Watching The Jimmy Saville Documentary On Netflix

I'm also watching it. Savile was unknown in America and I cannot believe how much of a celebrity he was in the UK. He was friends with Prime Ministers and the Royal Family FFS! This creepy, hideous, talentless disgusting man. WTF were the British thinking?

I'm also watching it. Trump was unknown in The UK and I cannot believe how much of a celebrity he was in the US. He was friends with Prime Ministers and the Royal Family FFS! This creepy, hideous, talentless disgusting man. WTF were the Americans thinking?

Too bad he died before it all came out

OP you're very brave watching the doco. It would make my skin crawl if I had to watch it...revolting creature. (not you OP..Jimmy)

r2 your whataboutism is tiresome. It's unbelievable how popular and beloved Savile was.

American here. Years ago I was in London and saw Saville on tv. I had no idea who he was but just looking at him made my skin crawl. I thought "that man looks like a total kiddie diddler." He was so, so gross.

Johnny Rotten called him out as a pedo and got banned by the BBC. There was so much institutional power protecting this man. Makes you wonder why.

I agree with R1 and R6 - I can't believe he was as popular and hideous / freaky looking as he was.

R2 - shut the fuck up - we're not talking about Trump. I hate when people derail a thread to pivot onto something completely different and try to think that they are smart.

I mean Jesus, just LOOK at this motherfucker! If you saw a man who looked like this sitting next to you in a restaurant or a bar would you not want to scream and run?

I watched it and felt like beating up the screen if that makes any sense. That piece of shit lived way to long because he was pushing 90 when he finally died.

Who covered for him? It took decades for people to catch on? Come on now! He must have had friends in high places but they are shit no different than he was.

R7 I totally believe that but your kinky is stinky so I'm linking to it for you. Johnny Rotten was in the right with this I do dare say.

Oh goodness! My typo! "Linky" is stinky. I hate my spell check and bilingualism oftentimes.

He was a master at hiding in plain sight: "He looks and acts like a freak so he CAN'T really be that much of a freak: Look at all the good he does for children and the disabled!"

Nope: He was that much of a freak.

If you are shameless and charismatic and absolutely willing to lie to your teeth while destroying anybody who disputes you, it's amazing what you can get away with. I'm reading Bad Blood, the expose on Elizabeth Holmes, and she was another sociopathic bully who got way too far on charm and ruthlessness.

*lie through your teeth

[quote]who covered for him? It took decades for people to catch on? Come on now!

There had to have people who knew what was going on. He molested literally hundreds (!) of children for decades. No way that people didn't know.

He was also a necrophiliac. He had unfettered access to some morgue in England and he would have sex with corpses. There are articles about it if you Google. Sick, sick man.

Sorry I meant "there had to have BEEN people who knew what was going on."

[quote]Elizabeth Holmes, and she was another sociopathic bully who got way too far on charm and ruthlessness.

Holmes was very attractive, though. That had a lot to do with it. Saville was absolutely repulsive.

[quote] Too bad he died before it all came out

There should've been a Savile row before his death.

[quote] He was also a necrophiliac. He had unfettered access to some morgue in England and he would have sex with corpses.

If one passed the NCLEX in Canada, can one practice nursing in England?

He used to make my skin crawl from my childhood. He got away with so much because he raised money for a famous children’s hospital and had the ear of some prominent people. People knew he was a creep but no one individual had the courage to come forward because it was the sainted if extremely weird and creepy Jimmy Saville and thought nobody would believe them.

I think everybody knew on some level (except for the children who watched his show and appreciated his 'big' personality), it was just extensively and systemically covered up.

From what i've read, the pedophile rings in the UK are very powerful and protected. Closely linked with the government, the media, the Royal Family, etc. I understand the 'he was so wacky' argument about hiding in plain sight, I guess it's sort of a Michael Jackson-esque thing where people just dismiss them as a bit crazy and odd.

Agreed. It's beyond fucking incredible that so many could not see, or refused to see, what was so blatantly obvious. His freakiness was an arrogant show of his true self, at once a cover and a dare to see the truth he wore with a smirk on top.

So many people DID see it though - he just got away with it all because the police wouldn't follow up the myriad of complaints and the BBC closed ranks.

I was thinking about this a little more. I think we also need to remember this was virtually all pre social media and internet time. He had major heart surgery in 1997 and was far less active by that time. There was no #metoo hashtag. No centralised computer systems where a report by a woman in one place would flag up reports elsewhere so it was far easier for him to get away with his crimes then. However, enough people in higher places knew and they should have done far more.

People did know. My mother (RIP) used to go dancing when she was a teenage after the war. Savile was the DJ. She said he made her skin crawl and she wasn't the only woman who felt like that. It was also known that he and his gang of thugs used to beat men up in the back room of the dance hall. Savile said it was men who 'crossed the line' with young women, but it wasn't. Nobody liked him but people were frightened of him. He had his gang of thugs, was connected to the local crime families, the police, celebrities, the BBC, charities, the Royal Family, politicians...the list is endless. He used to threaten the press that if they ever printed stories about him, all the charities he supported would lose money. Probably threatened them with other stuff as well. He was a horrible man who used his position to get away with his crimes. Long may he rot in Hell.

Decades of Benny Hill had desensitised them

He also abused men/boys and the elderly. His oldest victim was 75.

Saville had a long-running show called "Jim'll Fix It" where members of the public would write in to have their wishes granted. In the mid-1980's he answered a request from a young boy who wanted to appear on 'Doctor Who'. A special TV segment was filmed with the boy and the then-Doctor, Colin Baker along with former companion Janet Fielding. At the end of the segment, Saville comes into the TARDIS and kisses Janet Fielding's hand. Colin Baker later said he was creeped out by it. The segment used to be included as a special feature on the 'Doctor Who' DVD's but after the revelations about Saville, the BBC deleted the special feature from subsequent 'Doctor Who' DVD's.

I always found him creepy as a child, but it was still a shock when the revelations came out because you have to understand, in the UK he was just regarded as some sort of national treasure. I'm trying to think of who an equivalent in the US would be - drawing a bit of a blank though, maybe there isn't an equivalent?

I am in two minds about watching this - I saw the trailer and it literally gave me the shivers!

I think almost every movie or tv program featuring young women or children have a fair amount of sexual abusers lurking around. There were rumours of young actors in the Harry Potter movies being sexually abused by some members of the crew.

Prince Charles seems to have had an extensive correspondence with him, asking for advice on all sorts of things.

Hmm maybe in the US compare to if we were to learn Jerry Lewis was bonking the kids he used to raise all that MDA telethon money for. There were a couple of threads a few years back on DL about the pedo ring Saville and other socially prominent and powerful Brits (allegedly) were apart of. Do a search go back about 5 years. Quite the rabbit hole!

[quote]In April 2000, he was the subject of a documentary by Louis Theroux, in the When Louis Met... series, in which Theroux accompanied British celebrities going about their daily business and interviewed them about their lives and experiences. In the documentary, Savile confided that he used to beat people up and lock them in a basement during his career as a nightclub manager. When Theroux challenged Savile about rumours of paedophilia over a decade before, Savile said: "We live in a very funny world. And it's easier for me, as a single man, to say 'I don't like children', because that puts a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt."

Good lord.

The supposed VIP pedo ring was fictional, r31. The main source for it, Carl Beech, who alleged he had been sexually abused by a VIP pedo ring as a child, was found to be a congenital liar who had fabricated everything.

The sick vices of the upper classes, clergy and the aristocrathy. Anybody remembers Haut de la Garenne and the Jersey Home for Boys. Only in the last 50 years are there investigations about these things.

Jeffrey Epstein worked with the same methods. Charitable activities to get into high societies.

Jimmy Savile was about as working class and non-metropolitan as you can get, r34.

R35, Jimmy Savile was not involved with "high society". He was an ex-miner who became a DJ playing pop music and if anything made him and protected him it was the taxpayer-funded state television BBC, which the right wing in the UK considers the apogee of socialism. He lived most or even all of his life, even while he was famous, in his home town of Leeds in Yorkshire, which is a kind of English rust belt. His whole schtick was an old-style working-class Northern ("midwest"/"rust belt") humour.

He was Catholic, though.

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Every country has its celebrities at whom foreigners scratch their heads and wonder "Why him?"

Will watch this now.

