Film makers often describe their finished product as being based-on either : a 'true story' or 'on actual events'. "Jimmy Savile : A British Horror Story" is such a film. Jimmy Savile was a hugely famous and much-loved - television star in Great Britain for almost half-a-century.
There'd been gossip about him, just as there was and is, about many public figures, the difference being that the rumours and gossip that went on about him, involved his - alleged liking for : 'little girls'. Not one press article ventilating that rumour appeared until months after Savile died. Hold on to that fact reader. Not one newspaper published ANYTHING of the sort until someone got wind of Meirion Jones' story, and when they did, the press in general, still made little of it until ITV decided to make a television programme, and the rest is history, as they say.
For that reason, I've giving Mr Jones' contribution to this film special attention. After all, had it not been for him, any film based on Savile's life might have been quite different. My point being : was what Meirion Jones had on Jimmy Savile, enough to justify what he did when he died ?
He's a slippery character this Meirion Jones. Let's hear exactly what he says in this film, without the interruption of other 'witnesses'.
1)
"My dealings with Jimmy Savile started years ago. My aunt ran this very strange institution called Duncroft. I started going there when I was, sort of, probably 6 or 7.
From 1970 we would regularly visit about once a month.
"It was very grand and yet there were bars on the upstairs windows where the girls were at night ... this was called an approved school .. a prison for 14 year old girls who'd done bad things. Some of them had done very bad things. You know at times there were child murderer's here and all sorts of things.
I found it unnerving. Some of these girls had been accused of very serious offences. When I was a little kid, I'd come here and they would be like - babysitting me while the adults went, you know, had a few drinks or a party or something".
2)
"My contact with Duncroft School and in fact Jimmy Savile, really ended in about 1976 ... I got to university, became a journalist, sort of, invested my life in it. I mean, I always remembered, what I had seen, back in the 70's. Looking at these cuttings from the Sun (On screen is the paper dated Monday April 11th 1983) It's billed as 'the dark side of Britain's top DJ, but actually, it's a dark side that he can live with, uh, it's not a dark side that's gonna lead him to being prosecuted for anything ... safe confessions for him to have been associated with, and perhaps he then gets rid of the reporters ... he's coughed, he's admitted. 'We don't need to look at him, anymore'. He was very good at distracting people".
3)
"This was key moment. When I read that interview that Lynn Barber had done,, I mean - she was, best interviewer in the business at that point, I just thought : 'ooo', suddenly she's mentioning these paedophile rumours. It's there in BLACK AND WHITE". (pause more music) It turns out of-course, that this was far more horrific than I could ever have imagined".
"From that moment on, it was open, I mean : what was the real story about Jimmy Savile". (I assume he's referring to Barber's piece again).
4)
"My investigation into Jimmy Savile, began by chance. My aunt ran Duncroft, a youth detention centre. Savile arrives when I'm probably about 16. He kept turning up. I thought it was strange. (pause, music, Jones pinning stuff to a wall as per investigators do). In the 90's I became a journalist. At that point I was working at the BBC - radio news. I remember talking with other people, celebrity gossip, sometimes you heard 'Savile underage girls', I would say : 'where do you know that from' and I would try and see if that led anywhere. But when I tried to track them down, I could never find a witness or a victim. The trail went blank when you tried to follow that trail".
"Back then I thought it was simple, I just had to get the evidence, to catch him. I didn't realise, the whole world around him, had to change, before the truth could come out".
5)
"I'd suspected that things had gone on. That there'd been sexual assaults. By Savile. BUT, we needed evidence. Most of the evidence is going to be eyewitness accounts. Of the victims, who are young and often vulnerable. 'Can we find any victims ?'".
Screen : He's dialling up the internet on Windows 94.
"Maybe once a year if I had some spare time, I'd search for Duncroft. It's one of those things on my list of 'back stories' that I returned (?) and see if I could find anything, and you cannot. There was no references.
"2009/10 I started seeing stuff popping up on Friends Reunited - an early social media network. There were hints that something had gone on at Duncroft from girls, now mature women. Nothing you could quite put your finger on, but there's something about there conversations - HINTS, that there's been a police investigation.
Now take a look at what pops up on screen as he speaks about exactly when he came upon the Duncroft Approved School Account. He actually 'joined it'. You can see the welcome message in the top right hand corner. Sorry if it's not very clear to you. It was only there for a second. I had to move fast with my camera.
The 'old perv' looks like it was been posted on the 15th September 2010 as a recent message, so we can safely assume that Jones joined this group account around that time. We'd need to see other print outs of which he appears to have hundreds, but that would be for another film, not this one, obviously.
Bottom left-hand corner reads :
'Past Reunions at Duncroft Approved School :
TBA Took place on 23rd March 2008 For members who left 1982-1988.
Crowns Wood School Took place on 18th October 2008. For members who left in the years 1958-2008.
Past reunions ? The last being October 2008. Had Meirion taken a few years off searching for Duncroft stuff online, or were the entries just not juicy enough to have have him depressing that 'register now' button ?
Karin "Ha ! 'gentleman' surely don't do the kind of things HE did to teenage care home girls !". 19-?-2010.
Caro "Did you say gentleman !!! Lol". 19-09-2008.
Jones' printouts are interesting when one compares them to the five pages of comments that were included in Appendix 12 of the Pollard Report.
