The Most Influential Liar : Part 3

 After Andrew Neil, there's a bit about Savile's childhood via Alison Bellamy. From her 'research' material, she produces his bible, which this segues nicely into Mark Lawson, recollections of seeing Savile in a church and the importance of the Catholic church in his story. 

Next : Jones 

"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.

Screen : "In 1994 ANOTHER JOURNALIST IS PUT IN CONTACT WITH TWO FORMER PUPILS FROM DUNCROFT".

Paul Connew introduces himself to his global audience : "In 1994 I was the editor of the Sunday Mirror, er, a national newspaper in the UK". 

I'm not covering his bit in detail, his story is fairly well documented, but he is asked an interesting question :

"Was it not something you might have told the Police about ?".

"I did, in fact, tell a fairly senior police officer contact. He basically said : 'look, unless we've got clear evidence - almost film and footage of these things, juries are probably not gonna believe them.

Connew's evidence is thus : hearsay. 

Next Mike Hames, former Head of the National Paedophile Unit.

On Screen : "IN 1995 Britain FORMS IT'S FIRST POLICE UNIT DEDICATED TO THE CRIME OF CHILD SEX ABUSE".

Hames' main contribution is to explain how devious paedophiles are, and the fact that in 1998, four years after he'd left the force, his former colleagues allegedly received an anonymous letter about Savile, which was passed to Leeds Police, and never heard of again. (FILE UNDER HEARSAY).

Alison Bellamy again : "We sort of became friends". She attended the infamous : 'Friday Morning Club' at Savile's flat wherein the subject of letters from 'nutters' might crop up.

SCREEN : "A JUNIOR POLICE OFFICER PASSES THE ANONYMOUS LETTER TO A SENIOR INSPECTOR WHO TELLS HIM THE MATTER IS 'IN HAND'. IT IS NOT FILED OR INVESTIGATED".

Bear in mind, the quoted letter is the one Hames references. I'm sure that's been covered elsewhere, so I'll leave it at that.

More archive footage of Savile with a voice-over from Bellamy. Theroux' question in the car, Jim'll FIX It, Big Brother, Lawson, Lawson and backwards and forwards to Bellamy because now we're in a new century, and Jimmy Savile is still in demand : "He loved the attention. He thrived on it".

She tells us that her editor had asked her to get Savile to talk about the 'rumours'. We hear a voice-over of Savile being asked about the 'nasty rumours', on something called : Newstalk. 

Bellamy : "Because it was his 80th Birthday I wrote a series of features about him. She did and his response was 'Oh that's a load of baloney, it comes with the territory. When I was a DJ  they would be queuing up outside the dressing room door, these groupies. Why have I not been charged ? There's never been any trial or anything'. He was quite adamant. He was quite keen to show his conscience was clear.

I didn't want it to be true. It did make me think, and it was at the back of my mind. You know, because I was a journalist. If it was a story, I would have tried to chase it or get the story. You know, I was younger and I was  ambitious and keen, you know. I couldn't find ANY evidence of it and I mean I could not, heard of any victims and certainly not in Leeds, anyway. The area I covered.

Savile switches off Top Of The Pops Studio lights for the last time. And then :

An alleged victim gives her account. followed by :

Screen : "IN MAY 2007 SURREY POLICE ARE CONTACTED BY A WOMAN WHO WITNESSED AN INCIDENT AT DUNCROFT 30 YEARS EARLIER. AN INVESTIGATION IS LAUNCHED".

Bellamy : "He always used to say, 'it might all end tomorrow', So, why would it end tomorrow ?. I remember saying to him - 'Why will it end tomorrow ?' and he said, 'No, I love it. It might all end tomorrow". Obviously, these words are supposed to mean something sinister, because the next screen :

"THE POLICE FIND 3 MORE WOMEN WITH ALLEGATIONS WHICH CORROBORATED THE FIRST. JIMMY SAVILE IS REQUESTED FOR AN INTERVIEW UNDER CAUTION".

