This episode provides a searing analysis of how Savile weaponized social capital and institutional trust to operate in plain sight. It is a necessary, albeit harrowing, study of the intersection between celebrity power and systemic negligence.
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Part Three: Jimmy Savile: Britain's Unending NightmareAdded:
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>> Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. We are starting our second week, parts three and four, on a one of the bastardest bastards we'll ever do on this show, Jimmy Savile, British broadcaster and pedophile extraordinaire. and to talk with me about the latter and worst parts of Jimmy's life and career as a [ __ ] monster, the great Courtney Kosak.
Welcome back, Courtney.
>> Yay.
>> Thank you so much for having me.
>> Yeah, thanks for being on. And you've got a book, a book that we talked about in the first two parts but are going to plug again.
>> Dear God, if you guys haven't already bought my book, please do. It is called Girl Gone Wild. It is about trying to make it in Hollywood. It's an unwitting feminist coming of age and it's the perfect antidote to what you're about to hear right now.
>> Beautiful.
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Well, I guess we can't delay it anymore.
So, last episode we kind of ended by talking about one of the girls that Jimmy impregnated. She was This one was 16. There's a number. I came across at least two stories in the I mean, at least two direct stories and insinuations of a lot more. I don't think we'll ever have an idea of how many girls he impregnated. I'm going to guess often time generally they had stories like the lady we talked about where they get an illegal abortion, they have health consequences afterwards.
Like that's a I I think probably how a lot of these went. I'm going to guess Jimmy paid for a good number of those over the years. Um, but the same year that happened, which was 1964, the London Metropolitan Police received a report about a flat in London that was being used to pimp out children, little girls who had escaped from a nearby facility for I I I wrote for a facility for female juvenile offenders. That's not entirely accurate.
It was called the Dunkraftoft approved school and we'll talk about it more later, but it's some of these girls ha got in legal trouble, you know, committing some sort of crimes while underage. Some of them are just have behavioral problems. This place seems to be a mix of like >> a juvenile reform school and a place kind of one of those like troubled teen camps that parents send their kids to if they're not obeying enough, right? And so some of these girls are escaping from the Duncraftoft school and they're winding up at this flat where they're being pimped out as child prostitutes and the the London Met bust this place in 1964. And in their notes at the time there's like detectives write that Jimmy Savile was a repeat visitor to the home while it was operational as a pedophile brothel, right? Um they don't go after him or anything. He doesn't get charged with anything.
They're just like, "Oh, Jimmy Savile's going to this this brothel for children." An awful lot.
>> It's a famous teenage brothel. Wow.
>> Yeah. Yeah. This brothel for teenage girls who have gotten in trouble with the law. Interesting. Not worth looking into further. Um, so that does though beg the question, how did he get away with this? And Davies gives us a good idea of how in his book in plain sight when he describes an interview where Jimmy discussed one time that he nearly got arrested because and Jimmy's telling this to a reporter as like for laughs basically and he he talks about this story where like well there's always these a lot of underage girls hanging out around my office and I got in trouble at some point like someone called the police about it because they thought it was suspicious and so I had to sit down for an interview with the police chief and I told him, "You know that your 16-year-old daughter comes in here, don't Would you rather she was safe with me or being prayed on by all those scumbags and slags?
>> What?
>> Again, he tells the journalist this and I think like the 70s and the 80s. He's just like, >> "Yeah, you know, people get angry at me for all the underage girls I hang out around, but some of them are the children of cops, you know.
>> I'm just here to protect them.
>> I'm here to keep them safe. They get into trouble if they weren't around Jimmy Savile."
>> Oh my god.
>> My gosh.
>> Good times.
>> So, Roger Roger. Yeah. Not good times.
Roger Hol was a record industry adman in like the 60s and 70s. He's he's a guy like basically helping to There's a lot of pola going on in this period of time in the record industry. So his job is basically to bribe big DJs into playing specific records or specific songs, right? Um and there's a number of ways that they would do this. Sometimes you're just, you know, giving them gifts or hooking them up with, you know, concert tickets they can give out on the air. Sometimes it's more direct. were bribing people. As we've talked about, some of these DJs are getting bribed in girls, right? Um, not that I'm saying Hol did that. I don't know what Hol did specifically, but he's a record industry adman during this period of time, and he visited Savile's Radio One office regularly throughout the 60s. He would later tell Davies that the DJ's love for young girls was an open secret. Quote, I heard through his office, just in conversation, Jimmy's added again.
That's how people would talk about him.
molesting teenagers. Uh, this did not strike anyone. This it it struck people as a a bit odd. They're talking about it obviously, right? I don't think it was odd for DJs to I mean, it certainly wasn't uncommon for DJs to be in like close quarters with 16 and 17 year old girls, which again was legal at the time. But it's notable that Jimmy is exclusively going for girls that age and younger as opposed to that just being a which I'm not saying it's okay when it was the thing that happens sometimes for guys but people at the time are like wow Jimmy really prefers them really young often illegally so >> yes didn't just slip through the cracks.
>> Right. Right. Um, so yeah, what's important is you understand that Jimmy's love of young girls was seen as noteworthy and talked about, but was far from an aberration within his professional circles and certainly wasn't seen as like a reason to discipline him or look into it any further.
>> What made Jimmy weird and the thing people did note about him at the time is that he doesn't he's not into the social side of the music business. Most people who are like DJs or record engineers are like hanging out with other people in the business, right? They like like the culture around it and they're interested in like the creative aspect of it too.
Like they like making music and they like they're interested in how music gets made.
>> Jimmy's not interested in any of that and he's not interested in like socializing with his colleagues. In fact, he has almost no relationship with other DJs which is seen as kind of weird. As Mr. Holt told an interviewer, "He was just a very strange person. You couldn't really have a conversation with him. I used to see him at Top of the Pops, and I didn't talk to him unless I had to go to his dressing room. When I had to go to his dressing room the last time I was there, there weren't any young girls in there, but there were a lot of his mates that I thought were as weird as he was. There was definitely a clique in that dressing room."
>> Now, he's just saying the last time he visited, it wasn't a bunch of girls. It was his his friends. Weird friends.
>> What kind of clique do you think Jimmy Sapp's hanging out with? if it's not other DJs, right?
>> I mean, the word is click, first of all.
Second of all, >> okay, you can say it's a click, but thank you.
>> Um, my interpretation of the evidence I have is that Jimmy's issue, one of Jimmy's issues with his fellow DJ, he's he had a he has a couple issues with his fellow DJs. One is they're really reckless.
Like, they're not careful at all about the Kayola stuff. Oh, >> they're they're they're not like he you know remember that speech he gave about being clever versus being tricky. I think he would say they were clever and he's tricky and he didn't want to hang out with the clever guys cuz he knew the clever guys were going to get busted being clever whereas he doesn't want to get busted so he's going to stay tricky.
Now, the other side of that, what I think is also accurate and probably more worth mentioning is that most of those DJs are having sex with teenagers kind of, you know, it's not the whole point.
It's like a bit like it's a side part of what they're doing and their lives.
>> They're not sexually assaulting children.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, they are sometimes, but it's not their primary motivating factor. Jimmy's primary motivating factor is being able to sexually assault children.
>> So, who the [ __ ] is in his click?
Great question. We know that one of his close friends as early as 1966 was a member of the British royal family. And in fact, the person who introduces Jimmy to the British royal family, Lord Lewis Mountbatten.
>> Wait, like like like the Lord Matt like like like father figure to Prince Phillip, like father figure to King Charles, like Earl of Burma.
>> Yeah, >> that's his name. That's his real name.
>> Oh, yeah. The Lord Mountbatten. Yes, that was his name was. We'll talk about that in a second. [ __ ] So, Mount Batt Whoa. Okay.
>> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Did they >> Mount introduces Jimmy to the family?
>> Lunch clubs together and [ __ ] What's the vibe? What's >> We'll talk about what they might have been doing together because these are the royals. You know, we don't have perfect information about what was going on behind the scenes, but Mount Batton introduces him to people like Prince Andrew, who's been in the news lately, and of course, Prince Charles. We'll discuss all that later, but let's talk about Lord Mountbattton for a moment, right?
>> So, he dies in 1979. He and Louis again, he he and Jimmy meet >> you. You know who this guy is? Do you know how he dies and [ __ ] like he gets blown up by the IRA on a boat in 1979 because Lord Mountbattton was rumored by the USS died also on that boat. Robert, >> that part maybe not nailed it perfectly.
>> Great. But >> you did note that there were children on the boat. Sophie, Lord Mountbattton was rumored to be a pedophile on a massive scale. Um, >> yeah.
>> Yeah. Uh, which is not ideal. So, yeah, you were saying something, Courtney.
>> This is So, this is Phillip's dad.
>> No, father figure. No, not figure. Not direct, but not direct. But he he does take the Mountbatton name, Phillip.
>> Yes, he does. Right.
>> Yeah. I'm not an expert on the royals, but it's Mount Batten who is his introduces Jimmy to the family. And Mount Batton is rumored by the FBI before his death to be a pedophile and a like a major pedophile. The website Irish Central quotes from an interview with Anthony Dailyaly, who worked as a rent boy for London's Upper Crust in the 70s. That means he was a young male prostitute for like rich guys in London in the 70s. Okay.
>> And he recalled, quote, "Mount Bbatton had something of a fetish for uniforms.
Handsome young men in military uniforms with high boots and beautiful boys in school uniforms.
Great stuff. Now, I don't know that Mount Batten and Jimmy Savile hit it off because they love molesting boys together. I don't have evidence of that, but we know Savile loved to molest boys as well as girls and very uh getting down to very young boys. These stories did not come out as early as the reports of Savile abusing and having sex with teenaged girls, right? But they do come out later in life. And we have quite a bit of evidence of of this. And one of these accounts which comes from the book In Plain Sight is particularly horrifying because it comes from Guy Marsden who was Jimmy Savile's nephew.
Uh he was one of Savile's older sister sons and he runs away as a teenage boy after repeated trouble with the law.
He's just one of these kids who gets in trouble and he and like three of his friends hitchhiked to London. I I'm guessing they lived around Leeds or something just based on where the family comes from. And they spent their first days bumming around Houston station, which they didn't know at that point in time was a common pickup point for men seeking other men or sometimes boys.
After several hours waiting around, one man offered to put Marston and his friends up at a flat nearby. They came over and these guys are, you know, chilling at this flat. You have to assume paying with their bodies, you know, for privilege somewhat, but that's what's going on. And after a couple of days of this, Jimmy Savile shows up. Now, Guyia is terrified at first cuz he assumes his uncle has been sent there to bring him home and probably knock him around a bit, right? Like he thinks he's in trouble. And instead, Jimmy's like surprised to see them and is basically like, "Hey, why don't you guys come with me?" And I'm going to quote now from Inplain Sight. Marsden claimed that Uncle Jimmy moved the runaways into a house. Over the ensuing weeks, he also took the boys to a number of parties.
There were no women at these suarees, only men and children. Marsden maintained that he realized immediately what sort of parties they were. One of the houses he described as being particularly memorable. The big feature of it were when you went in the swimming pool, he explained it were a room with a big swimming pool and it was so inviting. Everybody used it and were diving into it. It had lights in it. It was lit up. It was unbelievable. All you wanted to do was stay there forever.
Marsden said he believes the house belonged to a famous pop imprario at the time. Don't know who that is. Might have a couple theories. Um, so What this is is some of the better evidence that I found so far to suggest that Jimmy Savile was not just a guy who abused a lot of kids at scale, but was part of an or several organized networks of child abuse and exploitation.
>> He's sex trafficking children.
>> Yeah, he's and he's part of like a club of guys who are doing that. And because these kids >> sexually assaulting and sex trafficking children in a coerc organized way is what you're saying.
>> Yes. Yes. And that that's that is what this account suggests. And there's there's some other things that suggest this too. But yeah, this is not a thing where >> like we have perfect this has not been explored for example to the extent that like the Epstein networks have been um in part because this stuff doesn't really start coming out until so much later. But what Marsden alleges is that these kids, some of these kids are being molested by the rich and famous men who attend the parties. Not actually like most of them necessarily, which is an interesting point and I'm going to explain that in a bit. But Marsden claims that quote from time to time they the boys were led into rooms with adult males. Noises could be heard coming from inside. None of these kids were stressed. It was as though they were really really enjoying what they were doing. That's the sad part really. And that's not as strange as it sounds.
These are all very poor kids. Many of them have been kicked out of their homes for being queer. These kids are living on the street. They are eating basically by prostituting themselves and have pro in general probably have been abused and raped and molested quite a few times.
And this is still more of that. But the difference is now these boys are getting paid. They're spending all of their time. They're living when they're not participating in these parties at these various like mansions and palaces. So, they're getting to live these kids who have been on the street are getting to live that 1enter lifestyle at the price of being repeatedly raped.
>> That's what's happening here. And it says a lot about the desperation of their lives that a lot of these kids at the time are like, "Okay, this is a worthwhile tradein for me." Right?
>> Yeah.
>> Now, a after some time at any one location, they would be put in a car and taken to a new location. Some parties would go on for days and would involve multiple different venues. Now, per Marsden's account, a lot of, if not most, of the boys aren't being molested, and that's for a reason. The kids who attend these parties range in ages up to their late teens. So, anywhere from 6 to 10 years old, and Marsden says most of the kids who were taken into rooms to be abused by adults were 6 to 10 years old.
Right. the older teens aren't being as often molested according to Mars's account and he says he was never abused himself. Um maybe he's lying about that, but I I he provides a pretty decent explanation as to why that would be as he posited, quote, "Someone must have had an idea that we would be a good intermediary for these kids. It might have stress them if they were only adult men." So you've got the older teens there so the younger boys don't think this is weird and don't get as scared and so they can kind of be like just go do it. It'll be fine, you know, cuz the older teen boys are getting something out of this too. That's kind of what's happening here.
>> Wait, so >> that was my job on the Girls Gone Wild tour was just to be the girl so the other girls felt comfortable on the bus sadly.
>> Wait, Robert, so you're saying that so so >> what are the ages of these boys? Their age is anywhere from what to what?
>> The kids being molested, he says, are generally 6 to 10. Marsden, I think, was more like 15 or 16. And the older teen boys are anywhere from like, you know, 11 or 12 to like, you know, 16, 17 years old probably would be 17 would be probably the oldest.
>> So, all of these boys are being sexually abused, even if they aren't aware that they're being sexually abused because they're being taken advantage of by adults.
>> They're all being abused. They're not all being physically sexually abused according to Mars.
>> Oh, >> like the older boys are there. Like there's like it's abusive to put a 16-year-old in a situation where they're like encouraging an 8-year-old to go get molested in order to have a roof over their head. That's a fundamentally abusive thing, but they're not necessarily being physically molested because their purpose is to be there to normalize the situation for the kids who are the real targets, right? That's what Marsden describes. And that makes sense to me. I mean for like as you said Courtney there there's >> yeah like it's I I don't doubt this account.
>> Understood sense.
>> So again his account is not that Savile is like the organizer or the main guy behind it. He's just a member of this network of very elite pedophiles. Right?
