He was the most famous DJ and radio presenter in the United Kingdom, a friend of the royal family, and a "national treasure".
But behind this friendly persona, he kept a very dark secret...
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man who climbed to the upper echelons of the British establishment.
[00:00:30] A man whose face for decades beamed into living rooms across Britain during a successful television career.
[00:00:38] A man instantly recognisable for his bleached-blonde hair, array of tracksuits and jewellery, and the cigar almost permanently hanging from his mouth.
[00:00:49] He was an acclaimed charity worker and fundraiser who was widely viewed as a ‘national treasure’.
[00:00:56] And a man who maintained personal relationships with the British Royal Family and the country’s most powerful politicians.
[00:01:04] But, he was also a man with a very dark side.
[00:01:09] A man who committed some of the most heinous sex crimes in British history, and used his influence and status to avoid punishment.
[00:01:18] A man, or monster, who lived his entire life hidden in plain sight.
[00:01:25] I am talking, of course, about Jimmy Savile.
[00:01:29] So, let’s get right into it and talk about Jimmy Savile, the man who tricked the country.
[00:01:37] On the 16th of April, 1990, King Charles III - who was then just plain old Prince Charles - wrote to Jimmy Savile, asking for advice on a speech. “Can you cast an eye over this draft and let me know how you think we can best appeal to people on this score?”
[00:01:56] “You are so good at understanding what makes people operate,” the King added, “and you're wonderfully sceptical and practical."
[00:02:05] The letter, it would be revealed many years later, was just one of hundreds the future King exchanged with the former-DJ and charity fundraiser over the years.
[00:02:17] But his influence didn’t stop there.
[00:02:20] Savile also cultivated close personal relationships with politicians, particularly the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
[00:02:29] He reportedly celebrated New Year with the Thatcher family at the Prime Minister’s country estate, Chequers, and in the 1980s Thatcher even wrote to Savile to reassure him that some of the changes he wanted to charity funding rules were getting her full and personal attention.
[00:02:48] Changes that were, in the end, eventually included in one of the British government’s budgets.
[00:02:54] This former DJ and nightclub manager not only advised future kings, but had a hand in influencing government policy.
[00:03:04] But how did this happen?
[00:03:06] How did a former coal miner from Leeds, a man that would later be revealed to be one of the worst sexual predators in British history, rise to such power and influence?
[00:03:19] How did he trick the nation? How did he get away with it for so long?
[00:03:25] James Wilson Vincent Savile was born on October the 31st, 1926, in Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in northern England.
[00:03:36] He was the youngest of seven children, born to Vincent Joseph Savile, a bookmaker's clerk, and his wife, Agnes Monica Kelly.
[00:03:46] Savile was from a working-class background, in an already not wealthy part of the country.
[00:03:52] His childhood was so poor, in fact, that he later claimed that his Christmas present was a trip to the shops to look at toys through the window.
[00:04:02] His schooling was brief, ending at the age of 15, when he left to briefly work in an office.
[00:04:10] This was right in the middle of the Second World War, and Savile was conscripted to work in coal mines to support the war effort.
[00:04:19] It was dangerous work, and he had a bad spinal injury, he damaged the bones in his back.
[00:04:26] The injury was so bad, in fact, that it took him years to be properly back on his feet, and he was told that he would never walk properly again.
[00:04:37] But recover he did, and once he had recovered from his injuries Savile first became a scrap metal dealer, before becoming a DJ, playing records in dance halls around Leeds.
[00:04:51] Playing the latest releases, and with the country finally at peace again, Savile’s events became a hit and he quickly started managing a large dance hall.
[00:05:03] By the late 1950s he was running the entertainment at 45 ballrooms across the country, and though popular and seen as a bit quirky, or a little strange, Savile’s no-nonsense approach to troublemakers at his dance halls already revealed his darker side.
[00:05:23] Drunks and troublemakers would be, as Savile would later admit, tied up in a boiler room and left for hours.
[00:05:32] And even back then, as early as the 1950s, there were allegations about Savile’s behaviour, particularly towards young girls.
[00:05:42] A bouncer, or doorman, in one of Savile’s Mecca dance halls recalled, many years later, that Savile was due in court for, in his words, "messing about with a couple of girls".
[00:05:55] When the bouncer later asked what happened, he was told: "It never got to court - they dropped the charges."
[00:06:03] Asking how he managed to get away with it, he was told Savile “did what he did last time - he paid them off.'"
[00:06:11] If you pay someone off, it means you pay them money to stop doing something, or to avoid talking about something.
[00:06:19] So, even back then, before his fame, Savile was, the doorman said, "a very powerful man with a lot of influence."
[00:06:29] This influence would only grow when, in 1958, he moved into radio and became a DJ on Radio Luxembourg.
[00:06:38] If you’re thinking, hang on, “Radio Luxembourg” that sounds like a strange name, you’d be right. Radio Luxembourg was a radio station based in Luxembourg, but at this time it mainly broadcast to the UK due to a British law that gave the BBC a monopoly.
[00:06:58] So, the point here is that Savile didn’t suddenly turn into a Luxembourgish DJ, his listeners were in the UK.
[00:07:07] And he was soon one of the leading British DJs on the radio, with 6 shows a week and his Saturday show attracting 6 million listeners, more than 10% of the country’s population.
[00:07:22] But the radio was only the start for Jimmy Savile. In 1960 Savile began working in the latest media trend, television.
[00:07:31] On the 1st of January, 1964, Savile presented the first episode of Top of the Pops, on the BBC.
[00:07:41] If you haven’t heard of Top of the Pops, it was a weekly show where the country’s most famous bands would play. Anyone who was anyone played Top of the Pops: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Beyonce, Madonna, the Jackson 5, it was the most famous musical programme in the country and was a pillar of British popular culture.
[00:08:04] And Jimmy Saville presented it for 20 years, cementing his position as the country’s most famous, and for some, most loved, TV presenter.