Of particular interest to me, is the comment from 'R6' dated 9th July 2011, because it's one that Jones reads.
In Pollard this comment - if it is the same one, appears much shorter than the one Jones now reads :
"I was contacted by the police but don't wanna do it on my own. I really think we ought to do something. The more girls say something the better chance we have of getting him exposed. I would love to see him get his just deserves".
Was he reading the same comment that was in the Pollard Report ? It starts and ends the same, but the rest is different. In Pollard, we get to see the poster's tag : 'R6', but here it's just a blur.
And, who was 'Caro' responding to in September 2008 ?
Doesn't make sense does it ? Not if your fact-checking, which isn't something that's relevant to this film. It's Jimmy Savile who's the 'tricky' one, in this script.
What did Jones tell the Pollard Inquiry ?
When did Karin Ward join Friends Reunited ? Was it 2010 or was it 2008 ? Jones tells us he didn't find her 'fanstory' until 2011. I wonder ?
What he told his boss a few days after Savile died :
'14 year old girls' ? They were always 14 weren't they ? Even they said they were 14, when they weren't ! Meirion Jones' star 'victim' claimed she'd been just 14 when she attended an episode of Savile's TV show. A lie she was able to maintain until she had to confirm her date of birth, on oath, before a Judge.
Then I just happened to come across the Freddie Starr Judgement. I don't think I ever read it before. What a difference having to swear on oath to tell the truth, can have on a woman who clearly lied for a living !
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2015/1987.html
Mr Justice Nicol :
- This has been the trial of claims for slander and libel brought by the comedian and entertainer, Freddie Starr, against Karin Ward. They arise out of an interview which Ms Ward gave to the BBC in November 2011 and to ITV in October 2012 and the subsequent broadcasts of parts of those interviews and also out of online publications made by Ms Ward.
1974: the background
- Ms Ward was born on 25th March 1958. She had a troubled family background including, she says, sexual assault by her step father. She also shoplifted on a number of occasions. When she was about 14 she was sent to Duncroft Approved School ('Duncroft') in Surrey. There were about 25 girls at the school. The Headmistress was Margaret Jones.
- While Ms Ward was at Duncroft she met Jimmy Savile ('Savile'). She says that she and other girls at Duncroft were sexually abused by Savile. In return they were given cigarettes and also the opportunity to attend Savile's TV shows. Savile was particularly known for a show called 'Jim'll Fix It'. But another show was a programme called 'Clunk Click' on which guests appeared with Savile in front of a studio audience. 'Clunk Click' was not broadcast live, but recorded in advance of transmission.
- One episode of 'Clunk Click' was filmed on 7th March 1974. Ms Ward and about 4 other girls from Duncroft attended as part of the studio audience. On that date Ms Ward was 15. One of the guests on that episode of 'Clunk Click' was Freddie Starr. He was 32 at the time and was well known as a comedian and entertainer.
- Ms Ward wrote an account of some of the incidents in her life on a website called 'FanStory'. She says that she started this exercise in 2008. For that reason it is convenient to take it first. However, the Particulars of Claim pleaded that the words were only defamatory of the Claimant after 8th October 2012, by which time the Defendant says she had taken this part of her account down from the website. In the course of his closing submissions, Mr Dunham, on the Claimant's behalf, accepted that he had no evidence to contradict what the Defendant said about the date when the story was taken down. He accepted that this part of the Claimant's case could not succeed.
She 'started' 'Fanstory' in 2008 ? Did she publish it in 2008 ? Did Meirion Jones, see it ? WTF knows ? One thing he MUST have known in November 2011, was that Karin Ward was NOT 14 when she attended that TV show that Freddie Starr guested on. She was less than three weeks off her 16th birthday.
Meirion Jones obviously didn't care about the fact that Ward told lies. All that mattered to him was the fact that she would continue to do so, on camera, in order for him to get a ten-minute slot on Newsnight.
- On 22nd October 2012 BBC broadcast a 'Panorama' programme. It included footage of the Claimant. A narrator then said,
'Among the guests on Clunk Click were young people from hospitals and other institutions, including girls from Duncroft. Karin Ward, aged just 14, was one of them. After the show, she was invited with other young people to join more famous guests in the dressing rooms. She told Newsnight about this 11 months ago in the interview that was dropped'.
This judgement was published on the 10th July 2015. Three-and-a-half years after ITV and the BBC together, destroyed Savile's name.
Oh, and - as an aside : Williams-Thomas said on oath that Karin Ward never told him she was only 14, back then.
Back to the film :
"At the beginning of 2011 I came across Karin Ward's account. You know, that was the real breakthrough because that was a lucid, proper story telling everything that happened. I found it cos I was googling : 'Duncroft Fanstory dot com. So now, Ive got a story written very convincingly. Ninety-nine percent of which I know is true".
Ninety-nine percent he knew to be true - really ? Here's a taster of that account from an email Jones sent to Mark Williams-Thomas on 23rd November 2011.
The Pollard Report can be quite difficult to find. Here's a link to the wonderfully informative : Appendix 12.
I hope it doesn't disappear !
And the rest is pretty much history as they say.
Why did Meirion Jones set out to convince people that Jimmy Savile was a 'paedophile' ? One forms impressions of people just from reading their Twitter accounts. Jones obviously hates seeing others getting the praise he believes belongs to him and him alone. Laugh Out Loud, as they say !
Bless you Sylvia !