These guys are very wealthy. They have massive properties. They're probably often doing this like miles away from civilization. A lot of this is happening on these big English estates where you're kind of a law into yourself. You know, you're not going to go run to the cops out there. You're in the middle of pasture land and [ __ ] right? There's like forests and stuff. Um, some of these properties have thousands of acres to them. So, and we see in this in the way this is set up an echo of how Savile abused the young like the teenage girls who were like fans of pop music who came to him. Most of the girls who showed up outside of his office or or went to shows and hung out with him before and after shows are not being molested by him. He doesn't quote unquote pick most of them. And that fact helps to hide what's going on and make it seem believable that this is normal and acceptable because most of the girls you talk to be like, "Oh yeah, Jimmy's a little weird, but it's fine." Cuz they're not all the target, right? Does that all make sense in terms of like how he's structuring this abuse?
Unfortunately, >> very sophisticated pedophilia.
>> Yeah.
>> To get away with it as long as he was, you have to be good at it. You know, he's also lucky. He benefits from for a lot of reasons, but like he there's he's set this up for this way for a reason because it works.
>> Yeah.
>> So, Marsden says he never saw his uncle abuse any boys at these parties. I don't know, maybe he didn't. Maybe he was primarily at the parties to get access or to get favors for other things. Maybe he's just not into it in that venue. We know he abused young boys. I think the youngest I've heard of was five. So, we know he abused young boys, but he may not have done it at these particular parties for some reason. Maybe this is just something he saw as useful to like facilitate the moving of his career, right? Um, so again, we know he bonds with Lord Mountbatten in ' 66. We know in ' 66 he's doing stuff like this. We know Lord Mountbattton's probably doing stuff like this. My guess is that this is how they become friends, right? Um, and we do know there's also versions of these parties that are being held with teenaged girls and a different set of rich and famous creeps, right? Where there's no boys, but there's rich and famous men and then there's like 14 to 17 year old girls, right? We also know that version and probably younger. We we know that version. There's parties like that going on, too. Um, >> I see.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, none of this weirdness, none of the fact this going on is enough to get the BBC to shy away from Jimmy. You know, there's rumors around him. People talk about him liking him young. He makes some comments about that.
>> The [ __ ] is wrong with the BBC?
>> Doesn't give a [ __ ] Oh, they don't give a [ __ ] about any of this. He is, in fact, they're going to be a major engine of abuse for Jimmy Savile. The the BBC doesn't isn't just He's not just a BBC employee who abuses people. He utilizes the resources of the BBC to aid him in abusing people. That's a major part of this story. At the start of the 1970s, they give him a Radio One show, Savile's Travels, which also turns into a BBC TV show. I think it's called Savile's Yorkshire Travels there. I think there's a couple. I don't understand. The BBC is weird. A lot of these shows aren't really archived in full anymore. So, I But he does both. It's a radio show.
watch this really odd guy go to places.
>> He's he's he he's lives in a caravan, which is like an RV or trailer basically, and he's traveling around the country talking to people, you know?
It's like his Anthony Bourdain type deal, right? That's that's what people are getting out of it.
>> I don't like I don't like that person.
>> Yeah, it's it's not great. I'm not not in But like that's the kind of the appeal is he's like this regular guy who's showing you the the regular guy's view of these different places in Yorkshire or wherever.
Um, >> so that starts in like the at the beginning of the 70s. Now, by the start of that decade, Savile had already established a strong reputation as a charitable fundraiser. As we've said, anytime he's doing events, he's often having his salary donated to charity.
He's, you know, he starts raising money.
There's this thing people are doing sometimes where like you'll push someone in like a wheelchair for a distance and, you know, people will like pay. It's like it's like these different kind of like, you know, Run for Cancer type type charities. You know, he's doing some stuff like that. In 1971, he participates in his most ambitious charity drive yet, an 876 mile walk. Uh, and he's he does this with his Saviles Travels motorpool traveling behind him.
So, he's like sleeping in the caravan at night and he's walking all day and people are like joining him at varying points on the march. This is like a 31-day event and he's never really alone during this. He's constantly being followed by people. Sometimes like people who are in wheelchairs show up and he'll push them for a while.
Hundreds of folks march alongside them.
Uh Jimmy wrote in his column the next week, quote, "I've wheeled cripples along in wheelchairs who didn't want to be left out. I've pushed prams with assorted babies in. I've slowed down to a shuffle with a 90-year-old lady gripping my arm and sped up fleetofooted downhill with an entire youth club tailing behind like Haley's Comet." And this actually ends with one of his first direct things with the [ __ ] British Royal Marines, which we're not going to talk about enough in these episodes, but the Royal Marines like show up to march with him at the end of his march. He does a lot of events with them. He becomes an honorary member of the Royal He loves the [ __ ] Royal Marines. Um, >> this is a proud proud part of the of the history of the Royal Marines is Jimmy Stel got to be a member.
>> Great stuff.
>> Wow. speaks well of the organization.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh he does a lot of long he does a lot of marathons. He does a lot of marches for charity. Does a lot of wheelchair pushes. All of these to raise money for good causes. Savile continued to make outrageous demands when he would agree to participate in these events as he had earlier in his career. During a fundraiser where he pushed a patient in a wheelchair from Rochester to Brmley, Savile admitted to press that he'd given this demand to the event organizer. Find me a blonde teenage bird who lives in a house with a drive so I can park outside so she can wake me up in the morning with tea at 8:00. The organizer agreed.
This is just in the press.
>> God, >> oh Jimmy, he loves those blonde teenage birds, you know, but he's doing good.
He's raising so much money for good causes, you know?
>> Why be angry at him for being just a little bit odd, right? He couldn't possibly be hurting anybody >> cuz he's >> You know who else? Oh, sorry. Oh, cuz he's a pedto file. Sorry.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> I ruined the ad transition.
>> You know who's not a That's not a good ad pivot. Anyway, let's forget I tried to do that. Here's some ads.
>> I am.
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We're back. So, after committing or committing completing his nearly 900 mile march, Savile was awarded the Order of the British Empire or OBBE, which is just a step under knighthood.
Now, this entitled him to sign his name, Jimmy Savile, OBBE, which he does on his subsequent autobiography that comes out not long after this. and interviews at the time. He is vocally thrilled by the recognition which elevated him to a level of social respectability other DJs simply lacked. Here's a photo of him after his investature at Buckingham Palace. There's Jimmy Savile OBBE. He's got like a normal suit on for once in his [ __ ] life and he's got this big metal they give you when you get the OBBE. He's smoking one of his cigars.
He's got a [ __ ] pinky ring on and a top hat and his his [ __ ] peroxide white hair. just pet hair >> like a man who's had no business around teenage >> making making the pinky ring look bad and [ __ ] like it's [ __ ] up.
>> Oh yeah dark part of pinky ring history >> pinky ring history and Royal Marine Corps history both both not low points of both um >> gross. So, Savile's Yorkshire Travels, his like TV show version of this radio thing, hits the air in 1972. Just before that happened, per the book In Plain Sight, the body of 15-year-old Clare McAulpin was discovered by her mother, surrounded by empty pill bottles and a red diary. In her diary, she had obviously committed suicide. Uh, and in her diary, she repeatedly mentioned the sex that she had had with top BBC disc jockeyies that she had met while dancing for Top of the Pops. And again, she's 15. This is underage. This is statutory rape. That's what she's writing about.
Multiple disc jockeyies at Top of the Pops, at the BBC's hit show, Top of the Pops, raped this girl. Savile is believed to be one of them. Like, we know he was one of them, right? But he mostly stays out of the fallout around this story because by this point, he's expanded beyond just being a DJ. So, the actual like scandal around Clare McCalpin's suicide and around all of this, and it's not just her. There's a couple of other girls that they find out were being trafficked basically to BBC disc jockeyies as part of like a Poliola scam. And that's the primary thing that blows up into a scandal is that a lot of these like DJs who had like get brought in from the pirate world are accepting [ __ ] sex with teenage girls as a form of poliola for playing songs, right?
