Some 20 years ago I was listening to the radio in the car as it played Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. When it finished, Tony Blackburn remarked along the lines of 'Jimmy Savile's favourite song, you know' and moved on to the next record.
That's what it was like. Knowing comments, little winks, comments along the lines of 'he's a one isn't he.'
Everyone knew. His colleagues, many of the public and certainly the press. Savile's relationship with journalists was good, partly because he made himself available.
At The Sun in the late eighties, you could ring the porter's office at the Leeds hospital known as 'Jimmy's' and Savile would answer. You'd ring him asking for a quote about a pop star in the news or some other trivial matter and after introducing yourself and before asking a question he'd say 'I never touched her.'
It was a big joke and a line he used every time, particularly when my colleague Phil Dampier - who, for some reason he called Claude - would ring him.
Occasionally, a paper would send journalists and photographers out to follow him after a phone call to the desk telling us he'd been picking up young girls.
He would deny it and when anyone tried to speak to an alleged victim, they would not talk to the press or clammed up. The feeling was they'd been 'got at.'
The press tried, hard, to pin something on him. They couldn't. Most of the tales were about him picking up young women, but not necessarily underage girls. He was rumoured to spend hours wandering around Regent's Park in London chatting up nannies who used to push the babies of wealthy locals around in Silver Cross prams.
But occasionally there were rumours of reform schools and children's homes. If anyone got too close there would be a lawyer's letter or, more commonly, a very positive story about his charity work would come out.
The reputation of the tabloid press may be one of a cavalier attitude to the law but they did not expose Savile because they didn't have proof. And they didn't want to spend millions on libel cases. They also worried that readers would be so pro-Savile they would turn against the paper. Imagine the row over privacy if they had published a story and then lost a libel case.
If the press got wind of it, there's a fair chance that everyone he worked with knew. Even in his own autobiography he told how the police came into a club when he was a young DJ asking him to look out for a runaway girl, aged around 15. He said he would bring her in if he found her but not until the next morning. And guess what, she came into the club that night, spent the night with him and he took her in the next morning. He admitted it in his autobiography but the police did nothing. Savile had that kind of influence.
He wasn't the only one. Jonathan King was a well known peruser of the charms of young boys and even the sainted John Peel admitted that he spent some time in San Francisco in the sixties getting blow jobs off 13-year-old girls and had a short lived marriage to a 15-year-old. He claimed she had lied about her age.
Perhaps it was something in the culture of radio DJs. If any were appalled by Savile's behaviour, they didn't say so publicly. You have to wonder if they said anything privately either. Savile, it is said, was such a moneyearning major figure at the Beeb that they may have worried it would be their word against his and he would prevail. Not one, it seemed, turned round to their boss and said 'I'm not working with that paedo.'
Esther Rantzen has since said she had her suspicions. Did she at any time tell her BBC bosses that if they did not do something about it, she would refuse to sign the next multi-million pound contract to do That's Life? Doesn't seem like it. But she did go on to found Childline. Oh, the irony.
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Those of us from Ilford know Savile as the man who invented the disco. During the mid-50s he was manager of the Ilford Palais, then a dancehall which went on to become one of the area's premier shitholes though it also featured in the video for The Kinks' Come Dancing.
At the time, such places had live bands for people to dance to, with a DJ playing records in between as the band had a break.
One night the band turned up and demanded a pay rise or they wouldn't play. Savile sacked them on the spot. As the crowds turned up he played records, continuously, on an early form of a twin turntable so there were no gaps.
The public danced - to Bill Haley or Elvis or whoever. It was immensely popular and much cheaper than hiring a band. So Savile made it a regular feature. The idea took off and, hey presto, became the first disco. In the world.
How's about that then....Solly
