Jimmy Saville documentary on Netflix

[AlternativePerspective]

Have just watched this, obviously we all know what he did and the absolutely reprehensible individual he was.

But watching the documentary and all the clips they played, even if he hadn’t committed all those hideous acts, he was a really creepy repulsive bloke. So why did the nation love him so much?

I’m not talking royals and other celebs etc, but ordinary people. The people who filed past his coffin after his death, and mourned his passing, sent in hundreds of tributes etc. Why? He was just so repulsive. Or is it just me?

Back in the 70's Johnny Rotten also tried to blow the whistle about him. You can find the interview on youtube. At the time it was cut from his interview.

A report into West Yorkshire police found they continueD to use him for publicity even though they were aware of the police investigation at Duncroft. In 2007 WYP were asked by Surrey police to look at what records they had about him not only about the school, but other inquiries dating back to 1964. Surrey police were found to have mishandled the abuse allegations when he was alive. Newspapers back then were also blocked from reporting about the investigation.

There is so much more that could have gone into the documentary. Like how he was investigated in two murders, impressions were made of his teeth and during police interviews Sutcliff mention Saville. The two victims found near savilles had bite marks, the only two btw. Sutcliffe always denied one was connected to him. Saville also offered his services to help catch the ripper.

Quite a few of the women that Peter Sutcliffe attacked weren't prostitutes in fact. Any woman who was outside her home or went to the pub was liable to be called a prostitute by the police once they'd decided he was attacking prostitutes. And they clearly felt prostitutes deserved whatever they got.

I think it’s all about the context of the time. I’ve been rewatching the Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister series recently. There’s an episode where a senior MP has been caught out and the Chief Whip asks something like “young girl or little boys”. That’s a line in a political comedy! It’s abhorrent now but in 80s the possibility of child sexual abuse was throwaway line in a hit comedy. It puts Savile’s offending into a context where sexual abuse wasn’t seen as a serious matter.

I also remember when the Louis Theroux documentary came out. It was the closest anyone got to exposing Savile in his lifetime. All those people who now say they knew, that documentary was the time they should have spoken up. Particularly because I remember that LT was pretty heavily criticised for making a national treasure look like a weirdo.

The thread the PP found says a lot, it really does. And I’ll bet good money that in 20-30 years time there will be another posthumous reckoning over an early 21st century celeb and we’ll all say that we always knew he wasn’t right. I can think of plenty of odd ones, but not someone who makes me think he is an abuser.

Name changed to separate this from other things I've posted in my usual name.

As a child I watched the show if it was on but really didn't like him and didn't have a frame of reference or the vocabulary, just found him unpleasant. At the same time, I didn't feel that way about Rolf Harris or Dave Lee Travis, for comparison. I just didn't like him.

I worked at Broadmoor for a while and walked past him once in the security hall. I smiled in acknowledgement but kept walking, that was as close as I ever wanted to be to him. Never imagined what would come out after his death.

But to those saying people like me are jumping on the bandwagon, you're wrong. I definitely felt dislike, but wouldn't have been able to put my finger on the reason. Would never have imagined it.

In later life, I met a parent at a school that I couldn't take to, and again couldn't entirely figure out why. He turned out to be a paedophile, too.

I don’t remember him much so I think it must have been turned off in our house. I never liked Bruce Forsyth either and he was another of those ‘national treasures’

It's actually really dismissive to discount feelings of unease around him. No wonder people don't report things,you can't even say you felt unease on the internet without someone saying it's all hindsight.

My Mum said everyone knew he was a bit weird, nobody thought of him as a usual sort of guy at all. She still wrote in to Jim’ll fix it to meet Duran Duran, now very glad she wasn’t chosen though!

The thing is even in the 70s and 80s it really wasn’t acceptable to joke about sex, nonces and young children. We were all taught to say no and to not let anyone interfere with us. My background is working class so no boarding schools etc. I think the kids in care had a horrifying time and pedophiles picked their targets.

@Silverclocks yes but this is constant, on practically ever interview he mentions it, not being jail bait but implying he is or would be (if he was discovered) wanted by the police or narrowly missing being arrested or ‘I’m feared in every girls school in the country’ etc etc. It’s so noticeable because he constantly alludes to it.

@Malibuismysecrethome

The thing is even in the 70s and 80s it really wasn’t acceptable to joke about sex, nonces and young children. We were all taught to say no and to not let anyone interfere with us. My background is working class so no boarding schools etc. I think the kids in care had a horrifying time and pedophiles picked their targets.

I disagree. We weren’t taught to say no and second was everywhere, Albeit Benny Hill style. But it misogyny was very strong and who would have the strength to say no to Jimmy Saville OBE?

Trixiefirecracker I disagree and what difference would an OBE make.
He gave me the creeps.

Have you watched the documentary?

@Malibuismysecrethome

The thing is even in the 70s and 80s it really wasn’t acceptable to joke about sex, nonces and young children. We were all taught to say no and to not let anyone interfere with us. My background is working class so no boarding schools etc. I think the kids in care had a horrifying time and pedophiles picked their targets.

I don’t really get what you are trying to say? That there was no abuse in working class homes because everyone was taught to say no? 😳 or that you think by saying no the abuse wouldn’t happen? You think no one tried saying no? I’m struggling to see the point you are trying to make. Jimmy Saville didn’t exclusively abuse children in posh boarding schools, quite the opposite.