If you look at any of these abuse scandals, it's disbelief mixed with the attitudes of the times protects these men. "Oh, no! He couldn't possibly do that with children." And there were the not so casual misogynist attitudes towards women in the all too recent past.

There were people, who knew otherwise as R24 pointed out, but they powerless. Prince Charles and the pope associating with a sexual abuser -- oh, couldn't possibly.

Huh!

It's creepy how in interviews he'd say stuff like "this could all and at any moment." He was kind of winking and nodding, almost admitting he was getting away with some terrible shit.

[quote] I'm trying to think of who an equivalent in the US would be - drawing a bit of a blank though, maybe there isn't an equivalent?

Michael Jackson

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I agree that Michael Jackson is the obvious American equivalent. MJ was a complete freakshow with his military costumes, bringing children to award shows, having sleepover with preteen boys, his entire childlike/effeminate persona--talk about hiding in plain sight. Yet he was the number one celebrity for a solid decade, went to the white house, and even had much continued success long after the first round of accusations. He really never paid a price during his lifetime, and you still hear his music everywhere.

I have a half buried memory of a segment JS did either for Jim’ll Fix it or another BBC program broadcast in the 1970’s. It involved JS getting a medical massage treatment from a couple of NHS nurses; the overriding memory I have is of his pallid flesh vibrating…

Talk about hiding in plain sight…

I’m not saying it’s actually true but a few years back Anonymous claimed Sayville was the actual reason why Princess Di was killed a staged car accident to cover up trafficking which she was about to expose

Funny how posters say, “how could they not have known,” while at the same time dismissing anyone’s claims of having been abused or raped. People like this creep can do this because of every single one like you.

Are you American, r41?

I don't think Michael Jackson is equivalent to Savile. Jackson was a musical genius, not a mere celebrity. His eccentricities were viewed as par for the course. His childishness was explained and understood because we knew how he didn't have a childhood himself.

I can't think of anyone comparable to Savile whose only ability was fund raising and being a "character". I was about to say Bill Cosby who drugged and raped women for years but he was a beloved and familiar actor and a lot of people sdon't believe the women to this day, or think they should shut up.

There are rumors that Mr. Rogers was a pedo, but they never got any traction.

Britain has the kind of "eccentrics" that we really don't have in the U.S. Someone who is famous for something else might be eccentric, but Savile seemed more like an eccentric who was given jobs just because of who he was, not because of talent.

We've had famous music show hosts but they always did something else, too, like Dick Clark who was a prolific producer, or Ed Sullivan who was a journalist and entertainment writer first.

There are certain "eccentric" actions that seem funny in England but not here. I remember one of Monty Python guys who bit women in the butt when he got drunk. In England it was funny, but in the US he got a beatdown in a bar.

What are you going on about, R45? You could count me as one of the "how could they not have known" posters on this thread, but I certainly would not have dismissed anyone's claim that Saville abused that person, nor am I one to dismiss claims of the sort against anyone. Clearly any such claims warrant a serious and thorough investigation.

[quote]Funny how posters say, “how could they not have known,” while at the same time dismissing anyone’s claims of having been abused or raped. People like this creep can do this because of every single one like you.

R45, up to your post there were 35 posters condemning Saville, most saying it should have been plainly obvious that allegations against him should have been properly considered; the remaining 10 posts are corrections or offer neutral information in support of previous posts. Where is there one post in this thread that condemns Saville AND/OR dismisses "anyone's claims of having been abused or raped"?

I'm not R45 but I do think it's easy to say "how could they not know" when even today victims of sexual abuse are not believed. People did in fact ignore the evidence about Saville at the time.

R41 daily mail preview links have been suspended on DL. Stop posting blank pages and get a new source. Grow up and join the adults while you’re at it.

Fuck off ^

Was Martin Short's "Jackie Rogers, Jr." a take-off on Jimmy Savile? At least visually?!

Why should it be up to this site to fuck off. This is datalounge. Not the daily mail.

They are two separate sites and some troll is trying to merge DL and DM.

I’m not gonna take it lying down.

The daily mail troll needs to grow up and stop acting like a 5 year old that smears feces on the wall. It’s ruining the DL experience.

Get some new links. There’s a whole world out there. Get your head out of that low-life tabloid trash.

r52 the link works fine for me

The daily mail is smut. Who wants to put that into their psyche everyday. It will make you agitated and looney.

R58 is a liar. It’s a white blank box and you know it. So what if the link works. If anybody wanted to go to Daily Mail they can go there without assistance.

It’s embarrassing to keep posting empty boxes. It’s desperate.

I wonder if the American version would be Mister Rogers meets Merv Griffin?

Neither were as famous as Saville seemed to have been. But maybe close enough.

I just watched the first episode. Man, what a creep. I get how he fooled people though: He just kept moving.

There have been rumors for years of a Jimmy Savile biopic. Who could play the part? Any ideas?

r60 it must be whatever device you're using. The Daily Mail links work just fine on my laptop and iphone. Maybe you need to upgrade? And BTW, the DM is great campy fun. Don't take it too seriously, same with the NYPost.

The American equivalent—without comparable bad acts!—might be Pee-Wee Herman. If his scandal had turned out to be a lot darker.

[quote]I wonder if the American version would be Mister Rogers meets Merv Griffin?

But Mister Rogers and Merv Griffin had professions and did things. They were also normal, regular people. Jimmy Savile was talentless and his only job was being a celebrity. he was also very strange and totally repulsive.

R63 I don’t think the fascist takeover of everything is campy fun. Why would you give time or money to these people? It’s not worth the poison it puts in your brain.

The link works. Nobody said it didn’t. Red herring much?

The preview does not work. But if that’s not enough hopefully Muriel will ban the links altogether then you might finally “get” it.

[quote]daily mail preview links have been suspended on DL. Stop posting blank pages and get a new source.

Work perfectly as preview links for me - the preview shows perfectly, the link works perfectly, with no "blank pages."

Oh my God, who fucking cares about Daily Mail preview links? Can we keep talking about the evil Savile?

Okay, enough, both of you.

1) r66: DL works differently on different browsers. I'm on Firefox and link previews for DM still work. There has NOT been a wholesale ban of link previews from DM. The photo is what I see when I look at a comment that links to DM.

2) r67: DM is a shitty rightwing propaganda website and there were tons of better websites you could have linked to. Defend your plethora of links to DM all you want, people are going to call you out on it, and they're right to do so.

There. Now move on.

Everyone knew, don’t kid yourselves.

They were all his enablers, and/or also participants on the child abuse.

Europe became a pedophiles playground post WW2. Do your research and read about how many sickos lined up to adopt children orphaned due to the war, for the sole purpose of sexually abusing them.

That’s part of what the aftermath of war does. It impoverishes the vulnerable to the point of making them prey to predators of all inclinations.

I suspect we will see similar results due to the devastation in Ukraine, and for sure mass migration of devastating middle eastern and African countries have fueled human trafficking exponentially, as well as with Asian countries.

Seville was a monster, and sadly, most monsters like him get away with it because unlike him, they hide and we have no idea who they are, or refuse to recognize them when we see them, like Michael Jackson and this yellow haired, big bird looking nonce.

Thanks for the heads up, OP. I’ll be watching this later on this weekend - if I can stomach it.

Gross 🤮

R55 it was you I told to fuck off, for the avoidance of doubt. You’re not going to police me on this board and I posted the link because it had images of the handwritten letters which I’m outraged about.

You might want to seek some other outlet as you have massively overreacted here.

I'm beginning to think that men with odd hair should be avoided. Jimmy Savile, Phil Spector, Davip Turpin, DJT...

Bill Cosby is a reasonable parallel to Savile: A beloved family entertainer who is a secret monster. And while he's lost his career and legacy, Cosby is currently out of prison and living his final years in luxury.

R29 Is one of those people who fetishize child sexual abuse and love to speculate at length about celebrity children being molested. The vast majority of child sex abuse doesn't happen in Hollywood or the media industry - it's just more salacious because of the fame aspect. Most pedos and child molesters are "regular" guys who live down the street.

Saville being a pedo was common knowledge in the UK, friends have told me. It wasn't some well kept secret. He just avoided blatant exposure because of his royal connections.

The Harry Potter kids were very well-protected. Apparently Michael Jackson made numerous attempts to visit the film sets but was always shut down.