[00:08:15] As his fame grew, Savile began cultivating his public persona and image, draping himself in jewellery and tracksuits, and becoming known for his wacky, slightly strange demeanour.
[00:08:31] Alongside this, he was one of the country’s most notorious charity fundraisers, doing runs, setting up charities, and raising an estimated £40 million pounds, so almost €50 million Euros for charity over the course of his life.
[00:08:49] But as Savile rubbed shoulders with some of pop music’s biggest stars and raised money for good causes, rumours about his private life - in particular, his inappropriate behaviour towards underage girls - began circulating.
[00:09:04] A man called Roger Holt, a music industry insider who regularly visited the Radio 1 offices during the 1960s, would later reveal that everyone knew what Savile was doing.
[00:09:19] Savile, Holt claimed, would invite “young girls into his Rolls Royce or the caravan when he was travelling around.”
[00:09:27] It was, Holt said, “an open secret in the record industry."
[00:09:32] In 1973, with the rumours becoming more common, the BBC’s press team checked with British newspapers whether they were planning to report on Savile’s behaviour.
[00:09:43] Incredibly, though many newspapers were aware of the allegations they were not going to print them because Savile was a loved public figure, who had been seen to raise so much money for charity.
[00:09:56] In fact, Savile used his charity work as a means to manipulate the press into not reporting the allegations against him, suggesting that they would be responsible for the end of his charity fundraising if they did.
[00:10:11] His quirky public persona combined with his charity work allowed him to hide in plain sight, and his fund-raising activities also gave him easy access to hospitals, schools and prisons, institutions housing some of society’s most vulnerable
[00:10:31] He even had a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, where his charitable trust was headquartered, as well as an office and bedroom at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.
[00:10:45] After his death, it emerged that both of these sites were where many of his crimes had taken place.
[00:10:53] Yet publicly Savile’s profile continued to grow, and in 1975 he got the job that he would be most remembered for and, sickeningly, would not only endear him to, but also give him access to millions of children across Britain.
[00:11:11] This job was his own TV show called ‘Jim’ll Fix It’.
[00:11:17] It was a children’s TV show that encouraged kids to write to Savile with a wish that would come true at the end of each episode.
[00:11:26] Jim, Jimmy Savile, would literally make their dreams come true.
[00:11:31] As you might imagine, kids loved him, and a generation of young Brits grew up wishing for Jim to make their dreams come true.
[00:11:41] Yet, as he established himself as the nation’s most popular children’s TV presenter and mingled with high-society figures, the rumours of sexual abuse showed no signs of abating, of dying down.
[00:11:56] Many began to question Savile’s private life, wondering why such a rich, well-known and much-loved celebrity had always been single and seemed to prefer to spend his time with children in hospitals, schools, and prisons.
[00:12:14] Unfortunately, his motives were far from pure, and I’m sorry but this is where I have to go into some uncomfortable territory.
[00:12:25] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Savile is alleged to have sexually abused hundreds of people, many of them vulnerable children, all while maintaining his public facade, or image, as a wacky but kind-hearted charity fundraiser.
[00:12:42] There were even rumours of Savile spending time in hospital mortuaries, where dead bodies are kept, and years later evidence would emerge of his unhealthy interest in dead bodies.
[00:12:55] Yet, despite these absolutely vile rumours and allegations, which were now so numerous that they should have been taken seriously, his career and public profile continued to grow.
[00:13:08] In 1988, Savile was even appointed by the Department of Health to a task force overseeing Broadmoor prison, a place where he habitually abused vulnerable people.
[00:13:21] In 1990 Savile was knighted by the Queen and made Sir Jimmy Savile for his charity work, and he was given a Papal Knighthood by Pope John Paul II the same year.
[00:13:35] It would later transpire that his friend, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had repeatedly tried to get him knighted back in the 1980s despite the widespread concerns about his private life.
[00:13:48] Some have speculated that Savile’s endless charity work was a means of misdirection, of making people think that he was doing all of this good work, raising all of this money for charity, so surely he couldn’t be an evil man.
[00:14:03] His fundraising, some say, was done with the aim of getting his knighthood - something Savile hoped would make him untouchable, as it would have been so embarrassing for the British establishment to admit that someone it had made a Sir would have committed such atrocious acts.
[00:14:22] Others have speculated that, given that he was a devout Catholic, doing all of this “good work”, the charity work, was a way of atoning for his sins, so that the good would counterbalance all of the evil.
[00:14:37] Whatever his motivations, it’s clear that he was a monster hiding in plain sight, hiding on the country's television screens.
[00:14:47] So, how did he get away with it?
[00:14:50] The warning signs were clearly there, there were plenty of accusations, and he almost seemed to publicly admit to it when he was asked, saying things like "I’m feared in every girls' school in this country."
[00:15:04] He would almost shock people with his responses that seemed so horrible they couldn’t be true, but they were.
[00:15:13] So, to go back to our earlier question, how did he get away with it?
[00:15:17] Well, one theory is that he was simply too famous, too loved.
[00:15:23] As a national treasure and a public face of the BBC, even those who knew or suspected what he was up to were too afraid to speak out.
[00:15:34] In an inquiry released after his death, it was concluded that BBC bosses were “more worried about their reputation than the safety of children.”
[00:15:45] Yet, during the 2000s Savile’s reputation began to change from oddball, or strange person, to creepy old man. Remember, he was born in 1926, so he is almost in his 80s now.
[00:16:01] In a documentary made in the year 2000, the filmmaker Louis Theroux visited one of Savile’s homes and discovered his morbid obsession with his mother almost 30 years after she had died.
[00:16:16] Savile, it was revealed, still kept his mother’s clothes in her wardrobe as they had been when she had died, and had remained alone with her dead body for 5 days after her death
[00:16:29] In the documentary, Theroux also directly challenged Savile on the long-standing allegations of his paedophilia.