That's primarily the big scandal that happens here. Um, and that's obviously not what people should have been most angry about. It's not the only thing that they're angry about. Some of these guys get in trouble, but not Jimmy, right? He's never a focus of these investigations cuz by the time this all blows up, he's kind of moved on, right?
Like he's he's still doing top of the pops from time to time. He's still a DJ, but he's like increasingly starting to be like a TV and radio star for other reasons. And so he's just not at the center of this stuff, but a good friend of his was.
>> He was like the one of the main top of the pops guys, wasn't he?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he's not socially a part of that circle. So most of the accounts they're getting and most of what blows up is involving other guys.
>> And Savile, we just kind of know he was involved, but he's not like at the center of this. And he may not have actually taken Poliola. He may have just been molesting teenage girls like we know he was doing a lot. He may not have actually taken We don't know like but he doesn't get in trouble for this whereas other guys do. Uh and one of these other guys is a member of his click uh Harry Goodwin who was a photographer for Top of the Pops. Undercover journalists recorded Goodwin bragging about taking pornographic photos of I mean and these are I think most of these are seam right. I I guess it depends on the age of consent, but he's taking he's making child pornography with pictures of of underageed girls. I assume some not all underage, but most of them probably are.
And he's also making movies, you know, quote unquote movies of the the the statutory rape occurring.
>> And he's playing these selling these movies to pop stars and like major figures in the industry.
>> Despicably gross. And >> good friend of Jimmy Savile. Uh yeah, he must be by now. That's great. Like, yeah. Uh and he gets in some trouble for this. Um so, you know, again, close friend of Jimmy's here, making child pornograph or child sex abuse uh uh content uh of varying sorts. Um so, a few people's careers end over this, but again, not Jimmy's cuz he's moved on.
Savile's travels keeps him on the road and makes his fame much broader than just pop music at a time when he desperately needed that. Of course, this doesn't stop him from committing sex crimes. There were almost immediately complaints along his route of travel that Savile, now well into his 30s, was molesting kids. Radio One controller Douglas Mugridge asked the station press officer Rodney Collins to make sure to check and see if any local newspapers in areas Savile had gone through planned to print any rumors about his behavior. As Mr. Collins later told the BBC, there were allegations that there were girls, underage girls, involved maybe in the caravan. However, the newspapers that Mr. Collins talked to insisted they were unwilling to print allegations against Savile whether they were true or not because of all of his charity work and because he was quote perceived as a very popular man. So this guy's for the BBC looking into like hey are you going to print any rumors to see if we need to like bribe these guys or or threaten them to stop it. And the papers are like we weren't going to publish it even if it is true that he's molesting girls you know because of all of his charity work.
He's a good guy and >> he's doing so much good stuff, you know.
Yeah. Is it so bad that he's molesting children on while he does this charity work, right? Someone someone's got to raise money for charity, you know?
>> Why not let it be a pedophile? A lot of reasons. Um >> Yeah.
>> So, again, he's like part of what he's doing on camera for these shows is he's like visiting mom and pop restaurants and cafes and clubs. He's talking to regular people in a way that no besuited, highly educated, traditional reporter could have done. Uh, and there's a number of reasons why Jimmy is so popular. One is that again, there had been like a BBC voice. There had been like a voice that radio announcers when they start doing television, TV announcers are supposed to sort of have to to kind of be proper and to like do the job the right way. And this is a very like this is a system that is primarily set up for people with specific educations from specific institutions and they talk in specific ways. And Jimmy's a former coal miner from the north voices the accent of the northern part of the country is seen as more authentic in the UK kind of in the same way as like a southern twang. It's seen as both evidence that you might be a redneck and that you're an honest salt of the earth real American. like he's got an accent that works for him in that way that makes him seem like a trustworthy workingclass dude and people are just kind of starved for that in Great Britain at this time. There's not a lot of it in their popular media. And this is part of why he's so rapidly popular is a lot of folks in the poorer northern parts of the country see themselves represented in Jimmy. And the fact that he kind of dresses like a weirdo is like, "Yeah, but he's our weirdo, you know, like why why should he have to wear a monkey suit like all these fancy guys?" Like that's kind of and it helps to it helps to camouflage him, you know? The popularity is part of the camouflage. He's got like five different covers. He's a genius.
>> He's he's he's good at it.
Unfortunately, most of the initial run of Savile's travels took place in Yorkshire and a BBC article in May of 2013, less than a year after Savile's crimes became were made public. Uh West Yorkshire Police noted that they had recorded evidence of at least 79 offenses by Savile against 71 separate people. Quote, per the PBC, 35 attacks by the broadcaster in hospitals involved complainants ranging from aged 5 to 45.
The West Yorkshire police figure shows Saviles targeted 18 victims at private addresses in Leeds in Bradford. Now again, a year after he dies and these stories come out, within the first year, West Yorkshire police have recorded 79 offenses against 71 people. That's not how many victims he had. That's what they record decades after the fact when it's finally okay to talk about. He's abusing hundreds of people in West Yorkshire alone, >> right? We'll talk about, we have no idea how his total number of victims, but we'll talk about what we know about it.
I just need you to understand this is like an every night thing for him. He is abusing people with tremendous startling regularity.
>> In 1972, >> yes, sorry, that's I >> No, five is so young. You said the range was 5 to 45. at 45 in that area a year after the investigation starts. Yes, >> that's nauseating. I didn't even think he went that old, but the young end of his rage is truly >> in like the 80s. Yeah.
>> Yeah. The young end is real bleak. In 1972, Jimmy had a radio documentary made about him, The World of Jimmy Savile, OBBE. It attempted to investigate who Jimmy was as a person, something that had already proven nearly impossible for interviewers to nail down. Jimmy himself claimed to have nothing to hide from people. Quote, they ask me, "Are you queer?" I say, "No, but if I felt that way, I would have been." They asked me, "Why don't you get married?" I say, "Well, I've never felt the need. I've got nothing to hide from people. And when you come to think about it, I lead a dead simple sort of life, which is okay and definitely enough for me."
simple.
>> Um, now the fact that Jimmy has been awarded the Order of the British Empire, as I noted earlier, makes it possible for him to enter these higher echelons of British society, but it doesn't guarantee that he'll make friends and and find influence there. To do that, he's going to need to put in work. And initially, it seems, Jimmy tries to hedge his bets by getting in good with politicians on both sides of the aisle.
In an article for the Tribune, Frell Kenny writes, "During the politically febriles 1970s, Savile appears to have hedged his bets. Filming a 1974 party political broadcast with liberal leader Jeremy Thorp, liberal politician Sirill Smith, who would be unmasked as a pedophile in the aftermath of Savile's death, enjoyed a light entertainment run on Savile's clunk clink program." So, he does talk to in the 70s. He's he's hanging out and kind of boosting liberal politicians and he will later boost conservative politicians. But one of the liberal politicians he boosts Siriel Smith and has on his show a bunch of times is unmasked as a pedophile too.
That's going to be a habit for like friends of jimmies. We've talked to two three so far. Lord Mountbattton, the the dude the photographer on the show and this [ __ ] politician. So that's three pedophiles out of Jimmy Sapple friends already.
>> Um >> the click. Yeah, the click. And also he knows he's he and Prince Andrew are buddies. We know what Prince Andrew is getting up to. No longer Prince Andrew.
>> Um, in 1975, Jimmy Savile did something rare, which is that he officially becomes a bigger TV star than he had ever been, like a radio star. This is the moment where he fully crosses over.