Next, the screen fills with the image of a tape cassette and the words : "1st OCTOBER 2009" 

In smaller print underneath : This audio is based on the original transcripts 

Bellamy recalls how these events affected Savile at the time.

"There was something amuck (amok). He was very upset and the police had been in touch with him from down South. He went to be questioned, I think it was down at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, erm, and he was most unhappy about this".

*"I remember him saying, he was having to get in touch with his lawyer and I asked him what it was about, but he didn't go into detail, about-the-claims. And he said it was a historic claim, from years ago, about something".

Bellamy's testimony is interspersed with the audio recording 'based on the original transcripts'. 'Based on' ? What exactly did this mean ? I decided to check what I was hearing with the official transcripts of the recording that was released to the public. 

Here's what I found :

There are just TWO voices on this 'recording' 'based om the original transcripts. The audience is not told, that there were actually FOUR people in the room where the 'out of custody interview' took place, in Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Savile waived his right to have a lawyer present. Instead, a friend from the hospital, sat in.

Here's how the film presents the event. You can read them yourself here. 

https://www.theguardian.com/media/interactive/2013/oct/16/jimmy-savile-police-interview-transcript

 "Ok, this interview is being tape recorded. I'm Detective Constable (Bleep) from Surrey Police. What's ya full name ?" . 

"James Wilson Savile".

"You said earlier, it was ok to call you Jimmy ?".

"That's my name, yes !".

"So, just before I make you aware of what's been alleged, I'll just read out the caution. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence, if you do not mention when questioned something, which you later rely on in court. And anything you do say, may be given in evidence".

"I'll say everything. I've had so much of this in fifty years you know, it's always is, there's someone looking for a few quid or a story from the papers.

"What we'll do Jimmy, I'm not being rude stopping you there. I will give you a chance to say, it's just important to get this instruction bit done". (By instruction, she means the caution that she's already done !).

"You didn't interrupt me". 

Bellamy (see* above).

Back to the 'recording' :

"Did you specifically go to Duncroft, knowing it was an all-girls place, to receive sexual gratification ?".

"That is a complete flight of fantasy"..

She coughs : "She said that when you visited D she showed you across to a place called Norman Lodge".

"Nah, I can't remember that".

Did you ever give her, what she calls 'a blow job ?".

"Out of the question".

"So did you ask for a massage from the girls when you visited Duncroft ?".

"Not at all - NEVER".

"Did you ask them to comb your hair, at all ?".

"No".

"Why would these girls say this about you ?".

"We always get something like this coming round at Xmas - cos we all want a few quid at Xmas, right ? Normally you can just brush them away like midges. They will try blackmail - 'If you don't send us money, I will say that - you've done this and you've done that. They just like causing trouble. Now, that's why I have, up in Yorkshire where I live in Leeds, a collection of senior police persons - who come to me socially, but I give them all my weirdo letters, and they take them back to the station".

"You stated - at the very beginning of this interview, your 'policy' on this sort of thing ?".

"Policy ? Yes ! I have now alerted my legal team, that we may, be doing business. See, I'm known in the trade as 'litigious' - pull people into court, no messing - 'Oh dear, I've been wronged - ah, ah, ah. Dreadful (noise of gavel being banged on table) £200 grand. Five times I've done that - I'd rather not.

If this disappears - it disappears. If it doesn't, then YOU YOUNG LADY, will finish up at the Old Bailey, as well as everyone else".

"If I just end the interview there. It's 11.40 and I shall stop the tape".

That's it. That's how these film makers handled such a serious aspect of the whole story - they trivialised it. They've used an actor who produces a very good replication of Savile's voice - as if he's been rehearsing for some time, possibly on a television drama ? Who knows and who cares ? I don't. I care about what was actually said by real people, not fakes - playing a part, for cash.

Here's the official transcript.

Dishonest isn't it ? These people couldn't even be bothered to write a proper 'script' for their performer's. The real police should attend to this, but they won't - it's only Jimmy Savile.