[00:16:38] “How do they know whether I am or not?" Savile responded. "How does anybody know whether I am?
[00:16:44] "Nobody knows,” he said, “whether I am or not.”
[00:16:48] It certainly seems a strange way of responding to the question, he never actually denied it.
[00:16:55] By this time though, the police had sufficient evidence to bring Savile to court, but no charges were ever brought against him.
[00:17:05] In 2008 Savile was named in a police investigation into child abuse at a children's home in Jersey, but…nothing came of it, and in 2009 the Crown Prosecution Service investigated four allegations against him from the 1970s, but did not pursue the case.
[00:17:25] Savile was even interviewed under police caution but claimed the victims invented the crimes to get money from him.
[00:17:34] As always, for one of the most recognisable faces on British TV, the allegations had no impact.
[00:17:41] And they never would, at least when he was alive.
[00:17:46] On the 29th of October, 2011, two days before his 85th birthday, in his flat in Leeds, Savile was found dead.
[00:17:58] Almost immediately afterwards, a flood of allegations emerged from victims who had been too scared to come forward while Savile was alive.
[00:18:07] The details of their claims, as well as the sheer number of them, rocked the British establishment to its core.
[00:18:16] By October of 2012, the police were investigating 400 potential lines of inquiry with over 200 witnesses.
[00:18:27] The allegations against Savile, police said, were "on an unprecedented scale". There were far too many for there to be any doubt that this man was one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
[00:18:42] By November, the number of alleged victims had risen to 450, and the police were investigating 199 crimes in 17 different parts of the country.
[00:18:55] And this is only people who have come forward and said something - presumably for everyone who has come forward and said they were abused by Savile, there are many, many more.
[00:19:07] Chillingly, 80 percent of the victims were children or teenagers at the time, and there are reports of completely horrible things, including necrophilia, having sex with dead people.
[00:19:20] This clearly put the BBC, the national broadcaster and an organisation that had employed and protected Savile for half a century, in a complicated position.
[00:19:33] It shouldn’t have been complicated, you could rightly say, and the behaviour of the BBC would come to be deeply criticised.
[00:19:42] In the aftermath of his death, journalists at the BBC began an investigation into how he was allowed to go unchecked for so long, but instead of supporting this investigation, BBC bosses ordered the journalists to stop looking into the allegations.
[00:20:02] Instead, on the 11th of November the BBC aired a tribute to Savile, and the BBC itself became the subject of investigations by other media outlets.
[00:20:14] It turned out that the BBC had protected Savile. Senior BBC staff knew what he was doing, almost certainly, but stopped any investigations because they were afraid of the reputational damage it could cause the institution.
[00:20:31] As more and more allegations emerged, BBC bosses were forced to step down, or resign, and police investigations continued across the country.
[00:20:41] Questions were asked of top politicians and the Royal Family.
[00:20:45] How was it possible that Savile had moved in such powerful circles and nobody had known?
[00:20:53] Many in Britain simply refused to believe it, did people really not suspect anything?
[00:21:00] There were calls for his knighthood to be withdrawn, and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Savile were taken off screen.
[00:21:09] Finally, after decades of sexual abuse and paedophilia, the real Jimmy Savile had come to light.
[00:21:16] He might have died before earthly justice could be done, but after his death there could be no doubt about the extent of his crimes.
[00:21:25] He could hide no more.
[00:21:28] The man who had tricked, or groomed, an entire nation - including its royal family and political elites - had been revealed for who he really was: a monster hiding in plain sight.
[00:21:42] OK Then, that is it for today’s episode on Jimmy Savile, the man who tricked a nation.
[00:21:50] It's an uncomfortable subject, I know, but it’s an important one.
[00:21:55] It’s also completely mad to think how a man who was the most famous TV presenter in the country by a huge margin was never truly brought to justice.
[00:22:05] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:22:09] Had you heard about Jimmy Savile before?
[00:22:11] Why do you think he never faced any consequences for his actions, despite the rumours about him?
[00:22:17] And what do you think this says about British society?
[00:22:21] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:24] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:33] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:38] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man who climbed to the upper echelons of the British establishment.
[00:00:30] A man whose face for decades beamed into living rooms across Britain during a successful television career.
[00:00:38] A man instantly recognisable for his bleached-blonde hair, array of tracksuits and jewellery, and the cigar almost permanently hanging from his mouth.
[00:00:49] He was an acclaimed charity worker and fundraiser who was widely viewed as a ‘national treasure’.
[00:00:56] And a man who maintained personal relationships with the British Royal Family and the country’s most powerful politicians.
[00:01:04] But, he was also a man with a very dark side.
[00:01:09] A man who committed some of the most heinous sex crimes in British history, and used his influence and status to avoid punishment.
[00:01:18] A man, or monster, who lived his entire life hidden in plain sight.
[00:01:25] I am talking, of course, about Jimmy Savile.
[00:01:29] So, let’s get right into it and talk about Jimmy Savile, the man who tricked the country.
[00:01:37] On the 16th of April, 1990, King Charles III - who was then just plain old Prince Charles - wrote to Jimmy Savile, asking for advice on a speech. “Can you cast an eye over this draft and let me know how you think we can best appeal to people on this score?”
[00:01:56] “You are so good at understanding what makes people operate,” the King added, “and you're wonderfully sceptical and practical."
[00:02:05] The letter, it would be revealed many years later, was just one of hundreds the future King exchanged with the former-DJ and charity fundraiser over the years.
[00:02:17] But his influence didn’t stop there.
[00:02:20] Savile also cultivated close personal relationships with politicians, particularly the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
[00:02:29] He reportedly celebrated New Year with the Thatcher family at the Prime Minister’s country estate, Chequers, and in the 1980s Thatcher even wrote to Savile to reassure him that some of the changes he wanted to charity funding rules were getting her full and personal attention.
[00:02:48] Changes that were, in the end, eventually included in one of the British government’s budgets.