And from this point on, he's not going to be primarily known as a DJ. He's going to be primarily known for his work on BBC TV. The BBC gives him like a dedicated show called Jiml Fix It, which airs for the first time in 1975 in a 7475 and a prime time spot on Saturdays. Right? This is like a major show. It's running at basically the best time you can. And the premise is very simple. Children from around the world write Jimmy Savile letters outlining their wildest dreams and Jim will fix it so the dream comes true. Writing for CNN, Dave Gilbert notes that at its height, this program, which again runs until 19 is yeah, not runs from 1975 to 1994, was receiving quote 20,000 requests a week. Famous fixes included a an encounter with boxing legend Muhammad Ali and the Boy Scouts who wanted to eat their packed lunches on a roller coaster, resulting in a predictable mess. So, that's the kind of show it is.
You can see why this is such a hit. You know, you've got first off, you've got these kids. And the way the show works is like Jimmy gets letters, right? It's like a Makea-Wish and he gets to read these cute letters that these kids write with their own drawings and he gets to laugh at like kids being cute or spelling stuff bad. Then you get to have the kid on talk about their dream and then you get to like film you you making it happen for them and then he gives them like these medallions that say, "Jim fixed it for me," which for a while were were quite valuable. Um, so the series is it's a massive success and it makes Jimmy more dangerous than ever because now he's gone from this is like a DJ who has access to teenage girls because he has access to pop stars. But like that has a time limit on it. For one thing, Jimmy's pushing middle age now. So it's getting harder and harder for him to still seem like Britain's oldest teenager. Now he has a reason to be around kids and be trusted by them cuz he's Santa. He's like British Santa.
>> It's crazy that they green lit this show.
>> We need a guy to be Santa Claus. Pick.
Let's have the giant pedophile. Yeah.
THE GUY WHO MOLESTS all the kids. Bring him on. He'll be a great Santa. Yeah.
So, uh, the dreams he made come true ran the gamut. In one early episode, a child wished to fly like Peter Pan and sword fight Captain Hook. and Jim's crew used like stage rigging and theater equipment to like to make that happen in the same way you would for like a Broadway production. You know, another kid wanted to take his school teacher out for an expensive dinner at a fine dining establishment and so they put him up at this like crazy restaurant with these really elaborate meals and they film all of it. You know, you can see why generations of Britons ate this show up, right? That said, as innocent as this is sounds and should have been, the content wasn't always innocent. And in fact, Jimmy can't help himself from like making references to his current and future sex crimes. There's bits of that littered all throughout episodes of Jim will fix it. Sophie's going to provide you with show you all one brief clip.
>> Ever since I can remember, I've always wanted to be a singer, but shyness has always got in the way. Please, could you fix it for me to sing? Yours sincerely, Debbie Coleman.
>> Here's somebody to help her who also has a problem with being shy. Gary Glitter.
>> So Gary Glitter, huh?
That doesn't seem like it was too bad, right? Just a kid who wants to be a pop star and and he's like, "Okay, I'll I'll fix you up with my friend Gary Glitter."
And Gary was indeed. Have Have you heard of Gary Courtney? Do you know anything about this guy?
>> No. No. Also, that kid was 20. So, >> yeah. Yeah. Kid was 20, thankfully. Um, Gary Glitter, a major pop, was a major pop star in the 70s and 80s and was a close friend of Jimmy Savile. He was brought down in 1999 after being convicted of downloading child sex abuse material. He was eventually charged with child sex abuse and attempted rape of a child among other offenses. Glitter and Savile partied regularly throughout the 70s and 80s and shared a taste for little girls. And in Glitter's case, the youngest of his victims were 10 and 11.
So great that he's he's hooking him up with people on the show. Um, good to have Gary Glitter on Jim Fix It. Uh, at least that one person seems to have been an adult. Thank [ __ ] God. They often weren't. Now, the fact that Jimmy wasn't singled out when Glitter got busted is extraordinary, especially because Jim made repeated, as I was kind of insinuating earlier, he made repeated open comments about his attraction to girls as young as 11 in episodes of his hit BBC show Top of the Pops and in Jim Will Fix It. Here's just one example, and this is from the part of Jim Will Fix It where he hands out his famous Jim Fixit for me medallions to winners of the show. So, we're going to look at that clip right now. Give both these young ladies their gimmal fix it badges >> because Wait a minute. How old are you?
>> 12.
>> 12. Hello, judge. Uh, and how old are you?
>> 11.
>> You're not married, are you?
>> No.
>> Oh, that's all right then.
>> It's fine. It's fine. Everybody laughs, right?
>> What did he say to her?
>> He said he asked her age and she said 12. And he said, "Hello, judge."
>> Yes.
>> He's joking that he's going to molest her and get in trouble. God. And then the other girl says 11. And he says, "Are you married?" And everyone laughs.
>> I didn't catch the arguing with these young lady ladies.
>> Yeah.
>> This isn't >> again. And I think this is part of his stick. I was so thrown off by how odd he looked at him leading over and his like that. I didn't barely even like Courtney missed it, too. I was like, "What did this strange man say?" But literally what he's doing is first making a joke about molesting a 12-year-old and getting in trouble in court and then making a joke about wanting to marry an 11-year-old. Those are the jokes.
He's not hiding this or it is he's hiding in very plain sight.
>> Um and that that hello judge bit is a constant that's one of Jim's like catchphrases, right? Is he'll reference his attraction to a young girl and then go hello judge. You know, he makes constant jokes. He'll also joke about having an upcoming court date. Like, I've had a great life and I go to, you know, my trial's next Thursday or something like that was like a really common reference from him. So, there's a lot of bits about him being in trouble with the law for his attraction to underage girls that he performs on air with regularity. Once he dies and all of the stories of the actual abuse start flooding out into the open, people begin looking through old episodes of Jim Will Fix It, and they find a lot of evidence of the pedophile hiding in plain sight.
For an example of that, here's one find from a user on the website beta.com.
Um, and this guy's actually like posting video from an old episode. He's like filming it on his laptop. Uh, again, a lot of these original episodes are kind of harder to find now. So, S Soie's going to play you a clip that starts with Jimmy reading this kid's letter.
>> I think about that one as well. From North Chingford, London, Eastport. Dear Jimmy, fix it.
Has it happened here? How's it happens?
I think you have fixed enough people now and I think it is about time you were fixed. So will you fix it for me to come along to the BBC theater and fix you.
Lots of love Barkley Quarter men. P.S.
Please do not tickle me here Barkley. I I'm presuming with Barkley Quarter men that you happen to be a young man and I'm not in the habit of tickling young men but if you had a sister who knows.
How was it?
>> Again, again, it's just he's just everyone laughs at this joke about this weird guy tickling a female child against your will, right? It's just funny. It's a bit, you know, nobody takes it seriously. It's [ __ ] amazing how open this is.
>> Like, the man, >> he's if the show was called Jim a pedophile, it could hardly be mo more open about this guy's proclivities.
>> Yeah. And yet, like paradoxically, the jokes act as a sort of camouflage, as does, as you've said, the way he's dressed and the way he presents himself.
It all helps him h it's very effective at letting him hide in plain sight. And in some ways, it's giving him per like the fact that he brings the audience in makes them complicit. That's part of the tactic. It he's they're giving him permission to act the way he does. If everyone's laughing, can what he said really be so bad? Right. But it's crazy that when Gary Glitter goes down or whatever, they're not like, "But wait a minute, what about his best friend?"
>> But it hap that happens so often that some guy will go down for pedophilia who is known as a close friend of Jimmy Savile and Jimmy doesn't get in trouble.
Like it happens a bunch. Good stuff. I'm I'm happy. How are you doing?
>> I'm okay.
>> Have we had a second ad break yet, Sophie?
>> We have not.
>> We have not. Let's do that the [ __ ] now.