I'm almost at the end of my coverage of this truly appalling film. Straight after the audio ends :

Screen : "THE THREE WOMEN MAKING ALLEGATIONS ARE RELUCTANT TO GO TO TRIAL. THEY EACH BELIEVE THEY WILL BE THE ONLY COMPLAINANT. THE POLICE DO NOT INFORM THEM THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE".

Another bit from Bellamy, who asks Savile, what happened "with that inquiry thing ?. 

"He just brushed it aside, as if famous people had this to put up with, all the time. And it was just part of his fame and - not to worry about it".

Savile voice-over saying he's a very tricky fella. Not clever, tricky.

Screen : " FOUR WEEKS LATER PROSECUTORS DROP THE INVESTIGATION ON THE BASIS THAT THERE IS NO REASONABLE PROSPECT OF INVESTIGATION".

Next up : How Jones found his 'victims'. 

Remember - he's already said how - maybe once a year, if he had any spare time, he'd look for stuff online about Duncroft ?

"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.

Jones produces a large file of what appear to be, print outs of web pages. We get to see a few of them.

On 19th September 2008 someone calling herself 'Caro' is responding to something someone has said about a 'gentleman'. You will note that Fiona only comes into the conversation in 2011. Where was she in 2008 ? Where was Meirion Jones for that matter ? Was he not scouring the internet for Duncroft gossip in 2008 ? Slap bang in the middle of the Police operation ? Apparently NOT ! Moreover, that 2008 poster is NOT included in the few pages of screenshots in the Pollard Report. I checked ! 

To be continued

The Most Influential Liar : Part 2

 After Selena, its footage of news reports of Savile finally getting his knighthood. Lord Butler : "Margaret Thatcher wasn't going to give up", and his name got onto her 'last list' for submission to the Queen. 

Savile was, according to Lynn Barber : "still sort of - buzzing" when he agreed to be interviewed by her again. 

"I went to his pokey little flat, near the BBC. I had decided that I must try and ask him if he likes little girls, but you know I couldn't work out how, and actually, he sort of gave it to me. on a plate because he said that getting the knighthood was a relief, and I said well why was it a relief and he said oh cos you know there's always been these nasty rumours, so then I was able yo say, you mean the rumours that you like little girls'

She reads from her magazine piece : "Still I was nervous when I told him : what people says is you like little girls ? He reacted with a flurry of funny voice - Jimmy Savile patter, which is what he does when he's getting his bearings. Ugh, now sure, now then now then. First of all, I happen to be in the pop business, which is teenagers, that's number one, so when I go anywhere, it's the young ones that come round me. Now what the tabloids don't realise is that the young girls in question don't jug around me because of me, but because I know the people, they love - the stars.

I, I thought he answered the question, well. And then I thought : Oh yes that explains it (not sure if Barber is reading this sentence, the screen has a Fix-It featuring Kylie doing the locomotion, but then she continues reading : 

"If they know it, why haven't they published it ? The Sun or The News Of The World would hardly refuse the chance of featuring a Jimmy Savile sex scandal. The fact that the tabloids have never come up with a scintilla of evidence against Jimmy Savile, is as near proof as you can ever get".

"And what was the reaction to your article when it was published ?". 

"Ah well I was quite told off by quite a lot of readers saying : this wonderful man who does all this work for charity and is now a Knight, and then you dare to ask him if he likes little girls. People were offended by the question. There was a feeling, it was sort-of - cheeky".

Straight to Sylvia Nichol (Jimmy's friend).

"Never seen anyone do that much good. Simple as that". The camera lingers on her face for longer than it needs to, as if it's searching for something. 

Next : footage of Savile on This Is Your Life. At the same time, there's a voice-over that doesn't belong to what's on the screen. I recognised the voice of Anthony Clare the famous Psychiatrist who interviewed Savile for a radio programme. Savile tells him he's not constrained by anything and how the one thing he couldn't stand losing would be his 'freedom' : "I've got the freedom to do pretty well everything, now". 