[00:02:54] This former DJ and nightclub manager not only advised future kings, but had a hand in influencing government policy.
[00:03:04] But how did this happen?
[00:03:06] How did a former coal miner from Leeds, a man that would later be revealed to be one of the worst sexual predators in British history, rise to such power and influence?
[00:03:19] How did he trick the nation? How did he get away with it for so long?
[00:03:25] James Wilson Vincent Savile was born on October the 31st, 1926, in Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in northern England.
[00:03:36] He was the youngest of seven children, born to Vincent Joseph Savile, a bookmaker's clerk, and his wife, Agnes Monica Kelly.
[00:03:46] Savile was from a working-class background, in an already not wealthy part of the country.
[00:03:52] His childhood was so poor, in fact, that he later claimed that his Christmas present was a trip to the shops to look at toys through the window.
[00:04:02] His schooling was brief, ending at the age of 15, when he left to briefly work in an office.
[00:04:10] This was right in the middle of the Second World War, and Savile was conscripted to work in coal mines to support the war effort.
[00:04:19] It was dangerous work, and he had a bad spinal injury, he damaged the bones in his back.
[00:04:26] The injury was so bad, in fact, that it took him years to be properly back on his feet, and he was told that he would never walk properly again.
[00:04:37] But recover he did, and once he had recovered from his injuries Savile first became a scrap metal dealer, before becoming a DJ, playing records in dance halls around Leeds.
[00:04:51] Playing the latest releases, and with the country finally at peace again, Savile’s events became a hit and he quickly started managing a large dance hall.
[00:05:03] By the late 1950s he was running the entertainment at 45 ballrooms across the country, and though popular and seen as a bit quirky, or a little strange, Savile’s no-nonsense approach to troublemakers at his dance halls already revealed his darker side.
[00:05:23] Drunks and troublemakers would be, as Savile would later admit, tied up in a boiler room and left for hours.
[00:05:32] And even back then, as early as the 1950s, there were allegations about Savile’s behaviour, particularly towards young girls.
[00:05:42] A bouncer, or doorman, in one of Savile’s Mecca dance halls recalled, many years later, that Savile was due in court for, in his words, "messing about with a couple of girls".
[00:05:55] When the bouncer later asked what happened, he was told: "It never got to court - they dropped the charges."
[00:06:03] Asking how he managed to get away with it, he was told Savile “did what he did last time - he paid them off.'"
[00:06:11] If you pay someone off, it means you pay them money to stop doing something, or to avoid talking about something.
[00:06:19] So, even back then, before his fame, Savile was, the doorman said, "a very powerful man with a lot of influence."
[00:06:29] This influence would only grow when, in 1958, he moved into radio and became a DJ on Radio Luxembourg.
[00:06:38] If you’re thinking, hang on, “Radio Luxembourg” that sounds like a strange name, you’d be right. Radio Luxembourg was a radio station based in Luxembourg, but at this time it mainly broadcast to the UK due to a British law that gave the BBC a monopoly.
[00:06:58] So, the point here is that Savile didn’t suddenly turn into a Luxembourgish DJ, his listeners were in the UK.
[00:07:07] And he was soon one of the leading British DJs on the radio, with 6 shows a week and his Saturday show attracting 6 million listeners, more than 10% of the country’s population.
[00:07:22] But the radio was only the start for Jimmy Savile. In 1960 Savile began working in the latest media trend, television.
[00:07:31] On the 1st of January, 1964, Savile presented the first episode of Top of the Pops, on the BBC.
[00:07:41] If you haven’t heard of Top of the Pops, it was a weekly show where the country’s most famous bands would play. Anyone who was anyone played Top of the Pops: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Beyonce, Madonna, the Jackson 5, it was the most famous musical programme in the country and was a pillar of British popular culture.
[00:08:04] And Jimmy Saville presented it for 20 years, cementing his position as the country’s most famous, and for some, most loved, TV presenter.
[00:08:15] As his fame grew, Savile began cultivating his public persona and image, draping himself in jewellery and tracksuits, and becoming known for his wacky, slightly strange demeanour.
[00:08:31] Alongside this, he was one of the country’s most notorious charity fundraisers, doing runs, setting up charities, and raising an estimated £40 million pounds, so almost €50 million Euros for charity over the course of his life.
[00:08:49] But as Savile rubbed shoulders with some of pop music’s biggest stars and raised money for good causes, rumours about his private life - in particular, his inappropriate behaviour towards underage girls - began circulating.
[00:09:04] A man called Roger Holt, a music industry insider who regularly visited the Radio 1 offices during the 1960s, would later reveal that everyone knew what Savile was doing.
[00:09:19] Savile, Holt claimed, would invite “young girls into his Rolls Royce or the caravan when he was travelling around.”
[00:09:27] It was, Holt said, “an open secret in the record industry."
[00:09:32] In 1973, with the rumours becoming more common, the BBC’s press team checked with British newspapers whether they were planning to report on Savile’s behaviour.
[00:09:43] Incredibly, though many newspapers were aware of the allegations they were not going to print them because Savile was a loved public figure, who had been seen to raise so much money for charity.
[00:09:56] In fact, Savile used his charity work as a means to manipulate the press into not reporting the allegations against him, suggesting that they would be responsible for the end of his charity fundraising if they did.
[00:10:11] His quirky public persona combined with his charity work allowed him to hide in plain sight, and his fund-raising activities also gave him easy access to hospitals, schools and prisons, institutions housing some of society’s most vulnerable
[00:10:31] He even had a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, where his charitable trust was headquartered, as well as an office and bedroom at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.
[00:10:45] After his death, it emerged that both of these sites were where many of his crimes had taken place.
[00:10:53] Yet publicly Savile’s profile continued to grow, and in 1975 he got the job that he would be most remembered for and, sickeningly, would not only endear him to, but also give him access to millions of children across Britain.
