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the sir jimmy savile obe thread

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littlebabyjesus said:
With the benefit of hindsight, Theroux is another person in a very long list who turned a blind eye. And like many of those turning their blind eyes, he may not have been totally aware that this was what he was doing.
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Yeah, it's certainly hindsight from me and there's no way Therox could have known anything about the extent of it. But for him to broach it all, you do wonder if he knew about the various BBC 'investigations' and maybe even the police interview(s). So, at one level he's actually the person who brought it into the public eye, but he also seems to have primarily used that information as part of a documentary rather than a true expose. Like I say, only a minor niggle for me, many more who should have done more about Savile.
 
all this 'should have done' is well and good in hindsight but Saville had bought people, cowed people and been mutual associates with all kinds of dodgy sorts both from the bent coppers angle to the criminal/heavies one. By his own admission. He'd managed to keep everyone silenced through litigious threats (and one imagines back channel threats of another kind) right up till the moment he died. So what could one person or half a dozen persons have done? Theres people breathing big sighs of relief at what secrets jimmy took to his grave, we can be sure of that.
 
Wilf said:
Yeah, it's certainly hindsight from me and there's no way Therox could have known anything about the extent of it. But for him to broach it all, you do wonder if he knew about the various BBC 'investigations' and maybe even the police interview(s). So, at one level he's actually the person who brought it into the public eye, but he also seems to have primarily used that information as part of a documentary rather than a true expose. Like I say, only a minor niggle for me, many more who should have done more about Savile.
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I know someone who worked on fashion mags (i.e. in the media world, but not in the BBC) in London in the early 80s, and she told me the rumours were flying about even then. So I don't know if for Theroux to have broached the question, he would have to have known about the "investigations" the Beeb might have done, or the police interviews.
 
DotCommunist said:
all this 'should have done' is well and good in hindsight but Saville had bought people, cowed people and been mutual associates with all kinds of dodgy sorts both from the bent coppers angle to the criminal/heavies one. By his own admission. He'd managed to keep everyone silenced through litigious threats (and one imagines back channel threats of another kind) right up till the moment he died. So what could one person or half a dozen persons have done? Theres people breathing big sighs of relief at what secrets jimmy took to his grave, we can be sure of that.
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I think I can answer that. In Theroux's case, he could have pulled the plug on the programme. Saville wasn't allowed anywhere near Children in Need on the BBC. Someone took a similar decision there - and if each individual had frozen him out from their particular sphere of influence, he might have been taken down one piece at a time.

You can't change the world on your own. But you can alter it a bit.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
With the benefit of hindsight, Theroux is another person in a very long list who turned a blind eye. And like many of those turning their blind eyes, he may not have been totally aware that this was what he was doing.
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Did he turn a blind eye or was he, like thousands if not millions of others, completely won over by Savile's strange charm.

He was a complete one-off. Wrestler, charity fundraiser, deejay, fixer, prankster, and professional enigma.
He was also a plainspoken Yorkshire philosopher and psychologist.
There won’t be another one like him
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goldenecitrone said:
Did he turn a blind eye or was he, like thousands if not millions of others, completely won over by Savile's strange charm.
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I would guess a bit of both - turned a blind eye because of the strange charm - couldn't quite bring himself to believe that his suspicions could be true. I've been in the same situation with someone I know. It can be very hard to believe that the person in front of you is capable of such callous evilry.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I would guess a bit of both - turned a blind eye because of the strange charm - couldn't quite bring himself to believe that his suspicions could be true. I've been in the same situation with someone I know. It can be very hard to believe that the person in front of you is capable of such callous evilry.
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And magnified by the fact that, like lots of us of a certain age, we grew up with this predatory scumbag being beamed into our homes every Saturday evening. I always found him a bizarre character, but I never would have guessed what a fucked-up monster he really was.
 
DotCommunist said:
all this 'should have done' is well and good in hindsight but Saville had bought people, cowed people and been mutual associates with all kinds of dodgy sorts both from the bent coppers angle to the criminal/heavies one. By his own admission. He'd managed to keep everyone silenced through litigious threats (and one imagines back channel threats of another kind) right up till the moment he died. So what could one person or half a dozen persons have done? Theres people breathing big sighs of relief at what secrets jimmy took to his grave, we can be sure of that.
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I agree with all that. The job he did in terms of keeping it under wraps, threatening people and the like was extraordinary, given that he seemed to have been abusing on at least weekly basis. Must have run the risk of exposure equally regularly. Brazen, powerful, connected (sort of), but by the law of averges it should have all come crashing down at some point.

On Theroux, maybe I'm overdoing it. Suppose I'm just interested what the state of his knowledge was at the time. It was an astonishing thing to introduce into the interview if he didn't have anothing other than vague rumours.
 
the beeb knew didn't they? Theroux's beeb through and throux. He'd have heard more than the vague rumours floating about amongst the rest of us, possibly.
 
by which I mean the rumours he knew would have been more specific. All I had were rumours along the lines of him diddling corpses and being into kids. Not the specifics.
 
