and inability to speak normal full sentences without bells and whistles on it. I was abused by a neighbor who did the exact same thing. He sort of brayed and covered up what he was saying with nonsense. One of his favs was "Did you get any slaps today at school." and then tap your bum. this was the very low end of his behavior. No one liked to be left alone with Uncle F. He was the very weirdest of men. No one spragged him up was ecause everyone owed him money. He lent money and was very generous about when it came back. he was tolerated by the adults. even though eh wasn't safe around grown women. no one put the brakes on him cos they all owed him too much money.
\But the strange speech patterns struck me as odd. even at the time. JS irritated me on TOFTP because of his jabbering and strutting cock of the walk schtick