@Malibuismysecrethome

Trixiefirecracker I disagree and what difference would an OBE make. He gave me the creeps.

The OBE and all the charitable works he carried out meant that he was revered and held up as this saintly character that could do no wrong, he hung out with royalty and was seen as above rebuke that’s why I mentioned it.

I'm 57 so Jimmy Savile was a staple on the TV as I was growing up.
I wasn't particularly taken with him, but I didn't particularly dislike him either.

I saw him as a minor irritation - his persona was irritating, all those silly catch phrases 'guys & gals' 'as it happens' etc etc.
Later I viewed him as a 'has been' that needed to retire. He just seemed irrelevant and boring when he cropped up on things like Radio 1, Top Of The Pops and chat shows. (I felt similarly about Tony Blackburn)
I thought all the prurient leering covered up a sexless or gay reality and I basically saw him as an English eccentric who had somehow become bafflingly popular but who had no malice in him.

When I watched the Louis Theroux interview I actually felt sorry for JS because I felt LT was unfair grilling JS and intimating that there were rumours of pedophilia around him. To my mind he was a man in his 80's, way past his prime, and by now a total has been, who was perhaps unable to defend himself & refute such statements because of a 'no smoke without fire' mind set in the viewing public.

I was shocked when the scale of his offending came to light, and like everyone else amazed that so many people surrounding him and in the entertainment industry had known or had an inkling of what he was like and done nothing.

My mother in law's attitude was eye opening. We watched the news together the night of his state procession style funeral and I expressed surprise at what a big deal was being made of JS. She was very quick to tell me that he was a great man who hade raised millions of pounds for charity and had selflessly helped out at St Jimmy's Hospital in Leeds where she had worked.
I considered myself well and truly put in my place and admitted I'd known very little about his charitable good deeds.

Flash forward a year to the uncovering of his depravity and my MIL was the first to say that she had never liked him and had always known he was creepy and not to be trusted and she had personal experience of him because of his working at St Jimmy's etc etc.

To me that was very telling, lots of people revised their opinions of him with the benefit of hindsight.

Trixiefirecracker you are projecting. I don’t need to clarify my post.

It was also well know on the terraces at Ellend Road about his necrophilia and peadophilia.
So it was well known in certain circles.

@Malibuismysecrethome

The thing is even in the 70s and 80s it really wasn’t acceptable to joke about sex, nonces and young children. We were all taught to say no and to not let anyone interfere with us. My background is working class so no boarding schools etc. I think the kids in care had a horrifying time and pedophiles picked their targets.

It wasn't exactly acceptable but it absolutely was normal and every day. I could give you lots of examples off the top of my head that happened to me when I was around 10, 11, 12. Safe guarding and knowledge/education around kids was very different back then. Life was very different. Flashers weren't necessarily reported for instance. We were just told to ignore them or laugh at them and run away. Fast forward 40 years and we now know a lot more about the escalation of crimes from indecent exposure but back then, we just didn't.

No, I’m not projecting I’m just trying to understand your point as it doesn’t make sense and projecting what??? That’s also cryptic. 😂@Malibuismysecrethome

@Palloom

Nowadays he wouldn't have to front charities and infiltrate influential people's lives to groom and assault the vulnerable girls/women that he did.

He could just say he was a woman and that would be that. Access all areas.

Very true.

Trixie... why do you need me to explain my post to you. What I have said is perfectly understandable. You don’t have to agree.

@ENoeuf

I feel Selena Scott is trying too hard to distance herself. It’s all innuendo though , why don’t they just say outright what he did. It’s a bit of a weird documentary.

I didn't quite understand what Selena Scott was trying to say was it that she knew/didn't know about him? Or that she didn't like him/ what he was saying and doing on the show. Her interview seemed a bit strange.

If you are saying what I think you are saying then I definitely don’t agree….seems bizarre to think your childhood experiences are the only truth out there.

@Imabouttoexplode exactly this, that’s mine and many of my friend’s experience too, I remember being distinctly freaked out about my ‘uncles’ wandering hands. He wasn’t an uncle but we all seemed to be persuaded to call any of my parents friends ‘uncles’ even though they were no relation whatsoever. Safeguarding children certainly wasn’t a thing back then and we just roamed out all day, my folks had no idea where I was at any given point.

But to the general public he was just a bit of an odd bod DJ celebrity who was on the telly

I'd agree with this. If it was an 'open secret' it's one that passed most of the population by. We trusted the investigative press to do their job, and uncover and expose scandals. That was badly misplaced - press standards are not what we thought (and becaome even worse with phone hacking). And if it really was an open secret, journalists would have known and should have worked on it - quietly maybe at the start, but as they amassed information, it would becone publishable. And it's not a question of guts - look at how The Mail named the Stephen Lawrence killers on the front page, even though prosecutions were not at that time forthcoming, and threw down the gauntlet to see them in court. I just don't understand why this 'open secret' was not pursued.

I suspect there's a lot of post hoc rationalisation going on, people not wanting to admit they had never spotted anything amiss.

I didn't particularly like him - yes Jim'll Fix It was the stuff of dreams (a small group from my school got to meet a pop group that way and there was nothing amiss about anything with them) - but that was because he was too old and too try-hard

If he was alive, he'd be nearly 96.

If you were 10ish in the mid 70s, and he would then have been 50ish so older than your parents and possibly same age as grandparents. And still trying to be trendy. That was a yuk factor in itself