Page 4 | Jimmy Saville documentary on Netflix

Maybeitstimeforachange · 07/04/2022 15:41

@Ohquietone

Very odd that he spent five days alone with his mother after she died in her open coffin.

Inside the coffin with her?

YouHaveYourFathersBreasts · 07/04/2022 15:43

My mum grew up watching him on TOTP and was apparently shocked he turned out to be such a monster but did acknowledge he was a “strange” man. I only remember him on Jim’ll fix it and I didn’t like him. I was a very young child so wouldn’t have realised why I didn’t like him just that I didn’t like him.

Catshaveiteasy · 07/04/2022 15:44

I always thought he was creepy, it's not just you. And I'm quite old so knew of him a long time before the truth came out. My friend liked him but remembered what I always had said about him when the story broke.

JADS · 07/04/2022 15:45

I'm in my mid 40s and I remember watching Jim'll fix it and Rolf Harris on the TV. We didn't have a lot to watch, but I enjoyed both programs, never noticed any creepiness.

@LeavesOnTrees I agree with your comment about some men who view their girls as princesses and other women as fair game. I've heard blokes at work discuss what they would do to people who would touch their girls, they are always misogynists

Mamamia7962 · 07/04/2022 15:45

He may have been seen by some adults as repulsive, but not by millions of young children watching him on TV. I never thought he was creepy as a child, I loved watching Jim'll Fix It. He was just seen as a larger than life character with his over the top jewellery and cigars.

People who knew him where he lived may have known the truth about him but back then there was no social media, so the majority of the public wouldn't have had a clue what he was really like

MrsPelligrinoPetrichor · 07/04/2022 15:47

@Mamamia7962

He may have been seen by some adults as repulsive, but not by millions of young children watching him on TV. I never thought he was creepy as a child, I loved watching Jim'll Fix It. He was just seen as a larger than life character with his over the top jewellery and cigars.

People who knew him where he lived may have known the truth about him but back then there was no social media, so the majority of the public wouldn't have had a clue what he was really like

I never write to Jim'll Fix It as I was terrified I'd have to meet him, I thought he was repulsive as a child.

MrsPelligrinoPetrichor · 07/04/2022 15:48

**wrote

x2boys · 07/04/2022 15:49

It was when it all came out about Stuart hall that shocked me more then Jimmy savile and Rolf Harris,he presented look northwest for years which was my local news station.

Changechangychange · 07/04/2022 15:52

I always thought he was creepy as a child as well, but then I also found Benny Hill creepy. Obviously I had no idea he was sexually abusing people.

He hid in plain sight didn’t he? The ring made out of the glass eye he’d stolen from a corpse he’d fucked in a mortuary- he literally told people that’s what it was, and everyone assumed it was a weird joke because he was a weirdo, not that it was literally true.

theDudesmummy · 07/04/2022 16:01

I only moved to the UK as an adult, in the 1980s, and I didn't pay much attention to JS as he seemed unpleasant and tacky, I didn't really know much about him but didnt care to find out. Rolf Harris I loved, his TV show and music were very popular in the country I grew up in. I was very surprised and shocked to hear about him

TheNestedIf · 07/04/2022 16:04

My mum thought there was "something not right about him" and said so at the time. She avoided watching Jim'll Fix It. Fine with me as I didn't like it, or him either. He was exactly the sort of adult I didn't like. Loud, touchy-feely, in people's faces discombobulating them with disturbing noises, and coercing them into doing silly things they appeared uncomfortable with. I was too young to identify that feeling as "creeped out", but now I'm old enough to understand the motivations as to why predators act like that, and now I can map my adult instincts onto it, I think that's how I would now describe that feeling.

I've got an old Judy Annual that somebody gave me somewhere and he's in it as one of the pin-ups. Quite extraordinary.

MoonriseKingdom · 07/04/2022 16:10

I watched Jim’ll fix it and at the time would have loved to go on it. I didn’t think much about it until the Louis Theroux documentary where he seemed to me very unpleasant and like there was a hidden side to him that he was enjoying alluding to without revealing anything. I wasn’t surprised he had done terrible things, I was surprised by the extent and the degree of coverup by people in power.

I’d say many of the famous people of that era who have been convicted were unsurprising. Rolf Harris though totally shocked me.

SevenWaystoLeave · 07/04/2022 16:19

@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?

Bear in mind you're a) watching with hindsight and b) the documentary deliberately picks out the most creepy, weird and suspect things they can find him saying and that wasn't necessarily how he came across most of the time. In most people's minds he was associated with his good deeds, money raised for charity etc. I think also people struggle with duality, like we want to place people in boxes as good or bad so when someone does a lot of good works as Savile did it's hard to fathom him also doing very bad stuff. In fact it's not at all uncommon for predators to hide in the community as he did, establishing themselves as pillars. He just did it on a national rather than a local scale.

Goodyetalso · 07/04/2022 16:19

I remember being maybe about 7 years old and watching Jim’ll Fix It. There was an assumption from my parents that I would like him because “children did like him”. I remember feeling a bit bemused and wondering why children liked the strange man so much but kind of going along with it.

SevenWaystoLeave · 07/04/2022 16:21

@Snog

It's also true that at the time there was just SO MUCH open sexism and misogyny that it was NORMAL. It always felt horrible when I heard it as a female child but people didn't challenge it because it was normal. So watching it back it seems shocking...but at the time it seemed horrible to me but not shocking and certainly not unusual 😞.