From Santa Claus to Meirion Jones accompanied by sinister-music and Lynn Barber's voice-over :

"Insofar as my article - had any importance, it was the first time that this had actually been in print. You know, I sort of - launched that idea on the world, as it were". Jones places the magazine on a desk, taps the relevant page, and declares "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". 

We leave Jones there, with his magazine and an article that was "there in black and white" in 1990. He doesn't let on when exactly he first came across it (I'll come back to this later) and nobody asks him. Nobody in this film wants to know. Suddenly : it's fast forward to 2012, when Jones' story finally reached the public, and a seemingly-horrified media : Carole Malone on some show : "He groomed an entire nation", etc, etc.

Jones has his say : "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 ? Honestly folks, were it not for the damage this man has done, I might actually feel a bit sorry for him. There's something not right with this man. And I mean that most sincerely. 

But never mind him and his issues, worse is yet to come, because less than three minutes before the end of Part 1, the screen fills with the image of an old cassette tape and a voice introduces herself as a Police officer. No disclaimer appears on the screen to inform the viewer that the voices are those of actors. To all intents and purposes, this is a recording of a police interview that actually took place in 2009. Even I was temporally fooled. 

The bastards !

And they didn't tell the audience until well into Part 2. 

Part 2.

Opens in Loch Ness with Savile, an interviewer but no 'Nessie'. These filmmakers, sure love making films about non-existent 'monsters'. 

On Screen : 'WHEN JIMMY SAVILE'S CRIMES WERE EVENTUALLY UNCOVERED. THEY SHOCKED THE NATION.'

'BETWEEN 1955 AND 2009 HE COMMITTED HUNDREDS OF SEXUAL OFFENCES, MAINLY AGAINST CHILDREN'.

Interspersed with footage of Savile and his telescope at Loch Ness.

One minute in the star of the show : Meirion Jones reappears. This time his aunt's school is a "youth detention centre".

"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" (Jimmy Savile is at an establishment dinner).

"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.

ON screen  "Part 2 : Finding The Monster".

Footage of Broadmoor Hospital, which looks like the BBC documentary made in the 80's (to check).

BBC narrator : "Today's siren called for change. For the past seven months a task force has been setting up a stronger therapeutic regime. It's chairman is Jimmy Savile". 

The viewer is at no time, told WHY a 'task force' was needed at the hospital in the first place, and/or why Savile was part of it. Nothing about patient's being confined to their rooms at an early hour and having to slop-out as if they were in prison, because of the industrial action and the chaos that ensued back then. 

No, just Richard Ordish expressing how surprised he was back then. Next another clip of Savile talking about the invite to join  'nutters anonymous club'. Then on Parkinson and next Marjorie Wallace.

Marjorie Wallace was a journalist who wrote a book called The Silent Twins and about two girls who were sent to Broadmoor for arson. 

"The twins wanted me to be their voice. I would go 6,7, 8 times a year to visit them. Jimmy Savile, I met only once". He'd suddenly appeared in the canteen and he jumped onto a table in front of her and the girls, according to her saying : "I'll have you first (pointing at one twin) I'll have you, second" (pointing at the other). Nobody asks Ms Wallace what she thought he might have meant at the time, so it's a mystery. 

Clip of Savile on TV being grilled by a group of teenagers and a very young Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Then back to Wallace who tells us that despite writing her concerns about the effect Savile might be having on vulnerable people  to the health minister at the time, she got nowhere. "I remember I didn't really get anywhere. He was too important. It had been decided ...".

Screen : BY 1990 JIMMY SAVILE HAS CHARITABLE RELATIONSHIPS with over 50 hospitals and children's homes across Britain.

A boy in bed laughing and chatting with Savile about a picture he's drawn of him. 

Screen : IT IS IN THESE INSTITUTIONS THAT HE FOUND MANY OF HIS VICTIMS.

Savile on Parkinson.