Uh, let's take a second and then come back.
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And we're back. So, Jim Fix It was such an outrageous hit that it launched Jimmy's career as a superstar or at least a UK superstar. He's never, people will notice he never really crosses over in the way that like some big BBC figures do, but he's very popular within the UK. As Dave Gilbert summarizes, generations of Britain also remember him for a string of public information films, including a road safety promotion that encouraged motorists to use their seat belts, a campaign that started before wearing belts became compulsory in the UK. Savile's closing catchphrase, clunk click every trip, was instantly memorable and caught on with the watching public. He also promoted the rail uh the national rail network in a campaign dubbed this is the age of the train. And I I read that quote because it's it's probably impossible for me to get across to an audience of mostly Americans and people from elsewhere in the world besides the UK what Jimmy Savile meant to Britons of a certain age. The best I can do is to say that for most young British kids from like the late 60s and 70, well really like the 70s through the early 90s, Jimmy Savile was the BBC. He has too many TV shows to keep track of. He's and whenever there's like a big we're doing a big fundraiser, we're doing a big New Year's or whatever thing. We're doing a big holiday thing. Jimmy's the guy who gets picked a lot of times to like headline or MC cuz he's the face of the BBC, right, for like 20 years. He's he's kind of like Regis Filin or something.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Like Re but even like I was aware of Regis as a kid but we have so much choice and option for channels and the UK didn't as much in this period of time. So the fact that he is the face of the BBC, like he's to a lot of kids, they would have just seen Jimmy as like woven into the foundation of the earth almost in like if you can if you were a '9s kid, a kid of like the late ' 80s through the '9s, >> the way that Robin Williams was to our generation where it was just like this is just like a and Robin never did anything wrong that I'm aware of, but other than steal some jokes, but uh I think that's forgivable. Um you know, he was pretty coaked out. Um, but that that level of like this this guy is woven into the firmament as like a part of your childhood, right?
>> Yeah. And like an uncle kind of >> like an uncle, like the country's weird uncle, right? Um, in 1971, Jimmy also started volunteering at the National Spinal Injury Center at the Stoke Mandal Hospital. He not only raised money to renovate the hospital's facilities, which had fallen into tremendous disrepair, but he started doing regular shifts as an orderly, helping new patients to their rooms and doing rounds, just as an employee would have done, as we'll talk about. This goes on for decades. From the start of Jimmy's time volunteering at Stoke Mandal, there were rumors that Jimmy, per one acquaintance at the BBC, abused his position by having sexual relations with patients. But this source insists he never heard anything about illegal activity with underageed girls. So this guy is saying like basically everyone knew that Jimmy's sleeping with patients at the hospital that he's helping to fund and is working at as an orderly, but we never thought that it was they were underage.
>> Jimmy's like >> that's not okay if they're all 40.
>> It's hard for them to get away. They have some injuries.
>> That's literally why he does it. Yes, that's that is that is the tactic here.
Unfortunately, >> dark.
>> Um, now, however prevalent these rumors are, they weren't enough to offset the funds that he's raising for Stoke Manville, particularly at a time by the late '7s, Great Britain's social safety net is starting to look like it's running on fumes.
>> It's pretty It's pretty gross that they're like that that like the cost of like fundraising is just like mass sexual abuse. Got to let this pedophile abuse people otherwise we won't have money to keep the spine hospital in business.
>> Yeah. They really value they really value people's lives and wellness and just it's despicably gross.
>> Get so much angrier. You're going to get so much angrier.
>> I was like trying to like hold I got really angry after part two that I was like I was like I'm going to try to pace myself this >> for an idea of how bad this is. We don't we're not in the process of doing trigger warnings on this show. Like I cried during the research of to these episodes that hasn't happened for years.
Like I am dead inside and I was [ __ ] fullon weeping during some of the research for this because >> what he's just the scale of it and the the degree to which his victims had no possible method of fighting back against him. Right? These are he's going after people who are the most desperate people he can find in his society. Anyway, let's talk about Margaret Thatcher. In 1977, Savile first hoed hosted member of Parliament Margaret Thatcher on a visit to Stoke Mandal. The two became fast friends. Thatcher liked Jimmy because his talent for raising money to fund public programs and facilities meant that the government didn't need to use as much tax money to support the NHS.
Jimmy, on the other hand, seems to have instinctively seen that was going places, and he wanted her to owe him.
His opportunity to do this would come as a result of the harsh austerity policies Thatcher sought to press upon the country if she became prime minister.
Her vision of an ideal Britain didn't include public funding for health care, but did include a worship of wealthy and powerful people and the charity they might be convinced to provide rather than compulsory taxes. By 1978, Savile was one of the most prominent charitable fundraisers in the country. If you just tax rich people to fund your social safety and you have to fund your hospitals, >> then none of them are particularly like like gain a position of necessarily power over the organizations they're funding. If you're just paying taxes and that keeps the hospitals going, you can't just if you just walk into the hospital, we're like, well, my taxes pay for this hospital, people are going to be like, [ __ ] you. But if you walk in and say like, no, no, no, like you guys were going to have to close down and I raised $10 million to keep you in business. They're gonna let you do whatever you want, right? That's why a lot of rich people love charity, right?
That's why, again, if you watch the Bone Temple, uh the the bad guys in the Bone Temple are based on Jimmy Savile.
They're traveling around doing what they call charity. This is like that that whole movie is a critique of Thatcherism and Savile's role in it. Uh anyway, I I love that film. Um >> you're talking me into a wealth tax right now. That's what you're doing.
>> Oh, yeah. Um, however, as Frell Kenny noted in his piece for the TR, the UK Tribune, Savile, quote, preferred small local charities over large ones with organized structures, he does a lot of charity, but again, it's mostly with these smaller orgs for a reason because then they're totally dependent on him.
And there's not going to be as much red tape. There's not going to be as much, you know, people looking into what he's actually doing. And in Kenny's article, he links to a Super Eight video from 1978 of Jimmy hosting a charity event for blind children. In the video, Savile receives a flower from a young blind girl and then a drawing of himself. And I'm just going to have Sophie show you the clip and and we'll we'll describe what's happening for those of you who like he's out in front of this facility.
He's got on like this shirt that looks like a [ __ ] uh what's that? It's It's like >> a game of twister.
>> Yeah, it looks like a game of twister.
Uh I don't know how else to describe it.
And yeah, there's this little blind girl. Looks like she's maybe 12 being like led up to him so she can give him this this drawing of himself.
>> Yes. Now say what you got to say there.
>> Thank you for coming.
>> Thank you for coming. Isn't that nice of you?
And the lovely Rose.
And she's so pretty as well.
>> Ooh, >> goodness gracious.
>> Did he say? And she's so pretty as well.
>> And she's so pretty as well. Goodness gracious. And again, you know, not necessarily upsetting unless you know what's actually going on.
>> So icky if he wasn't such a [ __ ] pedophile.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Now, at the time, the more noteworthy thing about that performance was that he he takes out this photo that's been drawn of him, and he jokes about it being a photo fit of the Yorkshire Ripper, right? He jokes that this drawing of him is like actually a picture of the Yorkshire Ripper, who's a serial killer that was active at the time. This is a guy who is ultimately murders more than a dozen women by the time he's caught, and is actively killing people and like the police are actively looking for him in 1978. Now, the real Yorkshire Ripper was named Peter Sutcliffe. And again, he was ultimately caught and convicted of his crimes, I think, in 1981, but that's like 3 years away. And what's interesting about this to me, just as a side bit, is that at the time Jimmy jokes about looking like the Yorkshire Ripper, he was an active suspect in the murders.
>> Oh my god. quote from the telegram.