[00:11:11] This job was his own TV show called ‘Jim’ll Fix It’.
[00:11:17] It was a children’s TV show that encouraged kids to write to Savile with a wish that would come true at the end of each episode.
[00:11:26] Jim, Jimmy Savile, would literally make their dreams come true.
[00:11:31] As you might imagine, kids loved him, and a generation of young Brits grew up wishing for Jim to make their dreams come true.
[00:11:41] Yet, as he established himself as the nation’s most popular children’s TV presenter and mingled with high-society figures, the rumours of sexual abuse showed no signs of abating, of dying down.
[00:11:56] Many began to question Savile’s private life, wondering why such a rich, well-known and much-loved celebrity had always been single and seemed to prefer to spend his time with children in hospitals, schools, and prisons.
[00:12:14] Unfortunately, his motives were far from pure, and I’m sorry but this is where I have to go into some uncomfortable territory.
[00:12:25] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Savile is alleged to have sexually abused hundreds of people, many of them vulnerable children, all while maintaining his public facade, or image, as a wacky but kind-hearted charity fundraiser.
[00:12:42] There were even rumours of Savile spending time in hospital mortuaries, where dead bodies are kept, and years later evidence would emerge of his unhealthy interest in dead bodies.
[00:12:55] Yet, despite these absolutely vile rumours and allegations, which were now so numerous that they should have been taken seriously, his career and public profile continued to grow.
[00:13:08] In 1988, Savile was even appointed by the Department of Health to a task force overseeing Broadmoor prison, a place where he habitually abused vulnerable people.
[00:13:21] In 1990 Savile was knighted by the Queen and made Sir Jimmy Savile for his charity work, and he was given a Papal Knighthood by Pope John Paul II the same year.
[00:13:35] It would later transpire that his friend, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had repeatedly tried to get him knighted back in the 1980s despite the widespread concerns about his private life.
[00:13:48] Some have speculated that Savile’s endless charity work was a means of misdirection, of making people think that he was doing all of this good work, raising all of this money for charity, so surely he couldn’t be an evil man.
[00:14:03] His fundraising, some say, was done with the aim of getting his knighthood - something Savile hoped would make him untouchable, as it would have been so embarrassing for the British establishment to admit that someone it had made a Sir would have committed such atrocious acts.
[00:14:22] Others have speculated that, given that he was a devout Catholic, doing all of this “good work”, the charity work, was a way of atoning for his sins, so that the good would counterbalance all of the evil.
[00:14:37] Whatever his motivations, it’s clear that he was a monster hiding in plain sight, hiding on the country's television screens.
[00:14:47] So, how did he get away with it?
[00:14:50] The warning signs were clearly there, there were plenty of accusations, and he almost seemed to publicly admit to it when he was asked, saying things like "I’m feared in every girls' school in this country."
[00:15:04] He would almost shock people with his responses that seemed so horrible they couldn’t be true, but they were.
[00:15:13] So, to go back to our earlier question, how did he get away with it?
[00:15:17] Well, one theory is that he was simply too famous, too loved.
[00:15:23] As a national treasure and a public face of the BBC, even those who knew or suspected what he was up to were too afraid to speak out.
[00:15:34] In an inquiry released after his death, it was concluded that BBC bosses were “more worried about their reputation than the safety of children.”
[00:15:45] Yet, during the 2000s Savile’s reputation began to change from oddball, or strange person, to creepy old man. Remember, he was born in 1926, so he is almost in his 80s now.
[00:16:01] In a documentary made in the year 2000, the filmmaker Louis Theroux visited one of Savile’s homes and discovered his morbid obsession with his mother almost 30 years after she had died.
[00:16:16] Savile, it was revealed, still kept his mother’s clothes in her wardrobe as they had been when she had died, and had remained alone with her dead body for 5 days after her death
[00:16:29] In the documentary, Theroux also directly challenged Savile on the long-standing allegations of his paedophilia.
[00:16:38] “How do they know whether I am or not?" Savile responded. "How does anybody know whether I am?
[00:16:44] "Nobody knows,” he said, “whether I am or not.”
[00:16:48] It certainly seems a strange way of responding to the question, he never actually denied it.
[00:16:55] By this time though, the police had sufficient evidence to bring Savile to court, but no charges were ever brought against him.
[00:17:05] In 2008 Savile was named in a police investigation into child abuse at a children's home in Jersey, but…nothing came of it, and in 2009 the Crown Prosecution Service investigated four allegations against him from the 1970s, but did not pursue the case.
[00:17:25] Savile was even interviewed under police caution but claimed the victims invented the crimes to get money from him.
[00:17:34] As always, for one of the most recognisable faces on British TV, the allegations had no impact.
[00:17:41] And they never would, at least when he was alive.
[00:17:46] On the 29th of October, 2011, two days before his 85th birthday, in his flat in Leeds, Savile was found dead.
[00:17:58] Almost immediately afterwards, a flood of allegations emerged from victims who had been too scared to come forward while Savile was alive.
[00:18:07] The details of their claims, as well as the sheer number of them, rocked the British establishment to its core.
[00:18:16] By October of 2012, the police were investigating 400 potential lines of inquiry with over 200 witnesses.
[00:18:27] The allegations against Savile, police said, were "on an unprecedented scale". There were far too many for there to be any doubt that this man was one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
[00:18:42] By November, the number of alleged victims had risen to 450, and the police were investigating 199 crimes in 17 different parts of the country.
[00:18:55] And this is only people who have come forward and said something - presumably for everyone who has come forward and said they were abused by Savile, there are many, many more.
[00:19:07] Chillingly, 80 percent of the victims were children or teenagers at the time, and there are reports of completely horrible things, including necrophilia, having sex with dead people.
[00:19:20] This clearly put the BBC, the national broadcaster and an organisation that had employed and protected Savile for half a century, in a complicated position.
[00:19:33] It shouldn’t have been complicated, you could rightly say, and the behaviour of the BBC would come to be deeply criticised.