A Forensic Psychotherapist talks about people who commit crimes over a huge period of time, without getting caught, interspersed with Savile on Top Of The Pops and Parkinson : "He's not what you think you know. The forces of darkness are at work there". 

NEXT UP : Savile on Andrew Neil's talk show : "Is This Your Life"(1995)  asks him : "What has prompted you to devote so much time to charity ?".

"Just cos I like it. I don't really need to justify why I like it".

Neil : "Jimmy Savile was a huge figure but he was also an enigma. I had been with The Economist for ten years. I made documentaries for the BBC. I was editor of The Sunday Times Of London for eleven years. He'd never been interviewed by someone like me. I've suspected there was something amiss. 

"We had found nobody who'd done a kiss-and-tell, and I should stress THAT THE PEOPLE DOING THE RESEARCH WERE HARD-BITTEN TABLOID JOURNALISTS. He said he had all these women chasing him. He'd all these girlfriends, but our research team couldn't find a single woman, girl, teenager he'd dated. NOT ONE."

No one asks Neil any questions in response to this, so here's mine :

1) Mr Neil, what do you mean when you say : we had found nobody ... ? Are you referring to your journalists at the Times Of London, the Economist, etec etc ? And if you aren't why aren't you ? Why mention tabloid journalists ? Didn't you have your own ?

2) I'm confused ? You do say 'our research team' ? Is that because this is a Netflix film ? Are you venturing to speak on behalf of the whole of the British Press ? 

Personally Mr Neil, I'd say Lynn Barber made a much clearer and useful contribution to my understanding of the matter. 

I'm not finished yet folks. 

To be continued ! 

 

 

The Most Influential Liar : Part One

 The British Press (Fleet Street) gossiped about Jimmy Savile's alleged 'liking for little girls', decades ago. We know this, not because Meirion Jones, or Andrew Neil says so. We know, because someone questioned Savile directly about it in 1990. That someone was Lynn Barber.  She'd heard the rumours, she asked him about them, she wrote about asking him, and then published an article about it in a Sunday supplement of a British Newspaper, and she didn't get sued. 

I don't like this film because it does exactly what it accuses its subject of. It's complicated, but I'll try explaining what I mean, as best as I can.  

Here's how it begins. Cast in order of appearance :

Jimmy Savile, Fix it footage, Savile on Parkinson, running for charity, the London Palladium, opening of Stoke Mandeville, Prince Charles, some establishment dinner, the Pope, Thatcher, Jersey 

FOR OVER 50 YEARS A NATION WATCHED HIM

Savile at the door of Big brother 2006

BUT NO ONE SAW THE TRUTH 

Commander Peter Spindler Scotland Yard :

"We received over 400 lines of information from the public. We. Are. Investigating. Major Crime here". My full stops reflect how he's speaking. You'd have to watch it to know what I mean. 

The viewer isn't told the date, but ITV published the following on October 25th 2012.

 

https://www.itv.com/news/2012-10-25/jimmy-savile-police-investigate-400-lines-of-inquiry-and-300-victims-of-abuse-of-dj-and-others

The film has hardly begun, and I know it's going to be awful for me personally, to watch. The global audience for whom this film was commissioned, isn't told that the British Police did NOT investigate Spindler's alleged '114 allegations'   The British Police misled the British audience in 2012. Out of their mouths came one thing, one message : that they were 'investigating', when really they were NOT. Not the claims about Savile anyway. They would investigate but not investigate, the word/expression they came up with was 'assess', they would 'assess' those lines of information and yet, to this day, they haven't adequately explained to any of us, how they did this. That : 'not investigating , yet deciding that 214 crimes had been committed didn't make sense to me in January 2013. It still doesn't, and I'm bloody sure I won't let some  film maker get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of newcomer's to the story. This is what the British public were told three weeks earlier.

 

The credits begin and above the music one hears :

"Steven King would struggle to come up with something like this".

Savile : "If you are clever, you can slip up. You never slip up if you are tricky". 