Charles and Diana adored him. Oddly enough, it was one of the few things they had in common.

There is a TV film/drama in production right now, Steve Coogan is playing Saville. Steve understandably said he thought long and hard about taking on such a role.

watched the documentary. It's basically 2.5 hrs of biography with 25 mins of what happened when the scandal went public. You hear from a small handful of victims.

Zero mention of the fact he would fuck corpses, which has been written about.

Photos of Jimmy Saville always makes me think of Martin Short's character the albino singer and TV host Jackie Rogers, Jr.

I started watching, but I already know so much about this criminal, I don’t know that I want to dunk my brain in the pig pen for another soaking in pure shit.

Why did the royals even tolerate the presence of this psychopathic nonce clown in their midst?

I promise I’m not attempting to give them shit, but they ran their own flesh and blood straight out of town, yet welcomed this viper into their midst with open arms bearing accolades in each hand of each extended arm?

The BRF and BM truly need to wake the fuck up and realize that the world is swiftly leaving them behind, and not just because of their antiquated “nonce-ense”, but because everyone is running as far away from them as possible.

It’s almost immoral for them to continue as they have been in modern times.

But they just will never understand this. How can they? They’re completely out of touch because that’s how they are trained to believe is what makes them special - that untouchableness , which has deprived them of their humanity and that of others.

Another stain on the perfect Royal mantle.

Figures.

[quote]The Harry Potter kids were very well-protected. Apparently Michael Jackson made numerous attempts to visit the film sets but was always shut down.

This is true. MJ was obsessed with the young Daniel Radcliffe just like he had been obsessed with the young Macaulay Culkin years earlier. Chris Columbus (the HP director), Radcliffe's parents, and JK Rowling herself refused to let MJ anywhere near Radcliffe and MJ was not allowed to visit the set.

There was a story that when MJ moved to the UK in 2006 that he saw the Billy Elliott musical on London’s West End and afterwards allegedly invited all of the (underage) male cast members to his hotel room for a party. He was kindly told to fuck off.

It blows my mind that MJ fans still defend him.

MJ was the greatest pop star to ever live and probably the best live perfor ever, but he was also a pedophile.

I loved him and I still genuinely appreciate his musical talents and his catalogue, but I can still see a pedo when I spot one.

It baffles me that British media enabled Saville for so long.

Why? He wasn’t even neatly as talented as Michael, and I don’t see what he did that was so unique or special?

Anyone could have easily replaced him. And someone should have.

This is why people start rumors about pedophile clubs in high places. I do not believe pedophilia was or is running rampant consistently in the UK, but I believe there were periods of time that the IK government dropped the ball big time and failed hundred of thousands of children with mismanagement of their minor wards and allowed for their exploitation to take place by manipulative sociopaths like Saville who couldn’t resist a good opportunity of massive fuck ups by government when they saw one.

I’m American and we didn’t/don’t have anyone akin to Jimmy Savile that I can think of: that man was a force unlike anything I could believe.

There was something Thatcher said that was telling about how Savile (a private citizen) was spearheading good works and not relying on the government to do things for people. That showed they likely knew about his behavior and turned a blind eye.

That documentary made me sick and I know they barely scratched the surface.

I think Steve Coogan will be great - he's actually very good in dramatic roles. Wasn't he also a victim of child abuse?

Let's not overdo the "everyone knew" thing. Maybe some people around Savile had some suspicions, but the idea that "everyone knew" is utter nonsense.

R80, presumably you've only recently started to hear about Jimmy Savile. He was a fixture in British media life for decades. He was presented to us as a loveable British eccentric, a top bloke who did lots of good works and a fun guy. He wasn't some kind of best friend of the royal family or anything. This attempt to try to make it seem as though he has some special connection to Charles is utterly ridiculous. Savile was everywhere.

[quote]There was something Thatcher said that was telling about how Savile (a private citizen) was spearheading good works and not relying on the government to do things for people. That showed they likely knew about his behavior and turned a blind eye.

How the fuck does that mean "they likely knew about his behavior and turned a blind eye", r84? All it means is that he did lots of charity work and politicians liked that, especially a politician like Thatcher who wanted to reduce public spending.

R83, part of why people were able to look the other way with Savile was his "saint" image because he raised so much for charity

Look at how people STILL defend Michael Jackson. People just call the victims liars. They see what they want to see

Louis Theroux made a documentary the other year about how he missed the Savile scandal when he made his original documentary about Savile. I don't know if he genuinely hadn't heard of what Savile was doing but if he hadn't, I wanted to scream at the screen that it was because he wasn't really that interested in finding out what the gossip was and investigating it. His documentaries are fairly superficial fluff.

Too many people think that gossip replaces doing something about it. They whisper, tell other people privately, rather than actually do something real about it to stop it.

I was a kid when this creature was at the height of his popularity and he freaked me out. I genuinely used to shudder when he appeared on TV.

It felt weird, because it was obvious that everyone was supposed to love him, but I just though how creepy he was, this old guy who seemed half-dressed in his tracksuits and string vests. And he ALWAYS sounded sinister. He did this programme called Jim’ll Fix It, which was a great concept, but I always felt uneasy watching it. Creepy, sinister, scary: trust your intuition!!!

He gained acclaim and influence by appearing to be a philanthropist, but he was obviously great at manipulating those in power into giving him access to women and children.

Incidentally, I felt the same way about Michael Jackson: how many children was he given access to, just because of his fame?

There wasn't a lot of gossip, r90. There just wasn't. People are trying to make it out that it was this big, open secret when it wasn't.

Look at who Savile's victims were. They were members of his family (children), sick kids laid up in hospital and more rarely kids who appeared on his show. Also, most of the time his abuse was not rape but molesting, touching the children in inappropriate ways, not necessarily genital but leery and creepy. Sick children in hospital are not even going to be able to process that what he was doing to them at the time was wrong, especially when they were undergoing treatment and already feeling shit about being in hospital.

Savile was also 84 when he died and his abuse was spread out over several decades, which means it would be harder to spot at the time what for us looking back were patterns of behaviour. Even so, his apparent peak of abuse was in the 1970s, which was a weirder time when children didn't speak up and people didn't talk about a lot of things.

R92 I agree, it wasn't mainstream gossip. But there were people who worked in the hospitals (for example) who knew and gossiped about it instead of reporting it. With the advent of #MeToo, hopefully that culture is changing now though.

One of my favourite factoids about Savile is that the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe murdered one of his victims (Irene Richardson) directly in view of Savile's flat window in Leeds. Savile was considered by the police to be a suspect partly because he visited prostitutes regularly and had a cast of his teeth taken (to see if his teeth matched a bite on the victim).

Then after Sutcliffe was caught, Savile would go to visit him in Broadmoor and would joke that they were a 'couple of Yorkie puds'. It's nauseating.

The royals loved jimmy saville. They like sexual deviants

…Whereas America just elects them to the presidency and appoints them to the Supreme Court.

r96 you need to stay on topic.

Prince Charles wrote to Saville for some "crisis PR" advice after Prince Andrew appeared at the Lockerbie plane crash site and basically said "well, these things are bound to happen sometimes." The public was angry at how callous and insensitive he was. For some reason, Charles thought Saville could help.

The sad thing is that so many media high ups in London knew what he was up to and kept their mouths shut.

R99 Yes, I think so too - I remember how the email gossip newsletter Popbitch were telling their readers about what Savile was doing before he had even died.

R94 According to the documentary, which I am guessing was very heavily fact checked, it claims they couldn't find adult women who had sex with Saville. No mention of prostitutes either. (And no mention of corpse fucking).

But they make the point that many tabloids and journalists tried to find adult women Saville had sex with and just couldn't. and as the doc puts it, these people knew how to dig for dirt or catch people.

R101 That is a bit weird. From what I've heard it's pretty sordid - Savile apparently had a caravan where he would take prostitutes and other women (rather than to his flat). I vaguely recall seeing a BBC documentary where a hospital worker was interviewed who claimed that Savile had sex with kids too sick or disabled to resist. He had a personal key and was allowed to come and go as he liked because he raised so much money for them.

When I was a young American traveling in Britain in the early 80s, the charity posters urging "Help Jim help spastics" represented to me one of the truly unbridgeable culture gaps. I couldn't even imagine how to translate that into American terms.

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Louis Theroux's "When Louis met Jimmy" documentary was astonishing. I highly recommend it, as I am sure others have in this thread.