This - a grown man joking about having sex with a 17 yr old was seen as acceptable banter back then, lads being lads etc. It seems much weirder to us in hindsight than it is was then.

Chasingaftermidnight · 07/04/2022 16:31

I know how easy it is to say ‘I knew all along’, but I genuinely did always think he was creepy. I certainly didn’t suspect what he actually was and I was totally shocked by the scale of his offending but I did always think he was a creep.

But then again, lots of people (not just his victims) must have known what he was and didn’t say anything.

Rolf Harris I was really, really surprised by. Never thought he was creepy. So it goes to show you can’t necessarily rely on your creepdar anyway.

2Gen · 07/04/2022 16:33

TBH as a child I wasn't creeped out by him but I did think he was really, really ugly! Repulsive to look at!
When he'd be babbling on about"lovely young ladies" on TOPTP, I'd always think "Well they won't fancy YOU!" but then I'd forget about it , and him until next time he was on telly.
Looking back , it is really obvious but hindsight is a wonderful thing. All his life he got away with it and that was partly because he had such influence with the rich and powerful, and partly because he was able to fool people because of their naivete! Kids with no adults to protect them stood no chance at all! He was pure evil but those who covered up for him , and those who enabled, him are no better!
He is getting what he deserves now though, I believe that, and his punishment will be far, far worse than any he could have been given in this life!

CathyorClaire · 07/04/2022 16:47

I was too old to be in the target age group for Jim'll Fix It so never really watched it. I did watch TOTP though and I never got a feeling he was a perv or anything other than what he appeared to be which was an OTT eccentric. I always thought him and his stupid catchphrases and cigar wiggling bloody annoying though.

For those wondering how he became such a megastar it's worth remembering that there were only three TV channels in the 70's so competition for audiences was limited. The economic climate was dire and a quirky, quick-witted presenter who provided light escapism could get very well known very easily.

When the extent of his crimes came to light it was horrifying. Even more horrifying that people like Esther Rantzen who went on to have the investigative skills necessary and even her own child protection charity didn't take action while he was still alive.

Guess consumer investigations and singing dogs were easier.

1forAll74 · 07/04/2022 16:55

i met Saville a couple of times many years ago, well before all the nasty bits of his lifestyle came to be known. I used to watch his Tv stuff when younger too. He was able to get lots of TV work, because of his odd ways, his odd quick ways of speaking, his odd clothes, and cigar smoking,, and his so called helping of people, with charity work etc. Young people seem to like someone, who is off centre, and eccentric on TV

I knew that he did some kinds of work in hospital, like being a porter and a general helper etc.

I actually met him in the Stoke Mandeville hospital, in the spinal unit there. It was my first visit along with my late Mum, to visit my Son, who had been paralysed from the chest down, in a motorbike accident

As myself and Mum entered the foyer of the hospital, looking around to see which way to go to the wards, we suddenly saw Saville, sitting on a longish seat there, he had just come back from running in the pouring rain, a charity run, and was just taking off his sodden trainers.. He was trying to raise money for the grotty swimming pool at the hospital. used for physio stuff for the paralysed patients.

He said, hello to myself and Mum, and asked who we were coming to visit, so told him my Sons name, and straight away he said,Oh I know your son, you will find him if you go up that staircase over there, turn right, walk along the long corridor, then you will come to a ward on the left, and your son David ( not real name) is the first guy on the right in the ward. He then said, I often go in the wards, and have a little chat with all the guys who have had very bad accidents when I am down this way..so at that time.I suppose i was a bit impressed that he knew all the names of the badly injured people in the spinal wards.

AlternativelyWired · 07/04/2022 16:57

Wtf about the glass eye ring🤮 I must have either missed a lot of this information unintentionally from not being on here or watching the news or I shut off to protect my mind. How utterly vile he was.

dipdye · 07/04/2022 17:00

Difficult to separate the DJ on TOTP and joking with the Rolling stones and Beatles to the total sleazeball that he was.

CPL593H · 07/04/2022 17:21

Nearly 60 and I think as kids we just thought him old and weird, he looked most odd presenting TOTP juxtaposed with Kid Jensen and Peter Powell. There were endless reminders of all his work for charideeee.

I remember an article years before he died by a woman journalist who'd interviewed him (can't remember who) where without her saying anything specific, her distaste was abundantly clear. That did stay with me.

Antarcticant · 07/04/2022 17:24

Well I don't think anyone's going to cone forward now and say 'Oh I didn't think he was creepy as all, I loved him as a child

I wanted to go on Jim'll Fix It as a child - wrote to them at least twice. I didn't have a particular opinion of Savile - he was just another TV presenter like Noel Edmunds or Keith Chegwin.

Obviously I am glad now that I didn't get onto the show.

JulesRimetStillGleaming · 07/04/2022 17:30

Jimmy Savile I found creepy but Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris I was a huge fan of. Jimmy was particularly odd though.

70kid · 07/04/2022 17:44

Ive mentioned this before but knowing all the drug we know now I wonder if Jill Dando was murdered because she discovered something or researching stuff and was about to blow the whistle or she had information and took it to the wrong person
I find it unbelievable that such a high profile murder is still unsolved many years later .
I don’t find it unbelievable that she would be murdered for knowing something big like this .