The Mark Lawson piece is highly persuasive but only up to a point - he cites the chanting of football fans about Savile's activities in the morgue as if to say, hey, even they knew about it back then, why wasn't it acted upon? But you don't really take footie chants at face value, do you. You'd see it as mischief making. Same with John Lydon - I know he's almost a national treasure now, due to his butter adverts, I'm a Celeb appearance, the fact that punk never did finish off the Royal family but probably made them stronger and of course the circumstances around his wife's decline. But as punk Johnny Rotten, mouthing off about Savile with no evidence would have seemed the usual rabble rousing, same as with the Bill Grundy interview where they rounded on him, calling him a 'dirty old man'.
And Savile himself addressed rumours of his being around dead bodies in an interview with Q journalist Tom Hibbert - the magazine did a piece called 'Who the Hell does [insert name of celebrity) Think He/She Is?' where an unsuspecting celeb gets raked over the coals. Savile acquitted himself well, explaining how in his role at the hospital he saw it as a privilege to be around the recently deceased for a short while, to wish them well on their way. Now, you could argue his polished response might be a bit suspect, that most folk facing such accusations when innocent would splutter their outrage, but then really, what can you say? Talked about how he didn't care for kids generally, made sure he wasn't left alone with them for fear of false accusations, said his presence on Jim'll Fix It was a buzz for them but that's all. He said all the right things, and Hibbert failed to nail him really, or land a punch if I recall. Same when he interviewed Rolf Harris or Gary Glitter - okay, they seemed a bit buffoonish but so what.
Savile also appeared on the radio show by Anthony Clare, The Psychiatrist's Chair. Clare seemed determined to make out Savile was a closet homosexual - well, the checklist is there - never married nor long-term girlfriend, worship of his mother whom he called 'the Duchess' and keeping her clothes in a wardrobe after her death, plus Clare made much of a young lad's funeral Savile had been broken up over, hinting. This was in the day when gayness was seen as something to be outed, like producing a card from behind someone's ear. None of this really went anywhere. Or John Harris' Britpop bio The Last Party describes how Savile was at Chequers for a Xmas party in the Blair years, sucking on a female guest's fingers. But none of this does anything other than show how he could ride his luck.
I don't want to dwell on this but I don't really know how anyone found out or had evidence of any misdeeds in a mortuary. There was a truly grim story in the last year about how a mortuary attendant had been found guilty of such things. Once found out, he confessed to many more - but why would he do that? And how did they find out? Did they have CCTV cameras? If they saw him do it once, would they let him continue to 'build a case'? Why would the accused then fess up to dozens more such crimes when a one-off might - albeit implausibly and still unforgivably - be claimed to be a 'moment of madness'? Or is it the usual State thing, that if you engage in dirty behaviour and have dirty secrets, you may be trusted with other dirty secrets on the basis they've got something on you and are unlikely to whistleblow?