[quote] His documentaries are fairly superficial fluff.

I agree, but I thought his Jimmy Saville and Max Clifford documentaries were very well done. While Theroux did not investigate Saville, the film did portray him as a creep and he let Saville speak for his creepy self. I didn't know anything about Saville or Theroux when I watched it and I found it a very unnerving documentary.

R106 That's a fair point. It's just that Theroux was really beating himself up for having missed it in the follow up documentary he made.

r104's article (yes, it's the Daily Mail. So what) goes into detail about what happened. Hundreds of assaults. Savile's charity work was clearly just an excuse for his true purposes, which was to gain access to vulnerable children and adults so he would sexually assault them. What a sick, evil man.

R87, thanks for your well reasoned response.

Just an FYI, I’ve been hearing about Saville for many years. This isn’t new news or just breaking recently.

Just Google the articles on the DM. They’ve been out for years.

I grew up with Captain Kangaroo so I guess I can see people accepting the strangeness back then.

[Quote] He was a master at hiding in plain sight

Hiding? If there was a Vegas version of a pedo it would be this guy.

Coming soon from the producers of the Broadway smash MJ...Jimmy!

R80. When did the royal family drive away their own flesh and blood?

But of course you know that isn’t the case. You just want to create a silly story. You’re honestly not trying to give them shit? Do you think everyone is an idiot?

"Jimmy Savile is much more frightening than the Sontarans -- much more. I will leave it at that".

Colin Baker (The Sixth Doctor Who)

(Clip below):

[quote]I promise I’m not attempting to give them shit, but they ran their own flesh and blood straight out of town, yet welcomed this viper into their midst with open arms bearing accolades in each hand of each extended arm?

It sounds like it was Charles who liked him and not really the rest of the BRF. The latest revelations about the letters between the two have Charles giving Savile's PR advice to the BRF and getting what the Guardian called a "lukewarm" response from the rest of the family, which irritated Charles. There was some mention of Diana liking Savile but there is just one thank you note from her to him, which to me sounds like she was simply being polite to someone who worked on a charity with her, rather than an actual correspondence between the two.

I read about his necrophilia recently, a topic that turns my stomach. While watching the documentary yesterday, the part about him spending five days with his mother's corpse was very disturbing, let alone how he spoke of it, something like, "she was finally all mine now."

He was incredibly talented in what pedophiles always do, find a respectable cover that gives access to children while promoting one's self as a kind, benevolent, gentle pillar of the community. People are much more aware of the ploys used by pedophiles nowadays and much more likely to speak out. Many people did in the Savile case, but none were listened to.

Where is Boyd McDonald when you need him? Nobody spends enough time talking about how disgusting straights are.

With what we now know about Saville it is easy to think that everybody knew he was some kind of monster, most people didn’t know much about him other than his raising millions for charity and his TV work. It has to be said also that once this whole story exploded the media were going out of their way to find the sweatiest and horrible pictures of Jimmy to publish. They were also trying to outdo each other in terms of his vile acts, I half expected to read that he had eaten some of his victims.

What is worth knowing, and it is no longer spoken about, it that he was incredibly charismatic and told great stories, he was a raconteur. Of course as we now know there was a vile side to him as well.

I actually met Jimmy several time in the early 80’s when I was in my early 20’s. He came across as very eccentric, odd but really friendly. Jimmy actually had many homes throughout the U.K., he had his council house in Leeds that he lived in his whole life, a huge penthouse in Scarborough, an apartment in Baker Street area of London, a house in the Shetlands in Scotland and others. The house in Leeds he lived in with his mother, who he called the Duchess, until her death many years before he himself died. Jimmy kept all of her fur coats and clothes in the wardrobe in her bedroom and sent them to be dry cleaned every year. That in itself is a very odd thing.

He was well aware of how influential and powerful he was because of his charity work, and he could certainly get things done. When the very first London Marathon was being planned the organisers wanted to include The Mall in the route, this was immediately refused. Jimmy got on the phone to Buckingham Palace to speak to the Queen and had this decision changed. Jimmy told me this story himself, who know if it is true, but I suspect it is.

Please don’t read this and think that I am defending him in any way. He was obviously a vile human being, but most people had no idea back then.

Like all the other streaming docu-series that have appeared lately this could have been very effectively truncated. Instead of 2 elongated episodes I would've been more gripped by 1 feature length documentary. Even with subject matter as compelling as this was I still became impatient with its repetition.

[quote] the media were going out of their way to find the sweatiest and horrible pictures of Jimmy to publish

They did not have to go out of their way to do that.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but in all of the exhaustive clips they showed in the doc, at no point did he come across as charismatic. Just creepy and disgusting.

I agree, Prince Charles is disgusting. I hear Jimmy was gross too.

Prince Charles consorted with a pedo? He should be ashamed of himself.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I started watching the documentary last night, after reading this thread and a review of it in "The Guardian."

I'm halfway through the first episode.

There is no equivalent of Jimmy Saville in the United States.

Several moments in the documentary struck me.

One was the testimony of the man whose aunt ran the reform school-like/juvenile delinquent institution, where Jimmy would go off in his Rolls with thirteen year old girls giggling in the backseat. The man said his aunt was star struck by the man who raised so much money for the institution, but his parents questioned the propriety of this guy hanging around teenaged girls.

Another moment was the testimony of the woman who regularly did profiles of celebrities. As she did her research, people told her he liked "little girls." She claims there was no hard evidence.

Margaret Thatcher's embrace of him came as no surprise. She was a politician who would've danced with the Devil to get a vote.

The testimony of the man who said no matter your background, once the "Establishment" accepts you, you're in and they'll protect you. He numbered the "Establishment" as a few thousand. Look at the faces today, apart from a few Black and Brown faces in the Labor party, they still run Britain.

As for Charles and other members of the royal family, their only purpose today is philanthropy. And all they care about is good press. No wonder he embraced Saville. And Charles also defended an Anglican divine who was later found to be a pedophile.

My takeaway: Jimmy Saville hid in plain site and dared us to discover him. Men like him are protected, because of their status and charitable works. There is disbelief that men like him couldn't possibly be pedophiles.

You have power, you'll get away with it.

The review in "The Guardian" noted his relationship with his mother and suggested it might be revealing, though not exculpatory, of his behavior. It noted he spent four days with her corpse before announcing her death. The review also mention rumors of necrophilia, but wrote the documentary's producers may have feared repercussions, if they mentioned it in the film.

Amazing what criminality the establishment will accept (within its own borders, we know what countries like the US do to the "shithole countries" wocka wocka).

R121 you are viewing those clips with "today's eyes", so to speak. Different times, different perceptions of charisma.

R28 R31 As I was watching the show I also tried to think who was an equivalent in the US... I immediately thought of Jerry Lewis, combined with Dick Clark. Or maybe is Soupy Sales had had a career where he became America's beloved entertainer and Reagan asked him for advice. (Does anyone remember Soupy Sales?) Both Lewis and Sales seemed pretty creepy.

There were a few clips from the early 80s (is my guess) when he actually looked attractive with a nice tan and a well done hair cut. Other than that period, his looks and "clown" costumes screamed damaged goods. I still don't understand why the British loved him so much and for so long. He was ugly, creepy, annoying and often inappropriate. Some comments were telling the public exactly what he was up to, but they were ignored.

Yeah, I hate Boris too, R129.

R125 Genuinely curious as to what possible repercussions could the producers have feared if they aired the necrophilia allegations? Savile is dead and can't sue them.

One for Tasteful Friends: here are pics of his huge Leeds penthouse flat in Roundhay Park. The huge windows do look nice.

Barf

[quote]He was incredibly talented in what pedophiles always do, find a respectable cover that gives access to children while promoting one's self as a kind, benevolent, gentle pillar of the community.

Exactly what Michael Jackson did.

R134 I hate to say it but if you're British, the children's entertainer Mr Tumble (BBC, natch) makes me wonder. I have no evidence though, only a bit of a gut feeling. He is creepy.

Let's stop this Michael Jackson equivalency - MJ, at his height, was the most famous entertainer in the world. Young kids in Bhutan, Mali, Paraguay, Palau, and Siberia were wearing MJ t-shirts and trying to do the Moonwalk. Saville wasn't known outside of GB and even there he was just a TV host.