Even if Louis Theroux had asked more probing questions, or been more aggressive, would that even been left in the program in the edit? It's one thing to say Louis must've known Savile's reputation, he clearly heard the rumours, but he also must've known anything that anything that aggressively challenged him on it would never be broadcast. He's just about the first person to say to Savile's face on camera are you a peadophile, in that exchange in the van at the end where Savile ends up saying "No worries, take a few quid off you too, take a few quid off anyone" and I reckon Theroux knew that wasn't an idle threat. Likewise that bit with the address lying around, then all the talk of secrets and omerta afterwards, that's proper intimidation. Theroux was a young guy and that was his first show, it was marketed as a bit of a knockabout thing that "weird weekend" series, with all the quirky music. They must've thought Savile would've been fine for this format, being an eccentric and whatever, but that show was really dark and in hindsight you can hardly watch it.

I remember watching it as a kid too with my parents and thinking he was a freak, I don't remember him from the 70's it was before my time. Jimmy Savile really just seemed to hate having theroux around him, trying his hardest not to be out of character. He had the all the superficial charisma of any functioning sociopath, but you can see in bits of that documentary how he couldn't deal with the format of having someone following him about. Wasn't there a bit where Savile was whinging that Theroux wasn't asking him inane questions, stuff he was used to getting?

whenever I watch him now I just look at him as an absolutely perfect case study in being a proper evil sociopath.

EDIT: also, I remember in that episode there was the bit where they left the camera running, and showed just how much of a wanker he was when he thought he was off camera. I think that's interesting, my pet theory is that he was coming out with that kind of shit all the time off camera and they wanted to get a bit of it once they started to realise what type of guy he was. I'd love to see all the unedited raw footage they got from that Theroux doc I bet there's loads of incriminating stuff, I wonder if it still exists?
 
Again, can't disagree with that. Just have a lingering doubt on how the programme itself fits into the bigger picture of what the BBC knew and when. It was shown on BBC2, but I'm not sure whether it was produced in house or made by an external company. If the former it's areasonable guess that those deciding it should go ahead would have had a fair degree of knowledge.
 
Wilf said:
Again, can't disagree with that. Just have a lingering doubt on how the programme itself fits into the bigger picture of what the BBC knew and when. It was shown on BBC2, but I'm not sure whether it was produced in house or made by an external company. If the former it's areasonable guess that those deciding it should go ahead would have had a fair degree of knowledge.
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I remember he was allowed to present the last ever episode of Top of the Pops . . . in 2005. Indeed, it's a question of what did they know, and when?
 
existentialist said:
I think this is a bit of an unhelpful bit of axe grinding on a serious and important thread, TBH.
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Workers tend to have an axe to grind with their class enemy. I don't see how I'm taking anything away from this thread so get the fuck of your moral high ground. If this was a serious and important thread it would lead to real world action of some kind but it's probable it will not.
 
exiledinwales said:
Workers tend to have an axe to grind with their class enemy. I don't see how I'm taking anything away from this thread so get the fuck of your moral high ground. If this was a serious and important thread it would lead to real world action of some kind but it's probable it will not.
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You're a charmer, aren't you? *pinches exiledinwales's chubby little cheek*
 
Delroy Booth said:
Even if Louis Theroux had asked more probing questions, or been more aggressive, would that even been left in the program in the edit? It's one thing to say Louis must've known Savile's reputation, he clearly heard the rumours, but he also must've known anything that anything that aggressively challenged him on it would never be broadcast. He's just about the first person to say to Savile's face on camera are you a peadophile, in that exchange in the van at the end where Savile ends up saying "No worries, take a few quid off you too, take a few quid off anyone" and I reckon Theroux knew that wasn't an idle threat. Likewise that bit with the address lying around, then all the talk of secrets and omerta afterwards, that's proper intimidation. Theroux was a young guy and that was his first show, it was marketed as a bit of a knockabout thing that "weird weekend" series, with all the quirky music. They must've thought Savile would've been fine for this format, being an eccentric and whatever, but that show was really dark and in hindsight you can hardly watch it.

I remember watching it as a kid too with my parents and thinking he was a freak, I don't remember him from the 70's it was before my time. Jimmy Savile really just seemed to hate having theroux around him, trying his hardest not to be out of character. He had the all the superficial charisma of any functioning sociopath, but you can see in bits of that documentary how he couldn't deal with the format of having someone following him about. Wasn't there a bit where Savile was whinging that Theroux wasn't asking him inane questions, stuff he was used to getting?

whenever I watch him now I just look at him as an absolutely perfect case study in being a proper evil sociopath.