Savile was brought in for questioning after members of the public contacted the police naming him as a possible subject. After a body was found close to Savile's Round Hay Park home, a Harley Street dentist was ordered to make a cast of Savile's teeth. Now again, Jimmy wasn't the ripper, but it says a lot about what he was doing and how many people did try to stop him that so many members of the public reported him as being the likely culprit that the police force, which was largely staffed by his friends, had to investigate. That's how many people think that know there's something going on that they're like, "Well, maybe he's maybe he's the serial killer, right?" Like there's a lot people do know what's happening and they do try to do something.
>> He's a serial something. Yeah.
>> Wild that he's joking about it. Now that same year, 1978, Jimmy wrote another book, God will fix it, about his Catholic faith. It included these chilling lines. In my early years, I can tell you I did a lot of things that need a bit of forgiveness. I was in a business that was fraught with temptations. Temptations of the flesh are all about. So in my early days, I was a great, and he puts this in quotations, abuser of things and bodies and people.
Okay.
>> Okay.
>> Couldn't be more clear. Interesting that abuser is in quotation marks. I don't know what entirely he meant by that, but you know, he's not >> That is interesting.
>> Heighten it. Yeah. Uh now, the fact that he's so public about aspects of his personal life, as we'll call it, has consequences for him. Other people do read what he's writing and read these interviews where he'll talk about his sex life and they get upset even if they don't all they don't always mark him out as a potential pedophile. They don't always realize what's happening but they know that something is wrong. And there's also people in the pop industry who know more again maybe not everything but they know enough they know enough other people that they know something about what's going on. One of these people is Sex Pistols frontman John Leiden, who said in an interview in 1978, "I'd like to kill Jimmy Savile. I think he's a hypocrite. I bet he's into all kinds of seediness that we all know about but are not allowed to talk about.
I know some rumors." He then added, "I bet none of this will be allowed out."
And it wasn't. The clip did not air with the rest of the interview. Um, >> good for that guy being Yeah, said something. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean like that guy had a lot of power and he didn't do that much with it but like you know better than the every other adult in this conver in this entire thing.
>> Yeah.
>> As we'll talk about you know liel laws in the UK are a big part of why stuff like that gets cut out is Jimmy's latigious and people are scared of being sued by him. Prior to the 1979 elections, Savile hosted a special episode of Jimble Fix It at the Houses of Parliament where Margaret Thatcher asked him to fix it for her to become prime minister. She was elected on May 3rd of that year. Right after she took office, Thatcher had her staff at Downing Street called Jimmy. Quote, "Her secretary rang to say she was rather upset because I hadn't been around to give her a badge to give her her badge.
I reported to Downing Street a few days later and presented it." "Oh, good.
Thank you, Jimmy, for Margaret Thatcher for fixing it so she got to be prime minister.
>> I really I really hate when a woman gets it so wrong.
>> Oh jeez. It's We have barely scratched the surface of how bad this is.
>> Now, not long after this, Jim was carrying out Jim's Daily Dozen, a series of sponsored runs through various British towns meant as fundraisers for different causes. He asked Margaret which charity she wanted a chunk of the money he was raising to go to and he ultimately presented her with a check for £10,000 for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The uh the NPCC.
That's uh that's good. Thatcher loves cares deeply about the kids. Uh obviously >> obviously >> Jimmy and Margaret would remain close friends for the remainder of Thatcher's PMship and life. Jimmy's skill with charity was extremely convenient given Thatcher's conservative austerity politics. By the start of Thatcher's term, the National Spinal Injury Center at Stoke Manville was in such bad shape that five ceilings of housing units had collapsed during an a winter storm. The NHS needed additional funding for repairs and that was very much not in the budget or in the spirit of thatism.
However, Stoke Manville is a major facility in the UK. It's like a historically important hospital and allowing the facility to collapse would make for terrible PR because you want to cut the budget. You want to cut quote unquote entitlements, but you don't want people to realize that they're taking you're taking away their healthare so that rich people have more money. You really want to hide that until the latest possible moment. Savile held a meeting with Gerard Vaughn, Minister of State for Health, as Davies describes in the book for the book in plain sight.
Quote, "Over tea and cake at the House of Commons, Vaughn outlined the new government's thinking on the National Health Services, a philosophy which ordained that special projects such as rebuilding work at hospitals, even such urgent work as that required at Stoke Mandal, would have to be supported by voluntary contributions in line with the cuts in public expenditure Prime Minister Thatcher was implementing across the board. Vaughn suggested this meant they had a problem." "Not really," replied Savile, and they struck a deal.
Savile would Jimmy Savile would lead a campaign to rebuild the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandville using private money and donations. In other words, it was to be a pioneering example of the type of partnership between government and the public that the prime minister was so keen to promote. Now, the renovations were to cost between6 and 10 million pounds as Jimmy announced at a subsequent press conference. When he was asked, "Shouldn't the NHS just be funding this?" He replied, "This is the way they used to build hospitals years ago." and laid out how a simple five pound donation could pay for a brick, allowing every Britain a chance to support one of the most famous hospitals in the country. To make a long story short, it worked. Savile used his connections to wealth and fame to solicit high dollar donations and his ability to connect with average Britons and host public runs and other fundraisers to solicit large numbers of small dollar donations. Now, he does succeed in convincing Thatcher to contribute half a million pounds of public money to the cause, right? But that means this goes from a thing that the NHS would have had to pay 10 million pounds of public money to do to something they have to pay just a half million pounds of public money to do because he raises the other nine and a half that's needed. Once the money was raised, Savile was fedded in a public press conference next to Prince Charles and Margaret Thatcher herself. This marks the beginning of his true climb up the rungs of power and fame in British high society. As Frell Kenny writes, "The preceding years had seen Savile work his way upwards through media elites, dance halls to radio, pop television to prime time flagship television, as well as integrating into the national health service. The years that followed, however, can be understood as Savile tirelessly working upwards through the British establishment, the Thatcher government, the monarchy, and an everpresent relationship with the police."
>> So, do we do we have any evidence that Charles knows?
>> A bit. We'll talk about Charles a lot more. Don't worry, Zoe. We you can come to your conclusion.
>> Okay. Because I'm just thinking like he he he got like a some, you know, I would guess people were were uh not upset with him for, you know, not standing in the way of his brother getting arrested for being a disgusting pedophile. And he got praised for it.
>> And um >> Oh, did he?
>> Um you know.
>> Yeah. Well, we'll we'll talk a lot more about Charles. We're not nearly done with him yet.
>> I'd like to know more is what I'm saying.
>> From the Thatcher years on, Savile was what some royal family watchers described as a court jester to the family. Right. That's the role he takes on socially.
>> Sav first meets Prince Charles in 1977, which is the same year that he met Thatcher. And Princess Diana herself later wrote that Jimmy was a mentor to the future king. Right? That's Princess Dy's take on things that Jimmy Savile is her husband's mentor.
>> I am.
>> Now, I was not at all surprised to learn that Savile and Thatcher had used each other for mutual benefit. What did surprise me is that this seems to have been a genuine friendship on Margaret's part, as in she deeply liked and appreciated this historically prolific rapist, and he seems to have enjoyed her company and considered her a safe person to joke around with. After one lunch in 1981, Savile wrote a letter to Thatcher that included the lines, "My girl patients pretended to be madly jealous and wanted to know what you wore and what you ate. All the paralyzed lads called me Sir James all week. They all love you. Me, too."
>> Great. It's beautiful to see a friendship blossom. It's it's it's wonderful here.
>> I don't like I don't like the use of me too and saddle in the same sentence.
>> Yeah, >> he's not allowed to use me too.