Clips of : Roger Ordish, Tina Davey (BBC secretary 1971 - 1975), Martin Edwards (BBC reporter who spent a week with Savile, running for charity and next : Jones.

"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".

Now, had Jones said something like this in a film that wasn't this one, someone - say, me, would be challenging what he'd just said. My questioning would have gone something like this : "Child murderer's ? What child murderer's ? Babysitting ? You mean your parents left you alone with girls who had committed very serious offences ? Have you reported them to the Police ?".

He continued :

"In the middle of all this Savile arrived when I'm probably about 16. At first it seemed he was just another of the celebrities there, but he kept turning up. Very often when we turned up we would see Savile. It was the first time I'd dealt with him face to face. 

All his phrases : now then, now then and all this stuff. It seemed to be a screen . So there he was in his shell suit and he was making a screen in front of him and it was like - you couldn't see through it. A lot of the girls were drugged up a lot of the time (how does/did he know this ?). Psychiatrists often over-prescribed just to keep them quiet (he's not speaking about what he witnessed at Duncroft here, is he ?) But never mind, this is his story after all !

I remember seeing him driving off with three girls from the school. In the back seat, they were very excited. They were waving at their friends up at the windows. I mean they're locked-up. Suddenly one of the most famous people in Britain is turning up, and that started to become a bit of an issue for my parents who were both teachers, who would say to my aunt 'why are you letting this guy hang around with 13 year-old girls, and she would always say 'well it's Jimmy - he's a friend of the school, raising money for charity, helping people, you know, Jim'll Fix It'."

Roger Ordish

A Jim'll Fix It Participant

Mark Lawson

Lynn Barber :

"I was the Independent On Sunday's celebrity interviewer. I mean I was called 'Demon Barber' which was a bit hard I thought. More of my interviews were nice but the bitch ones were the ones the readers loved. Before I worked for the IOS I worked for the Sunday Express. I did a series called : 'Things I wished I'd known at 18. Jimmy Savile - I'm not sure what he said he wished he'd known at 18, but I asked him about the fact he'd never had a girlfriend. He said that he was so busy he didn't have time for girlfriend or children or a proper home. And he was always travelling.

Some time after, I asked around the office and what was striking was how many people said to me : 'you know he likes little girls. It was a very widespread rumour, but it was a feature of Fleet Street that rumours could go on round and round and round, so you did hear the same thing from twenty people, which did make them sound plausible. But then you had to try and get some back-up : 'have you any evidence for this ?', and they never did. 

We leave Barber there for now. After a short clip of Savile on Russell Harty, we have Dominic Carman, son of George Carman Q.C. who gives us hearsay, and an insight into what he refers to as the 'invisible club' that is : the establishment. He's one of two 'establishment' contributors in this film. The message is clear : Savile only raised £10,000,000 for the rebuilding of a hospital wing, in order to impress and thereby win the protection that being in this 'club', affords. A sort of : 'immunity from prosecution' if you will. 

Says Carman : "People can enter the establishment from modest backgrounds. To be taken 'seriously' by the establishment, one has to make a very strong impression on them. A BIG impression (his emphasis)". 

The wards of The Spinal Injuries Unit at SM Hospital, were in a bad way. The ceilings were literally falling in on top of the patients. Sylvia Nichol offers the following :

"On the Second of January 1980, we had bad snow. One of the patient's is lying in his bed, can't move, and the ceiling above his head, which was all he'd got to look at for a few months, was beginning to BULGE (her emphasis)". 

 "One of the consultants phoned Jim and said can you help us, and that's when all hell broke loose". Footage of the start of the appeal to rebuild the National Spinal Injuries Centre, bagpipes included. 

Clip of Savile eating fish and chips with Russell Harty.

Christine Checkley a patient at SM : "Stoke Mandeville keeps me going. That's why I'm still here now. I was given a life expectancy of ten years, and look at the age of me now. We NEEDED that hospital". 