All "kid favorites" have creepy undergrowth. As said above, Captain Kangaroo was a creeper, Sheriff John was a drunk, Mr Rogers always seemed like the neighborhood pedo, Sales seemed high and out of control... I guess the Muppets were ok and non-creepy.

Rolf Harris is another 'loved' entertainer in the UK who turned out to be a sex abuser.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers never seemed anywhere pedo-level. Mr. Rogers in particular was the opposite of eccentric, and his shows involved regular, understated adult characters like Officer Clemons and Handyman Negri. "Mr. McFeely" was about as weird as they got, and that wasn't very weird. On his shows Mr. Rogers himself wasn't around children except when he had one as a guest.

Many posters here are attesting that Jimmy Savile seemed creepy to them even back when he was popular, not just in hindsight. He reveled in an exaggerated sleazeball look, with his standard garish combo of open track suits with mesh undershirts, gold chains with medallions, big round tinted glasses, bleached long hair, and prominent cigar.

The documentary is poorly done. If you don't know the entire story already it's boring.

I used it as background noise. I got the gist of it.

I agree. The documentary was a total bore. Add Pee Wee Herman to the mix of American children's show weirdos. I never heard any rumors of him diddling children but he did have that incident at the porn theater.

This is fascinating and I'm going to watch the documentary., Did he make a fortune doing this? Was he wealthy when he died, and if so, where did his money go after he died?

R142 Yes, he left about £5m to charity when he died (he had no spouse or kids that we know of). He had a lot of properties which must have been expensive. If he made that money from the BBC, that's taxpayer money (TV licence). Disgusting.

Pee Wee didn't do anything that 5 billion gay men haven't done. Isn't that what those theaters were for??

Netflix Viewers Have One Question For Brits After Watching Jimmy Savile Documentary

Now the paedophile's heinous crimes are being exposed to an international audience on the streaming platform, and viewers – quite reasonably – do not understand how Brits couldn't see that something wasn't right about the posthumously-disgraced national treasure.

In a tweet that has been liked more than 32,000 times, one viewer wrote: "Watching this netflix thing abt jimmy savile and hey brits I deeply need to understand how you didn’t know this guy was a freak."

Another added: "The biggest revelation of this Jimmy Savile thing on Netflix is that Brits have poor eyesight. They looked at this for years and then said 'Wait, you mean THIS GUY is a pervert?!'"

A third wrote: "The new Jimmy Savile documentary on #Netflix is actually unbelievable. Every single thing he said was practically an admission of guilt, and everyone just laughed."

Pretty simplistic assessment. Do people realise how many hours he was on television? These documentaries distill the most damning minutes of an entire career. Yes, he was odd and people should have been more suspicious, but he wasn’t constantly incriminating himself and he was working in a period when these kinds of topics were much less acknowledge. Michael Jackson was at least as blatant and more than a generation younger than Savile and his still managed to avoid losing his carer.

I don't think Jimmy Savile would have ever become a star in the US. That gross thing with the mesh shirts hosting a teen pop show or a show for kids? Yeah, no way.

People have known Michael Jackson was a pedo since the early 90 (his mainstream career was almost done by then too). It seems like almost nobody in the UK suspected Jimmy?

There was speculation about him, just as there was with Jackson. Both kept their careers.

Michael was even creepier than Jimmy. Taking Emmanuel Lewis as his "date" to the Grammys and then carrying him around like a baby

R118 here. It’s all very well for Netflix viewers overseas saying how could us Brits not know, but what you have to understand is that Jimmy was a permanent fixture in U.K. culture for decades. When he was younger he just appeared a bit odd or eccentric, the gaudy polyester track suits came later, his look evolved over a long period of time.

I haven’t seen the Netflix show yet so I obviously don’t know what was shown. In the swinging 60’s Jimmy was right in the centre of the whole Beatlemania hysteria, he toured with the Beatles as the DJ in the concert halls. He did tell me a story about those days, he said that he could forge each Beatles signature perfectly, and that he often did so to give them to fans, he said ‘’it’s wasn’t hurting anybody and they were overjoyed to be getting The Beatles autographs” I’ve often thought back to that story, and given what we now know I wonder what the young girl fans gave him in return for the signed pictures.

T147. You do realise he didn’t look or dress like that when when he hosted a pop show? He lived to be 85. It’s like saying Elvis would never have been given a movie contract in the UK because he was so bloated.

It's probably mostly the 'I raise so much money for charity!' thing which was a successful manipulative tactic by him and which made so many people ignore any red flags.

He was always gross to me. I grew up watching him on Jim'll Fix It.

Michael Jackson did evil things to children. Everyone made excuses for him too.

If you didn't live through the 70s, you wouldn't be able to understand how truly, deeply screwed up the culture was. In the U.S. we had kids' shows that were thinly veiled metaphors for drug use, comedy shows and sitcoms laughing at and celebrating the idea of 12-year-old rock star groupies, KISS was seen as a kids' group even though their publicity was all naked women and pretend Satanism, Paul Lynde and Richard Dawson telling dirty jokes on game shows was kids' entertainment, etc.

People look back at the Woody Allen interview from the 1970s where he jokes that he'll be found in a love nest with little girls and say "look, he admitted it!" But back in the 1970s, that wasn't admitting anything. That's just how the culture was.

Alice Cooper in a 1973 interview with Rolling Stone talked about how his favorite perversion was raping a teenage Tuesday Weld. Again, that's what the culture was like.

It was a grand time for the perverts and the pedos, because everything was so crazy that when someone "admitted" to something, it was taken as just a sideways joke or way to get attention.

At a time in the U.K. when there were only 3 TV channels and a limited number of radio stations he was omnipresent as a host and entertainer. The then establishment representative, the BBC promoted him as as their star across their services. His appearances were met with public groans. He was tolerated as a media personality. We were stuck with him, we had no choice.

R156 my thoughts too. And we're still stuck with certain people the BBC thinks are great and inexplicably pay millions to, like that smug fuck Gary Lineker. No, I don't think he's worth his fee.

Although Savile was probably the more prolific and depraved abuser of the two, Savile’s demeanour and dress, strange as they were, were almost normal compared to Jackson’s. Savile spoke in a normal voice, not a Jacqueline Kennedy impersonation. Savile never caused his nose nearly to fall off and never transitioned to another race before our eyes. As far as I know, Savile never paraded a pre pubescent child as his official date at public functions or spoke of his sleepovers with minors.. Unlike Jackson, Savile never publicly settled an abuse case and continued to pursue some level of public career. As for who dressed the strangest, I’ll let you be the judge. And all of this was after an additional generation of consciousness raising before Jackson came on the scene. The Americans expressing bewilderment at British cluelessness are pretty absurd.

Maybe, R158, but Michael never groped kids on camera like Savile did.

But Michael Jackson did publicly claim that little boys were his best friends and had sleepovers with boys. It's insane to look back on. So many red flags.

R159. I know he groped a young adult woman. Did he gripe underage women on air?

While I’m sure he was a creep, I do wonder how much of this is hysteria. Some of these stories are over-the-top. It reminds me of satanic panic.

[quote] Add Pee Wee Herman to the mix of American children's show weirdos. I never heard any rumors of him diddling children but he did have that incident at the porn theater.

Tell us you’re a frau cunt without telling us you’re a frau cunt.

Michael Jackson's hot streak was the Thriller period, when he still looked like a normal human being and was quite attractive. He also wasn't as blatant about parading the little boys around in public. He was also an incredibly talented performer who had some great songs. The freakishness didn't really start until the end of the 80s, when he really went overboard on the surgery and was always seen with little boys around him. That was when people really started to question his sanity. By the early 90s most of the public thought there was something seriously wrong with him.

Jimmy Savile had no talent, and was a creepy and disgusting freak from the get go.

Maybe you are right about the age, R161. Either way, bolder than MJ.

That apartment alone will have the Tasteful Friends filing abuse claims.

R166 I'll admit that I think that the view and building itself is very nice, and fairly good value, all things considered. It's just that he never changed the decor from the 70s, and it looks dirty. I had a look at other apartments in the building on Rightmove and a lot of them have updated with new bathrooms, kitchens, etc. You definitely couldn't get the equivalent in London at that price but the downside is that it's Leeds. If you're a remote worker it would be good value.