>> This is awful. bit about they all called me Sir James is something he includes here because as soon as he becomes friends with Thatcher Savile starts working her to try to get a night >> he's already OBBE the next step up is a knighthood baby right >> and Margaret spends like a decade fighting for this she fight she spends years pushing Jimmy to be a knight in 1983 that wrote Sir Robert Armstrong the chair of the national honors committee to ask about making Savile a knight But Sir Roberts said no. And his reasoning wasn't that Jimmy was like obviously a dangerous child predator. It was that he'd just endured a minor scandal about some comments he'd made in an interview about the young girls he hung out with at his charity runs. The AIDS crisis was on fire at that point, and Sir Robert thought it was inappropriate for the government to celebrate and endorse a man who made light of premarital sex. He pointed out that the lurid details of Jimmy's sex capades hadn't faded from public memory yet, and it would be best if Mr. Mr. Savile were to wait a little bit longer. Per the BBC, quote, "We remain worried," he added. "Fears have been expressed that Mr. Savile might not be able to refrain from exploiting a knighthood in a way which brought the honor system into disrepute."
>> You know, >> accuracy.
>> There's no way this was a genuine friendship. They're both just empty inside and they're such climber [ __ ] pieces of [ __ ] >> She goes to bat for him though, right?
You know, which like are do any of these people have real friendships in as much as Thatcher ever did or Savile ever did, right? They were tight. They they both very much needed each other, right? And >> it's like when Trump talks about having like his friends, it's like you don't have one single friend on this planet.
>> Not really. But you have people you need. And it's noteworthy. The the amount that Margaret goes to bat for Jimmy shows you how much she thinks she needs him. He is not just a celebrity who's kind of friendly.
>> She is a major He's a major part of Thatcherism, >> but she needs him.
>> He allows her to do a lot of the austerity [ __ ] she wants to do without seeming like she's [ __ ] the country as much as she is because he's keeping the lights on in some of these facilities. And in return, he gets a blind eye turn to his molestation of hundreds and hundreds of people because he's keeping the lights on in these facilities, which allows her to [ __ ] cut [ __ ] to the bone. Right? That's Savile's role in Thatcherism. And it's a significant one as shown by how much Margaret herself goes to bat for this guy.
>> Now, the fact that it's it's great. You love it when Margaret Thatcher's in the story. Now, the fact that Sir Robert is worried Savile would use being kned uh in order to like for his own benefit in some way that threw the system into disrepute was preant. Uh Savile's already at this point using his fame as a charitable fundraiser to shut down investigations into his sex crimes. For the BBC, Savile persuaded the tabloids not to run stories by telling them they would be responsible for the end of his charity fundraising. Savile himself admitted in an interview, "People leap about. Yes, they do." if he wants something because of his charitable work. Right? Folks will do anything for me because of all the money I'm raising for good causes.
Now, any hope of negative reporting on Savile's crimes was further dashed by his close public friendship with Thatcher. Again, this makes it harder.
You're some [ __ ] kid who's like at a juvenile [ __ ] like facility or whatever cuz you got in trouble for something and Jimmy's molesting you and this guy's You're going to try to report the guy who's friends with the prime minister?
Yeah, that'll work.
>> And the royal family.
>> And the prince. Yeah. And the royal [ __ ] family.
>> In one episode of Jim will fix it. A little girl asks to be a cop for a day at 10 Downing Street. And Jimmy uses his connections to Thatcher to fix it. He gets she gets a cop uniform and she gets to like patrol around in front of the prime minister's residence. And when when Thatcher shows up in her limo or whatever, like the kid gets to like escort her from her car to her residence. TV viewers eat this up. Like it's adorable, right? But his victims, many of whom are stuck in hospitals and psychiatric wards, see this as more evidence that Jim is untouchable. I found an article on the website investigative psychiatry that's like analyzing a bunch of different investigations, several cuz after it all comes out how many people he was abusing, all the hospitals he volunteered at have these internal investigations into how Jimmy was allowed to abuse their patients for decades. And there's like an NHS investigation, an SEC investigation. Um, so this article kind of summarizing all those in investigations notes, "He leveraged his fame and claims of highle political friendships to intimidate those around him. He successfully made hospital staff believe he had the power to have them fired while simultaneously coercing vulnerable patients into believing that reporting his abuse would only worsen their treatment and lead to punishment."
>> Now he's Yeah, it's great. And the fact that for an idea of how much [ __ ] absolute impunity he has, you remember in the first couple episodes we talked about Jimmy's got this weird thing about dead bodies as a kid.
>> It's kind of a regular like thing like he makes some really weird statements whenever he sees like dead people.
>> He got that Yeah. saw that chick get chopped up. O >> yeah. Let me read a quote from a BBC article.
>> I'm afraid >> Dr. Sue Proctctor, who chaired an inquiry into Savile's actions at Leed's General Infirmary, said the star also had an unh wholesome interest in the dead. It is alleged he posed for photographs and performed sex acts on corpses in the hospital mortuary. She also referred to Savile's claims that large rings he wore were made from the glass eyes of dead bodies at the mortuary. There's more we could say here. Jimmy's a necroile. He's abusing dead body. That's like bad and gross.
That's kind of all we're going to say about in these episodes. It's important you know that about him, but like we're focus like the living people are like my primary concern. Obviously like this is bad too. It's just >> that's how bad this guy is. The necroilia is like a side note also. He's doing this. It's not on THE FRONT BURNER IN TERMS OF like the things he's doing bad.
>> Could you I just want you to repeat that one part about what what did you say he was with what the ring?
>> Oh yeah.
>> What?
>> Yeah. He had he wore he loves he's got these big rings and he would tell everybody he made comments about this publicly that they're made from like the glass eyes from dead bodies at mortuaries.
That's where his like rings get their like big gyms from.
>> I don't know what to say to that.
>> Thanks man.
>> So my interpretation of what's kind of going on behind the scenes in Jimmy Savile's head through this period is this. You've got this guy who gets his start as a hit DJ in a time when that means unlimited sexual access to teenage girls. He enjoys this for years, but he's not an idiot. He can see this isn't going to last forever. And since he doesn't really like any of his fellow DJs socially, he's got enough perspective to realize they're flirting with danger while literally flirting with children. The BBC offers him a professional escape to a world with less scrutiny and more money just as his old colleagues start drawing attention for their behavior. And then he realizes the more big public acts of charity he does, the more good he gets in with the people running the country and the more camouflage he gets for his behavior. And this provides him with direct access to victims in his preferred age range who can't defend themselves. And that's why he volunteers primarily at spinal wards, psychiatric hospitals, and as we'll talk about in our next episode, the Duncraftoft approved school for girls.
Okay. And that's part three.
>> I Oh my gosh, I hate this guy.
>> Harrowing stuff, isn't it?
>> This is the worst one I've ever done.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the worst ones we've ever done. This This guy is uh Yeah. the the devil. The devil himself. Really?
>> I don't even know if there's a word to properly describe how disgusting he is.
>> No. No.
>> I've been trying to think of one and I'm at a loss.
>> He's a just a fox that got led into a hen house made up of every single person in a hospital in the UK.
>> Okay, cool.
>> I don't even >> You got to plug something.
>> Sorry. Yeah, my book. Let me recover for a second. Um, I wrote a book. It's honestly way happier than this. And there's a lot of sad [ __ ] in the book.
It's called Girl Gone Wild. And um, it's it's feminist, which we need after listening to this.
>> Yeah. Sounds nice.
>> Abhorent. Abhorent. That I'm just trying to I'm just throwing out words.
Abhorent.
>> Sickening. Abhorent. Yeah.
>> Obscene.
>> Mhm.
>> I don't know. Revolting.
Loathome.
>> Mhm. Loathom's a good one. Yeah, we don't use that word enough. Yeah, loathsome. Let's end with loathsome.
>> Okay.
>> Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzone media.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode.
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