Parkinson with Alan Alda

Fix It with Margaret Thatcher

Lord Robin Butler :

"When I became Principal Privy Secretary to MT in 1982, her relationship with Jimmy Savile had really become quite established. Their relationship was pretty close, he was writing letters to her, she had invited him to the PM's country residence : Chequers. Stoke Mandeville is on the doorstep of Chequers, it was round the corner. MT partularly liked Jimmy Savile because he wasn't relying on what the state, could do". 

A doctor in Stoke Mandeville :

 "This place would not be in existence without Jimmy Savile. He has been the driving force. The focal point. The Engineer. The saint".

Sylvia N : "I 'd never seen anyone. Do that much good. He kept it up, never faltered. I just, sort of - I probably loved him".

Next up : Footage of Prince Charles and Diana opening the new hospital wing in 1983. Repeated visits by Diana - sometimes on her own, etc etc etc.

 Alison Bellamy former reporter for The Yorkshire Evening Post and Savile biographer. 

"I was the Jimmy Savile correspondent, covering all his news ... I DID like him ... I did know quite a lot about him, so I was asked by a book publisher to write his biography. It was published three months before the scandal erupted. After the scandal I was shown all of this stuff. Lots of letters, here. He kept everything, you know, meticulously". 

"So these letters, from the Royal Family. They include Prince Charles and Princess Diana".

In 1987 Prince Charles writes to Savile : "I do so want to get to parts of the country that others don't meet. What I really need is a list of suggestions from you. Perhaps I am wrong, but you are the bloke who always knows what's going on". 

Ms Bellamy expresses some surprise that some one like PC would seek advice from someone like Jimmy Savile. I'm more surprised that he uses the word 'bloke' myself.

Back to Lord Butler's recollections of Thatcher "pressing" for him (Savile) to get a Knighthood, "in the early eighties". 

Jimmy Savile : "It said in the magazine the other day that the only person she listened to was Jimmy Savile (he and reporter laugh about this) which in itself is an oddity. We'll go down and sit with the prime minister over the Christmas period  and I think that someone like me is invited into a family circle like that, because I'm not a political person and maybe she just wants a bit away from politics over Christmas. 

Here's Jimmy Savile at his best in my opinion. You'd need to watch it to know what I mean. 

Lord B reflects on Thatcher's countless attempts to get Savile a knighthood.

"My predecessor, chairman of the main honours committe, he said : 'Mr Savile is a strange and complex man. He deserves high praise But he has made no attempt to deny the accounts in the press about his private life accounts of his private life, WHY ?". I'm not sure if that 'why' is his predecessor's words or Lord B's, but next up is Meirion Jones 

"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. Er, 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".

But Meirion, this is what 1983 ? Weren't you a journalist by then ? Why didn't you speak up back then ? 

Next the audience is offered an example of how the camera apparently LIES. I'm still getting my head round the irony of Selena Scott's contribution and the message her latter day testimony regarding her experience of interviewing Savile back in the 80's, repeatedly. 

'He was odd but you said - he made people laugh and it's a gift to make people laugh, and television studios are desperate for light entertainment. I was as much an act in this as he was, and that's embarrassing'

'I know what I was thinking when I was looking at him there. It's a totally different experience when you are sitting at home and looking at this set. It's like I'm a liar, like (inaudible) sitting there telling fibs, when the truth is very different (inaudible) A camera never lies does it ? (shakes her head) A camera never lies.

So what I'm looking at here is something totally different to what I actually felt at the time. SO THE CAMERA DOES LIE. You know - if the camera never lies the the camera would have picked up on him years ago. Yeah, Yes IT'S THE BIGGEST LIAR - THE MOST INFLUENTIAL LIAR'.

It's not the camera that's lying and it's probably not Selena either. Bless her, she's just doing her job. And Savile is just doing his and the 1980's audience loved it. Meanwhile, behind everyone's backs, the Fleet Streeter's were gossiping that Savile 'liked little girls' but no one had any evidence, so no one could print that gossip, back then. That's not how they did things back then. 

To be continued !