R164. No one claimed Savile was as talented as Jackson so why do you menton it twice? Are you saying Americans can be excused for not detecting an obvious pedophile like Jackson because Americans would not expect a person with t’aient to be a pedophile and that a British people should have suspected Saville was pedophile because he wasn’t very talented? I truly don’t understand that. If that’s not what you mean, then what is the relevance of their relative takers?

Your chronology is also all off Jackson started appearing with Emmanuel Lewis at public events in 1984, a peak year of Jackson’s fane. Although Jackson’s fame began to diminish after the eighties, he remained a very visible and marketable celebrity through at least the early 2000s. It’s simply not credible to claim he was a marginal figure after 1990.

I thought Leeds was one of this post-industrial nightmare cities populated by out of work former miners and factory workers. We have several of them in the US, but celebrities rarely live in them. Well, Aretha did live in Detroit.

[quote] It’s simply not credible to claim he was a marginal figure after 1990.

Jackson wasn't a marginal figure, but mainstream America considered him a joke and a freakshow after 1990. Savile was always a freakshow and repulsive. He had no talent.

So because Jackson had talent it was unlikely he could have bern a pedophile ?

r171 no one said that. Most people thought he was very strange and the relationships with young boys were very strange. Are you British? It sounds like you have no idea what the perception of Jackson was from mainstream Americans past the late 80s.

The unfettered access Savile had in all those hospitals was insane. WTF were they thinking? Even Michael Jackson wouldn't have been allowed to just roam the halls of Cedars Sinai.

R113, who actually gives a shit about the royals anyhow?

Brits.

Americans DGAF.

We laugh at the hypocrisy of the BRF, as I’m sure everyone laughs at the hypocrisy of our politicians, as they should.

We’re not monarchists, so let’s just get over it.

I’m not here to argue with other DLers. I’m not here to argue with you, and unless you’re the Queen herself, taking umbrage with what I wrote is a waste of time.

Have a wonderful weekend. I hope you enjoy the fuck out of it.

I am American. Yes. I know people commented about him. He still remained a part of everyday life just like Saville, who was also the subject of comment. And I still don’t get the relevance of his talent to whether he should have been suspected to be a pedophile or not. To me it seems completely extraneous. I think it’s dangerous to assume that the more talent someone has, The less likely he is to be a pedophile

[quote]And I still don’t get the relevance of his talent to whether he should have been suspected to be a pedophile or not. To me it seems completely extraneous. I think it’s dangerous to assume that the more talent someone has, The less likely he is to be a pedophile

FFS nobody has said that. You need to work on your reading comprehension. What was being said was that Michael Jackson was the most famous star in the world for years. He had lots of talent. He was attractive at one time. Jimmy Savile was only famous in Britain. He was a DJ and a tv presenter. He had no talent. He was always hideous. The point being about Savile is that he could've been easily replaced at any time. Why this worthless, grotesque man was so famous and had so much influence is a mystery to Americans.

And even Michael Jackson was seen as a freak and his relationship with young boys was questioned by most mainstream people after his 80s peak was over and he got REALLY weird and freakish-looking. A lot of media coverage of MJ in the US was snarky or downright negative for nearly two decades before he died.

I see this guy and I think this.

FfS. You. need to work on your writing and reasoning ability. I now understand your position. Jackson was attractive and talented so it was reasonable for Americans not to suspect him of being a pedophile or condemn him for being a pedophile despite overtly pedophile behaviour. Saville should have been Suspected and condemned because he was unattractive and untalented.

r178 Savile was a lecherous creep from the beginning. MJ didn't start parading young boys around until later in his career. And it immediately caused comment from many people and the media.

[quote]Jackson was attractive and talented so it was reasonable for Americans not to suspect him of being a pedophile or condemn him for being a pedophile despite overtly pedophile behaviour.

Again, that behavior was not in the public eye until years into Jackson's career. It was the Bad era in the late 80s when the little boys really started appearing in public with him everywhere. Then he was inseparable with Macaulay Culkin.

The general public began to dismiss Jackson as a weirdo by the late 80s. The last album of his I can remember being seen as a big deal by young people was 87's bad, and even then there was comment about his extreme pallor.

The book I just read on the final days of MJ suggests that he was never the same after being severely burned in that Pepsi commercial. It began an addiction to prescription drugs he never kicked: Even a lot of the cosmetic procedures were just a way of getting access to Demerol.

r178 I don't know how old you are but you don't seem to have a clear grasp of the timeline of Michael Jackson's career or public image. For those of us who were around back then, questions began being put forth in the late 80s. By the early 90s most "normal" people suspected there was something very wrong with Jackson.

R179. As noted above in the thread he took Emmanuel Lewis to awards in 1984. That was his late career?

That was a one-shot deal with another celebrity at an awards show r183. It wasn't seen as odd. Later, when he was with one young boy after another, everywhere he went, at all times, it caused comment. When it became clear that MJ had all these boys in his private life all the time and traveled everywhere with them, it was like "WTF?" A hell of a lot different than taking a child star who was famous at the time to an award show or two.

Speaking of Jackson I remember being quite puzzled by the shock and gasps over the HBO documentary released a few years back. People were acting as if the pedo thing was brand new info. I remember back in the 90s seeing mad tv skits implying that he was a child abuser. I really thought that Jackson's proclivities had been known for years. The situation with Savile seems slightly similar in that the media coverage after his death implied that this was a massive shock when it appears to have been discussed and rumored about for quite some time.

What did Michael Jackson and pimples have in common?

They both came all over your face at age twelve.

Jackson sang at the Super Bowl in 1993 He had a top five single in 1995. He sang a huge benefit concert with Pavarotti in 1999 His live concert in 2001 had 30 million viewers. The idea that his career was essentially over after the late eighties is a bit hard to sustain.

He was a guy who engaged in more heavily publicised pedophilic behaviour than Savile yet his career continued at a respectable level for over a decade after those behaviours were well known.

R113. Thanks for confirming you just made all that nonsense up.

[quote] The idea that his career was essentially over after the late eighties is a bit hard to sustain.

Again, nobody said that. Just that his career was never the same after the BAD era, when he got really freaky. He still had fans, but his popularity was nowhere near what it had been and a good number of the general public thought he was a freak.

The question Americans have about Savile is how did Britain fall in love with a man who was ALWAYS grotesque, ALWAYS a lecherous creep and ALWAYS hideous? Who did nothing in the way of entertaining and was just a tv host and "famous for being famous?" He was repulsive, had no redeeming qualities, produced no body of real work and was always repulsive in every way. It's just a mystery.

This is the Exposure episode that first reported the crimes of Savile, right after his death.

R189. As stated above, what you see from the documentaries is distilled from thousands of hours of. television appearances. The really incriminating material probably comes to 15 minutes or so of his entire carer, and is drawn largely from the end of his career. Almost all of his creepiness was off camera And it’s inaccurate to say no one suspected it.

He was a fluent speaker and quick thinker who hosted programs efficiently and effectively. American celebrities can also be modestly talented and unattractive too. Why on earth was Jay Leno so successful?

[quote]The really incriminating material probably comes to 15 minutes or so of his entire carer, and is drawn largely from the end of his career. Almost all of his creepiness was off camera And it’s inaccurate to say no one suspected it.

He looked like a total freak way back in the Sixties, and the documentary had video of him making young girls and women kiss him. There were also photos of him doing this. He was always extremely gross and creepy.

Even 50 years ago, a guy who looked like Saville and who was always around young girls would've been suspect in the US.

R132. Have you seen Family Feud during the Richard Dawson period.

[quote]He was a fluent speaker and quick thinker who hosted programs efficiently and effectively. American celebrities can also be modestly talented and unattractive too. Why on earth was Jay Leno so successful?

Jay Leno wasn't half naked, with a crazed look in his eye and acting like a pig around women.

[quote]Have you seen Family Feud during the Richard Dawson period.

Richard Dawson was widely mocked for that and the TPTB who ran the show told him to cool it.

[quote]Why on earth was Jay Leno so successful?

You're actually comparing Jay Leno to Jimmy Savile? Jimmy Savile would never, ever have been giving a talk show on US television. He was sickening by American standards.

R197. No. If you could read you would realise I’m not comparing Leno morally to Savile.

r198 you did make a comparison. The bottom line is that someone as repulsive as Savile would have been repellent to Americans. There are a slew of stories in the media right now where Americans are mystified that this man was so famous and beloved in the UK. We really can't believe it.

r198 you just wrote "realise" but in your post at r175 you claim to be American. ???