[00:19:42] In the aftermath of his death, journalists at the BBC began an investigation into how he was allowed to go unchecked for so long, but instead of supporting this investigation, BBC bosses ordered the journalists to stop looking into the allegations.
[00:20:02] Instead, on the 11th of November the BBC aired a tribute to Savile, and the BBC itself became the subject of investigations by other media outlets.
[00:20:14] It turned out that the BBC had protected Savile. Senior BBC staff knew what he was doing, almost certainly, but stopped any investigations because they were afraid of the reputational damage it could cause the institution.
[00:20:31] As more and more allegations emerged, BBC bosses were forced to step down, or resign, and police investigations continued across the country.
[00:20:41] Questions were asked of top politicians and the Royal Family.
[00:20:45] How was it possible that Savile had moved in such powerful circles and nobody had known?
[00:20:53] Many in Britain simply refused to believe it, did people really not suspect anything?
[00:21:00] There were calls for his knighthood to be withdrawn, and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Savile were taken off screen.
[00:21:09] Finally, after decades of sexual abuse and paedophilia, the real Jimmy Savile had come to light.
[00:21:16] He might have died before earthly justice could be done, but after his death there could be no doubt about the extent of his crimes.
[00:21:25] He could hide no more.
[00:21:28] The man who had tricked, or groomed, an entire nation - including its royal family and political elites - had been revealed for who he really was: a monster hiding in plain sight.
[00:21:42] OK Then, that is it for today’s episode on Jimmy Savile, the man who tricked a nation.
[00:21:50] It's an uncomfortable subject, I know, but it’s an important one.
[00:21:55] It’s also completely mad to think how a man who was the most famous TV presenter in the country by a huge margin was never truly brought to justice.
[00:22:05] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:22:09] Had you heard about Jimmy Savile before?
[00:22:11] Why do you think he never faced any consequences for his actions, despite the rumours about him?
[00:22:17] And what do you think this says about British society?
[00:22:21] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:24] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:33] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:38] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a man who climbed to the upper echelons of the British establishment.
[00:00:30] A man whose face for decades beamed into living rooms across Britain during a successful television career.
[00:00:38] A man instantly recognisable for his bleached-blonde hair, array of tracksuits and jewellery, and the cigar almost permanently hanging from his mouth.
[00:00:49] He was an acclaimed charity worker and fundraiser who was widely viewed as a ‘national treasure’.
[00:00:56] And a man who maintained personal relationships with the British Royal Family and the country’s most powerful politicians.
[00:01:04] But, he was also a man with a very dark side.
[00:01:09] A man who committed some of the most heinous sex crimes in British history, and used his influence and status to avoid punishment.
[00:01:18] A man, or monster, who lived his entire life hidden in plain sight.
[00:01:25] I am talking, of course, about Jimmy Savile.
[00:01:29] So, let’s get right into it and talk about Jimmy Savile, the man who tricked the country.
[00:01:37] On the 16th of April, 1990, King Charles III - who was then just plain old Prince Charles - wrote to Jimmy Savile, asking for advice on a speech. “Can you cast an eye over this draft and let me know how you think we can best appeal to people on this score?”
[00:01:56] “You are so good at understanding what makes people operate,” the King added, “and you're wonderfully sceptical and practical."
[00:02:05] The letter, it would be revealed many years later, was just one of hundreds the future King exchanged with the former-DJ and charity fundraiser over the years.
[00:02:17] But his influence didn’t stop there.
[00:02:20] Savile also cultivated close personal relationships with politicians, particularly the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
[00:02:29] He reportedly celebrated New Year with the Thatcher family at the Prime Minister’s country estate, Chequers, and in the 1980s Thatcher even wrote to Savile to reassure him that some of the changes he wanted to charity funding rules were getting her full and personal attention.
[00:02:48] Changes that were, in the end, eventually included in one of the British government’s budgets.
[00:02:54] This former DJ and nightclub manager not only advised future kings, but had a hand in influencing government policy.
[00:03:04] But how did this happen?
[00:03:06] How did a former coal miner from Leeds, a man that would later be revealed to be one of the worst sexual predators in British history, rise to such power and influence?
[00:03:19] How did he trick the nation? How did he get away with it for so long?
[00:03:25] James Wilson Vincent Savile was born on October the 31st, 1926, in Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in northern England.
[00:03:36] He was the youngest of seven children, born to Vincent Joseph Savile, a bookmaker's clerk, and his wife, Agnes Monica Kelly.
[00:03:46] Savile was from a working-class background, in an already not wealthy part of the country.
[00:03:52] His childhood was so poor, in fact, that he later claimed that his Christmas present was a trip to the shops to look at toys through the window.
[00:04:02] His schooling was brief, ending at the age of 15, when he left to briefly work in an office.
[00:04:10] This was right in the middle of the Second World War, and Savile was conscripted to work in coal mines to support the war effort.
[00:04:19] It was dangerous work, and he had a bad spinal injury, he damaged the bones in his back.
[00:04:26] The injury was so bad, in fact, that it took him years to be properly back on his feet, and he was told that he would never walk properly again.
[00:04:37] But recover he did, and once he had recovered from his injuries Savile first became a scrap metal dealer, before becoming a DJ, playing records in dance halls around Leeds.
[00:04:51] Playing the latest releases, and with the country finally at peace again, Savile’s events became a hit and he quickly started managing a large dance hall.
[00:05:03] By the late 1950s he was running the entertainment at 45 ballrooms across the country, and though popular and seen as a bit quirky, or a little strange, Savile’s no-nonsense approach to troublemakers at his dance halls already revealed his darker side.
[00:05:23] Drunks and troublemakers would be, as Savile would later admit, tied up in a boiler room and left for hours.
[00:05:32] And even back then, as early as the 1950s, there were allegations about Savile’s behaviour, particularly towards young girls.