EDIT: also, I remember in that episode there was the bit where they left the camera running, and showed just how much of a wanker he was when he thought he was off camera. I think that's interesting, my pet theory is that he was coming out with that kind of shit all the time off camera and they wanted to get a bit of it once they started to realise what type of guy he was. I'd love to see all the unedited raw footage they got from that Theroux doc I bet there's loads of incriminating stuff, I wonder if it still exists?
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It's not hugely important, but this wasn't Theroux's first show. It was the first in the series of When Louis Met... which means he'd done about 20 shows before this in the Weird Weekends series. He knew exactly what he was doing by this point.

I'm a bit sad to read that afterword on his website. Why did he continue to visit him and have overnight stays in Leeds with him? That's all very odd given the way Theroux implied he was disgusted with Savile, and a bit afraid of him.
 
Fez909 said:
It's not hugely important, but this wasn't Theroux's first show. It was the first in the series of When Louis Met... which means he'd done about 20 shows before this in the Weird Weekends series. He knew exactly what he was doing by this point.

I'm a bit sad to read that afterword on his website. Why did he continue to visit him and have overnight stays in Leeds with him? That's all very odd given the way Theroux implied he was disgusted with Savile, and a bit afraid of him.
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Yeah, agreed....but to Theroux's credit he doesn't seem to have made any attempt to go back and delete/edit any those cringy (with hindsight) comments on the show's webpage.
 
Fez909 said:
It's not hugely important, but this wasn't Theroux's first show. It was the first in the series of When Louis Met... which means he'd done about 20 shows before this in the Weird Weekends series. He knew exactly what he was doing by this point.

I'm a bit sad to read that afterword on his website. Why did he continue to visit him and have overnight stays in Leeds with him? That's all very odd given the way Theroux implied he was disgusted with Savile, and a bit afraid of him.
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You're right I mistook it for that Weird Weekend series. And yes staying with afterward is also a bit weird when you think of it. Is there any interviews Theroux's done where he goes into any more detail about his opinions on savile? (apologies in advance if there's already links on the thread)
 
i think in the 'the BBC knew...' thing we ought to differentiate between what particular individuals in the BBC knew or suspected because they had been exposed to Saville within particular programmes, and what anyone else in the BBC would have known. if you werent in Radio 1 or TOTP etc.. around the times he was there, you'd probably know/think no more than Mr Averge sat at home watching 'Jim'll fix it' and thinking 'that blokes got to be a nonce..'.

in view of Savilles well documented litigous and intimidatory behaviour, its pretty unlikely the BBC managers who were a bit suspicious of him would put a post-it-note on his file saying 'watch him around kids, he's a wrong'un..'
 
Theroux stuff is what it is, nobody should look to him for serious and detailed exposes. His Savile program was enough to confirm some of the ways that Savile was deeply unpleasant, but was not enough to get to the bottom of any of the really bad shit that was rumoured and subsequently turned out to be true. And the most serious failings occurred for decades before the documentary.

Theroux was quoted saying the following in the press once the truth about Saviles crimes started to emerge:

"So the rumours seem to have been in some degree validated.

"I haven't seen ITV's expose on Jimmy Savile yet, but from what I understand there are a number of credible accounts from underaged teenage girls of Jimmy abusing his position of trust and celebrity to procure sexual favours.

"What is especially disturbing is the nature of the alleged abuse - the fact that it apparently took place repeatedly, in the workplace and at a school he was visiting, and that it may have been known to his bosses and co-workers.

"My thoughts are with the victims. I hope they find peace."
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/louis-theroux-on-sir-jimmy-savile-1354468#ixzz2i03ykg7B

Certainly when I originally saw the Theroux program it left me disturbed and wondering, and quite capable of believing the worst. But since like many others the real bad stuff was just rumours, I didn't form any strong conclusions. When he died I expected stuff to come out, but I wasn't 100% confident of it, and I probably didnt say anything like that on this forum until other stuff such as that Nolan video were posted, and then victims started to come forwards.

I did not agree with simplified soundbites that came out such as official statements about him 'grooming the entire nation'. But the nature of long-standing rumours, 'everyone knowing', institutional failings and people getting away with it do fascinate me, but in the case of Savile I don't think I've seen a single report that really does the whole thing justice yet.
 
I'm not sure that exhuming the corpse of the JS is dead thread is any better an idea than re-animating the corpse of Jimmy himself TBH.
 
why did he have to "let" them use the room? they're the police, they can do what they want, so shouldn't they have ordered him to give them the room or asked him to go to the station?
 
common courtesy, innit? i'm assuming that they'd need a warrant or something to 'order' him to use the room/make him attend a police station? i know that voluntary interviews/arrests happen - maybe this was the only way they could get him to speak to them (on his turf) without having to go as far as summoning him in.. pure speculation though, and a heavily edited post :oops:
 
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