R198. You are illiterate. And everybody knows there are stories in America about how incredible it was. The pint of most of the recent posts is Joe stupid it is for Americans to write those stories.

I think this comes down to most Americans finding him ugly.

Was Savile himself abused by family members or Catholic church people? Abused people often become abusers themselves.

The doc mentioned that Savile had an "unhealthy" relationship with his mother but didn't go into details. They also left out the necrophilia. He had unsupervised access to a morgue at one of the hospitals where they let him roam around freely and do whatever the fuck he wanted.

I mean, what normal person would ever go into a morgue just for the hell of it? Fucking sick.

The most you can say about Jay Leno was that he was dopey and unfunny. Richard Dawson - does anybody even remember him? Was he beloved by American audiences?

Michael Jackson started out as an immensely talented and cute kid and grew to be a pop super star, producing some of the most enduring music in American history. You could at least understand why he had so many enduring fans, even as he grew more freakish and grotesque, because his music and talent meant a lot to people. And even with that he was considered a weirdo and a sinister joke by the late 80s.

I still can't wrap my brain around how Jimmy Savile got a toehold in entertainment in the UK much less became some kind of national cultural icon, when he always seemed like an unhinged, uggo mental patient.

There is simply no parallel in American culture.

Coming at this from another angle, leaving the King Of Creeper stuff aside... Saville wasn't remotely funny, interesting, witty, attractive... to an American eye. It's a culture-bound explanation, that is "humor" is so frequently culture/context dependent. Jerry Lewis was hilarious to the French, ok, bizarre. But then most Americans respond to Jacques Tati or Marcel Marceau with beaucoups yawns. Monty Python was hilarious, but Benny Hill?? Americans don't get. I think the "northern working class council flats rough edged" manner and tomfoolery is equivalent to someone like Minny Pearl. I'd imagine a Brit just couldn't understand a Minnie Pearl.

Andrew Dice Clay

Americans who weren't white trash from the South couldn't understand a Minnie Pearl.

I think this must have more to do with the BBC pushing him than it does with any broad appeal he had to the British public. See also: Donald Trump.

R186?

L M A O!

Now goes and hides…

Okay I watched the documentary and was surprised at how little was devoted to the actual claims against Savile.

Andrew Neil talked about how journalists failed to find the stories of the victims or to find any adult women Savile had sex with.

I talked above about how police suspected Savile in the Yorkshire Ripper case. They were monitoring men who visited prostitutes which is why Savile came up on their radar. So clearly they knew that Savile was using prostitutes in 1976 at least.

The reason why journalists failed to find people is mostly because of taboos - both victims of sexual abuse and prostitutes are not going to want their allegations aired in public. They also were mostly working class people who (mostly quite rightly) did not think that police, juries, or the general public were likely to believe them.

I read somewhere that a girl (in an orphanage or hospital) who told people he abused her, was punished for “lying”. Absolutely heartbreaking.

The Channel 5 documentary that aired when the scandal first broke is available on YouTube and goes much more into detail about his abuses.

Jimmy Savile's story reminds me of Kim Philby's. Once you are 'in' with the right crowd, they will go to ridiculous lengths to protect you even when reality is staring them in the face.

There is a lot of pearl clutching going on in this thread. Some idiot who is shocked that masturbation goes on in porn theatres, is this even still a site for gay men? Also Jimmy’s TV career started in 1960 and lasted for decades, he didn’t always look like he did when he was older. Even before this he was a successful DJ playing at dancehalls throughout the country.

Of course we can see now that he was hiding in plain sight, but how can any American be shocked by this after watching their own Whacko Jacko story unfold before their eyes. Jeez he wasn’t exactly discreet with his secret life, parading young boys around like trophies.

[quote] Some idiot who is shocked that masturbation goes on in porn theatres, is this even still a site for gay men?

Nobody said that. I don't know if you're familiar with Pee Wee Herman, but back in the early 90s he was busted for jerking off in a porn theater and it was a big scandal and ruined his career. That's all that was mentioned. As for your Michael Jackson comment, see any of the numerous posts in this thread explaining why he was in a whole different universe than Jimmy Savile, who was a gross disgusting pig from the very beginning. You can start with r205 and work your way up.

[quote]Of course we can see now that he was hiding in plain sight, but how can any American be shocked by this after watching their own Whacko Jacko story unfold before their eyes.

I know you're not American, but the American general public and also the American media regarded Michael Jackson as a freak and a curiosity from the late 80s onward. He was no longer universally beloved and a major influence in American pop culture like he was in the Thriller era. And then of course there was the first child molestation scandal in '93 which pretty much finished him in the eyes of most of the general public. Sure he still had a fan base, but he was written off by everyone else.

R217, I think you and many are missing the point that most people here didn’t particularly like Jimmy Savile - he was a weird, creepy man. However, most people did not know he was committing horrible crimes and because he raised so much money for charity he was given pass. Without the knowledge of his crimes people couldn’t do much else unless they wished to be deemed judgemental towards someone’s appearance and mental health.

When he was at his peak, there aren’t really any signs yet that he might be odd.

[quote]Jackson started appearing with Emmanuel Lewis at public events in 1984, a peak year of Jackson’s fane

I was going to mention that as well, with regards to some of the comments made on this thread. I know that by the time I was in junior high school, there were rumors among the kids that Michael Jackson liked little boys, so that would have been 1986-87. Looking through Google Photos I see pictures of him with a group of little boys at Disneyland in 1984.

People knew something was weird with Jackson but for some reason it never took off as being a serious problem. The media joked about it all the time, but no one ever talked about it seriously.

[quote]I'd imagine a Brit just couldn't understand a Minnie Pearl.

I wouldn't be so sure, Boxcar Willie was popular in the UK.

Apparently some of the cancer centers she founded are in the UK now, as well, but I'd bet no one knows the Sarah Cannon on the name is Minnie Pearl.

[quote]Also Jimmy’s TV career started in 1960 and lasted for decades, he didn’t always look like he did when he was older.

Come on, he always looked freaky, even in those Beatles clips. What was the appeal of this man? He wasn't funny or charismatic. Or maybe he was and it's just cultural.

Well, he certainly wasn’t a Bob Hope, Phylis Diller, Erma Bombeck, or jay Leno in looks or talent, but Brits just have weird tastes sometimes.

Americans also have to bear in mind the kind of celebrity Savile was. He wasn’t someone people paid high ticket prices, traveled downtown, or scheduled a baby sitter to see. He was a provider of high-volume, low commitment entertainment. He was closer to Sally Jesse Raphael than George Clooney. In the realm in which he operated, it’s pretty mysterious why any particular person is.a star while others are not. In 50 years do you think it will be obvious to people why Oprah Winfrey was a huge celebrity or why Maury Povich was even a minor celebrity? Neither of them is particularly beautiful, talented, or intelligent. It’s usually a combination of an ability to fill a large amount of air time with minimally engaging banter or conversation for the benefit of a usually minimally engaged audience, as well as sheer luck.

Again, the obvious American parallel is Trump. The sex crimes weren't the same, but he's just as bizarre and inexplicably successful.

Oprah Winfrey isn't talented? There's a reason why not just anyone can host or interview people on a talk show and be the number one daytime show in America for 25 years undisputed. That takes talent and skill.

There's always one person trying to knock Blk talent and success. I caught it!

Savile may have been a philanthropist and volunteer, or good at raising money for causes, but that’s marred by the fact that his philanthropic pursuits were self-serving. They were a means to accessing vulnerable people. You can’t help but see that. He was a deeply sick individual.

R226 But Jimmy Savile hosted entertainment shows on TV for several decades as well. That argument doesn't really make sense.

Netflix documentaries are intentionally a whitewash, and an attempt to get their safe narrative out there.

They avoid many details, then overdo the salacious ones to keep viewers watching & talking about shit, that way we avoid talking about the other barely alluded to shit.

[quote]Another moment was the testimony of the woman who regularly did profiles of celebrities. As she did her research, people told her he liked "little girls." She claims there was no hard evidence.

Was going to mention this, as I read the profile when it was published. It was by Lynn Barber, who in the 90s made her name by writing few-holds-barred interviews with big names. She was no respecter of reputation, and often slid in the knife. Of course she was known as 'Demon Barber', and usually her copy was riveting.