[00:05:42] A bouncer, or doorman, in one of Savile’s Mecca dance halls recalled, many years later, that Savile was due in court for, in his words, "messing about with a couple of girls".
[00:05:55] When the bouncer later asked what happened, he was told: "It never got to court - they dropped the charges."
[00:06:03] Asking how he managed to get away with it, he was told Savile “did what he did last time - he paid them off.'"
[00:06:11] If you pay someone off, it means you pay them money to stop doing something, or to avoid talking about something.
[00:06:19] So, even back then, before his fame, Savile was, the doorman said, "a very powerful man with a lot of influence."
[00:06:29] This influence would only grow when, in 1958, he moved into radio and became a DJ on Radio Luxembourg.
[00:06:38] If you’re thinking, hang on, “Radio Luxembourg” that sounds like a strange name, you’d be right. Radio Luxembourg was a radio station based in Luxembourg, but at this time it mainly broadcast to the UK due to a British law that gave the BBC a monopoly.
[00:06:58] So, the point here is that Savile didn’t suddenly turn into a Luxembourgish DJ, his listeners were in the UK.
[00:07:07] And he was soon one of the leading British DJs on the radio, with 6 shows a week and his Saturday show attracting 6 million listeners, more than 10% of the country’s population.
[00:07:22] But the radio was only the start for Jimmy Savile. In 1960 Savile began working in the latest media trend, television.
[00:07:31] On the 1st of January, 1964, Savile presented the first episode of Top of the Pops, on the BBC.
[00:07:41] If you haven’t heard of Top of the Pops, it was a weekly show where the country’s most famous bands would play. Anyone who was anyone played Top of the Pops: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Beyonce, Madonna, the Jackson 5, it was the most famous musical programme in the country and was a pillar of British popular culture.
[00:08:04] And Jimmy Saville presented it for 20 years, cementing his position as the country’s most famous, and for some, most loved, TV presenter.
[00:08:15] As his fame grew, Savile began cultivating his public persona and image, draping himself in jewellery and tracksuits, and becoming known for his wacky, slightly strange demeanour.
[00:08:31] Alongside this, he was one of the country’s most notorious charity fundraisers, doing runs, setting up charities, and raising an estimated £40 million pounds, so almost €50 million Euros for charity over the course of his life.
[00:08:49] But as Savile rubbed shoulders with some of pop music’s biggest stars and raised money for good causes, rumours about his private life - in particular, his inappropriate behaviour towards underage girls - began circulating.
[00:09:04] A man called Roger Holt, a music industry insider who regularly visited the Radio 1 offices during the 1960s, would later reveal that everyone knew what Savile was doing.
[00:09:19] Savile, Holt claimed, would invite “young girls into his Rolls Royce or the caravan when he was travelling around.”
[00:09:27] It was, Holt said, “an open secret in the record industry."
[00:09:32] In 1973, with the rumours becoming more common, the BBC’s press team checked with British newspapers whether they were planning to report on Savile’s behaviour.
[00:09:43] Incredibly, though many newspapers were aware of the allegations they were not going to print them because Savile was a loved public figure, who had been seen to raise so much money for charity.
[00:09:56] In fact, Savile used his charity work as a means to manipulate the press into not reporting the allegations against him, suggesting that they would be responsible for the end of his charity fundraising if they did.
[00:10:11] His quirky public persona combined with his charity work allowed him to hide in plain sight, and his fund-raising activities also gave him easy access to hospitals, schools and prisons, institutions housing some of society’s most vulnerable
[00:10:31] He even had a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, where his charitable trust was headquartered, as well as an office and bedroom at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.
[00:10:45] After his death, it emerged that both of these sites were where many of his crimes had taken place.
[00:10:53] Yet publicly Savile’s profile continued to grow, and in 1975 he got the job that he would be most remembered for and, sickeningly, would not only endear him to, but also give him access to millions of children across Britain.
[00:11:11] This job was his own TV show called ‘Jim’ll Fix It’.
[00:11:17] It was a children’s TV show that encouraged kids to write to Savile with a wish that would come true at the end of each episode.
[00:11:26] Jim, Jimmy Savile, would literally make their dreams come true.
[00:11:31] As you might imagine, kids loved him, and a generation of young Brits grew up wishing for Jim to make their dreams come true.
[00:11:41] Yet, as he established himself as the nation’s most popular children’s TV presenter and mingled with high-society figures, the rumours of sexual abuse showed no signs of abating, of dying down.
[00:11:56] Many began to question Savile’s private life, wondering why such a rich, well-known and much-loved celebrity had always been single and seemed to prefer to spend his time with children in hospitals, schools, and prisons.
[00:12:14] Unfortunately, his motives were far from pure, and I’m sorry but this is where I have to go into some uncomfortable territory.
[00:12:25] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Savile is alleged to have sexually abused hundreds of people, many of them vulnerable children, all while maintaining his public facade, or image, as a wacky but kind-hearted charity fundraiser.
[00:12:42] There were even rumours of Savile spending time in hospital mortuaries, where dead bodies are kept, and years later evidence would emerge of his unhealthy interest in dead bodies.
[00:12:55] Yet, despite these absolutely vile rumours and allegations, which were now so numerous that they should have been taken seriously, his career and public profile continued to grow.
[00:13:08] In 1988, Savile was even appointed by the Department of Health to a task force overseeing Broadmoor prison, a place where he habitually abused vulnerable people.
[00:13:21] In 1990 Savile was knighted by the Queen and made Sir Jimmy Savile for his charity work, and he was given a Papal Knighthood by Pope John Paul II the same year.
[00:13:35] It would later transpire that his friend, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had repeatedly tried to get him knighted back in the 1980s despite the widespread concerns about his private life.
[00:13:48] Some have speculated that Savile’s endless charity work was a means of misdirection, of making people think that he was doing all of this good work, raising all of this money for charity, so surely he couldn’t be an evil man.
[00:14:03] His fundraising, some say, was done with the aim of getting his knighthood - something Savile hoped would make him untouchable, as it would have been so embarrassing for the British establishment to admit that someone it had made a Sir would have committed such atrocious acts.
[00:14:22] Others have speculated that, given that he was a devout Catholic, doing all of this “good work”, the charity work, was a way of atoning for his sins, so that the good would counterbalance all of the evil.
[00:14:37] Whatever his motivations, it’s clear that he was a monster hiding in plain sight, hiding on the country's television screens.
[00:14:47] So, how did he get away with it?
[00:14:50] The warning signs were clearly there, there were plenty of accusations, and he almost seemed to publicly admit to it when he was asked, saying things like "I’m feared in every girls' school in this country."
[00:15:04] He would almost shock people with his responses that seemed so horrible they couldn’t be true, but they were.
[00:15:13] So, to go back to our earlier question, how did he get away with it?
[00:15:17] Well, one theory is that he was simply too famous, too loved.
[00:15:23] As a national treasure and a public face of the BBC, even those who knew or suspected what he was up to were too afraid to speak out.
[00:15:34] In an inquiry released after his death, it was concluded that BBC bosses were “more worried about their reputation than the safety of children.”
[00:15:45] Yet, during the 2000s Savile’s reputation began to change from oddball, or strange person, to creepy old man. Remember, he was born in 1926, so he is almost in his 80s now.
[00:16:01] In a documentary made in the year 2000, the filmmaker Louis Theroux visited one of Savile’s homes and discovered his morbid obsession with his mother almost 30 years after she had died.
[00:16:16] Savile, it was revealed, still kept his mother’s clothes in her wardrobe as they had been when she had died, and had remained alone with her dead body for 5 days after her death
[00:16:29] In the documentary, Theroux also directly challenged Savile on the long-standing allegations of his paedophilia.
[00:16:38] “How do they know whether I am or not?" Savile responded. "How does anybody know whether I am?
[00:16:44] "Nobody knows,” he said, “whether I am or not.”
[00:16:48] It certainly seems a strange way of responding to the question, he never actually denied it.
[00:16:55] By this time though, the police had sufficient evidence to bring Savile to court, but no charges were ever brought against him.
[00:17:05] In 2008 Savile was named in a police investigation into child abuse at a children's home in Jersey, but…nothing came of it, and in 2009 the Crown Prosecution Service investigated four allegations against him from the 1970s, but did not pursue the case.
[00:17:25] Savile was even interviewed under police caution but claimed the victims invented the crimes to get money from him.
[00:17:34] As always, for one of the most recognisable faces on British TV, the allegations had no impact.
[00:17:41] And they never would, at least when he was alive.
[00:17:46] On the 29th of October, 2011, two days before his 85th birthday, in his flat in Leeds, Savile was found dead.
[00:17:58] Almost immediately afterwards, a flood of allegations emerged from victims who had been too scared to come forward while Savile was alive.
[00:18:07] The details of their claims, as well as the sheer number of them, rocked the British establishment to its core.
[00:18:16] By October of 2012, the police were investigating 400 potential lines of inquiry with over 200 witnesses.
[00:18:27] The allegations against Savile, police said, were "on an unprecedented scale". There were far too many for there to be any doubt that this man was one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
[00:18:42] By November, the number of alleged victims had risen to 450, and the police were investigating 199 crimes in 17 different parts of the country.
[00:18:55] And this is only people who have come forward and said something - presumably for everyone who has come forward and said they were abused by Savile, there are many, many more.
[00:19:07] Chillingly, 80 percent of the victims were children or teenagers at the time, and there are reports of completely horrible things, including necrophilia, having sex with dead people.
[00:19:20] This clearly put the BBC, the national broadcaster and an organisation that had employed and protected Savile for half a century, in a complicated position.
[00:19:33] It shouldn’t have been complicated, you could rightly say, and the behaviour of the BBC would come to be deeply criticised.
[00:19:42] In the aftermath of his death, journalists at the BBC began an investigation into how he was allowed to go unchecked for so long, but instead of supporting this investigation, BBC bosses ordered the journalists to stop looking into the allegations.
[00:20:02] Instead, on the 11th of November the BBC aired a tribute to Savile, and the BBC itself became the subject of investigations by other media outlets.
[00:20:14] It turned out that the BBC had protected Savile. Senior BBC staff knew what he was doing, almost certainly, but stopped any investigations because they were afraid of the reputational damage it could cause the institution.
[00:20:31] As more and more allegations emerged, BBC bosses were forced to step down, or resign, and police investigations continued across the country.
[00:20:41] Questions were asked of top politicians and the Royal Family.
[00:20:45] How was it possible that Savile had moved in such powerful circles and nobody had known?
[00:20:53] Many in Britain simply refused to believe it, did people really not suspect anything?
[00:21:00] There were calls for his knighthood to be withdrawn, and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Savile were taken off screen.
[00:21:09] Finally, after decades of sexual abuse and paedophilia, the real Jimmy Savile had come to light.
[00:21:16] He might have died before earthly justice could be done, but after his death there could be no doubt about the extent of his crimes.
[00:21:25] He could hide no more.
[00:21:28] The man who had tricked, or groomed, an entire nation - including its royal family and political elites - had been revealed for who he really was: a monster hiding in plain sight.
[00:21:42] OK Then, that is it for today’s episode on Jimmy Savile, the man who tricked a nation.
[00:21:50] It's an uncomfortable subject, I know, but it’s an important one.
[00:21:55] It’s also completely mad to think how a man who was the most famous TV presenter in the country by a huge margin was never truly brought to justice.
[00:22:05] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:22:09] Had you heard about Jimmy Savile before?
[00:22:11] Why do you think he never faced any consequences for his actions, despite the rumours about him?
[00:22:17] And what do you think this says about British society?
[00:22:21] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:22:24] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:22:33] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:38] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