She actually asked and printed the observation to Savile: 'People say you like little girls.' Savile had his 'plausible' answer to the ready: working in pop music around young people across decades provokes all sorts of wrong assumptions. Etcetera. But - he had the defence all to the ready. It's not like he was outraged by an unexpected question. He knew his reputation very well indeed.

What's not often mentioned about Barber's brave observation is that she made the appearance of then taking Savile at the highest possible valuation, and ended the long article by mentioning his de facto 'sainthood.' Almost certainly to provoke other parties into then saying - publicly - If only you knew. But no, James made it to the grave without getting caught.

[quote]He was a fluent speaker and quick thinker who hosted programs efficiently and effectively.

This made me recall a bit in Anthony Burgess's memoir. Burgess was on some programme to debate and defend his authorship of 'Clockwork Orange', and how the subsequent film led to copycat violence. Savile was the host, and mugged Burgess self-righteously for celebrating violence which created more violence. To great studio applause. Thus the canny hypocritical showboater wiped the floor with one of the most well-read and articulate authors alive. In so many ways, Savile had the cunning of the devil.

The Documentary was surprisingly boring.

Pictures of Saville are nightmare fuel.

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The above link is to Lynn Barber's original 1990 interview.

Her profiles are great. And this bit in particular stood out:

[quote]Touring the Stoke Mandeville wards with him is a disconcerting experience: when he coos over a young woman paraplegic “A-ha, now I can have my way with you, my dear!” one can only pray that she appreciates the joke. I remember the most frightening thing anyone ever said to me was when I was being wheeled in for a back operation and the junior doctor remarked cheerily, “We’ll have you walking again in two weeks – and if we don’t we’ll send Jimmy Savile to visit you.” Much as I admire Sir James Savile, he is someone I never ever want to be visited by.

What a lot of people don't understand is that back in the old, and when I say old I mean OLD, days. People, who would be rejected for who they are (from being gay or a Communist to pedophile or animal or baby killing Satanist) had two choices: Hide forever or work your way up and become "too big to fail". A lot of people, with dark secrets, hid their secret and worked their way up and when they were in a powerful position they went "well, guess what! I can do whatever I want now, and you guys have to protect me or your lives and careers will be ruined!".

The whole lot at BBC preferred to cover up all the Saville sickness, because they didn't want their lives and careers being ruined by association. But all they did was kicking the can down the road and let have Saville more years to be a creepy and disgusting predator. They were enablers trying to cover their own asses. They became part of a network of enablers and other predators, or like-minded peers who created a whole safe environment for predators, cheats, etc.

The media presents these creeps as popular figures in pop culture. Why did the Royals and government officials socialize with him? To look relevant by associating with pop culture icons. As a result, that gave him even more power. It happens to this day that the media tells us to look up to celebrities and buy whatever they tell you to buy, listen to whatever they tell you to listen, and watch whatever they tell you to watch, and wear whatever they tell you to wear, care about whatever they tell you to care, etc.

I know it's a rather trivial example, but just look at Will Smith and his "aw, shucks!" image for decades suddenly shattered by publicly slapping Chris Rock (even though he did something similar to some prankster acting as reporter). The media hyped him as this cool down-to-earth, humble guy and yet the gossip sites tell a different story of an ego maniac who, for example, needs big ass trailers causing troubles for all sorts of people to stroke his ego.

Another trivial example: Lance Armstrong. He created a whole network for the sole purpose of covering up his cheating. He became too big to fail and made others cheat, so they would fuck their own careers if word gets out.

Of course, then there's Jerry Sandusky. Worked his way up, became too big to fail and Joe Paterno rather covered for him than face the public humiliation of being associated with a pedophile, most likely not realizing he became an enabler and accessory the moment he didn't report Sandusky's crimes.

Jimmy Saville was made possible by media pushing him as the big man people should look up to, because he makes so much money for charity and because he's so highly entertaining (repeat that last part often enough and enough people believe it). The media told people "he's no creep, he's just whimsical, eccentric! He's such a philanthropist!". The media still shapes public perception of people, politics, pop culture, shopping habits, etc.

Yes, Saville was a creep who pulled the wool over many people's eyes. But given our history of electing complete raging psychopaths and war mongerers into the highest offices, Americans are really in no position to judge anyone. Not to mention our own problems with widespread abuse.

One thing I found highly confusing was the assertion from the documentary that Saville was essentially celibate except for the molestations and attacks. And that the accusations were a massive shock. But someone posted here that he did indeed have sex with prostitutes and that the police suspected him of offing some of them. That's quite a contradiction and suggests that if the poster is right that the doc wasn't very well researched.

[quote] Almost all of his creepiness was off camera

Then how do you explain all the posters saying they were creeped out by him back in the 70s and 80s? I (an American) only saw him a couple of times on tv on a trip to England and knew he was at least odd.

I just question Netlix's motives by releasing this not very in-depth documentary. Reminds me of Netflix releasing that Fyre Festival docu that was basically the PR company trying to save face and pointing all responsibility away from them, "I swear we didn't know it was a scam, we were just hired to promote something that was so obviously not going to work out! We didn't realize that filming stock footage for the commercials and ads wouldn't faithfully represent the Fyre Festival experience! We had no idea!".

Look at the Queen and the Royal family and how long were protecting Prince Andrew. Of course they all knew for decades what a monstrous piece of shit he was but he was one of their own and mum's steel will was protecting him. What's wrong with molesting children? And other powerful people what dirty crap were they doing that Saville was blackmailing them? A lot of people are still alive who were protecting this man and will they ever be punished? Of course not. It was only Saville! Nobody else. And now the British people will have Charles as their king who was good friends with Saville giving him a knighthood along with his good friend who paid him for one. The British people have to be idiots to want this man to spend the rest of his life as king. At least we were able to get rid of Trump after 4 years and Epstein and Weinstein and Maxwell had their reckonings before dying. The Queen has a lot of dirty shit to answer for but she'll be dead soon. Dump it all on Charles.

To-date no underage person has accused Prince Andrew of having a sexual relationship with him or her. If you are saying that happened, you have knowledge that the rest of the world does not yet have.

Imagine the conversations these two had.

Finished the first part of this documentary last night. By far the creepiest was the testimony of the breakfast/morning program host, Selena Scott, when she said the camera lies. They showed clips of her being groped and harassed on tv.

The guy was a complete creep, and her male co-host sat there laughing at off, basically telling her to be a good sport about it all.

I don't remember that type of outright sexism and misogyny on American television at the time. Am I wrong?

R240 Everyone in the entire world has knowledge that only you don't have. Andrew has been pulled from all royal duties and humiliated in front of the entire world for absolutely no reason whatsoever. OK.

R243. I think you will need to tell us because I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been reported.

He was hiding in plain sight. He flat out said he befriended the police so they could help him with the rumours. And they did. Only thing is the rumours were true. But the police made sure any allegations went away.

Ab article in Vanity Fair about Saville it was asked how could someone "without looks, charm, or talent" because such a beloved celebrity. I wonder that myself. Saville was hideous, repellent; how did he get to be so rich and famous? He didn't bother to hide his nasty behavior; on some music show he's actually seen grabbing the behind of some poor young girl. He did charity work; suppose that made up for his weirdness and perversity. He was considered a "national treasure" in England. He got away with sexually assaulting children and young girls his entire life. He was like Michael Jackson in that regard. He too was a serious sexual abuser (his preference was little boys) and he too got away with it scot free.

Bad things do tend to go away when you have the right connections. Things tend to go your way if you have the right connections.

Money, and making yourself invaluable to others, can get you to a place, or position, where you have the right connections.

Americans can’t judge. We have the inexplicable popularity of Donald Trump.

His pictures may be nightmare fuel, but his headstone was even worse.

I don't think it's about judging. It's more about "hey, maybe we should rather trust our own instincts instead of trusting people, because the media tells us they are so nice and trustworthy!".

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R246 I think that “grabbing the behind” was likely worse: probing or insertion of his fingers into one orifice or another. That seemed to be one of his favorite activities. That footage (the woman’s reaction during the grab or probe during the finale of the program) was used in the last seconds of the documentary.

Savile looked like the fucking devil. So creepy and scary. WTF were you thinking, Britain?

[quote]Pictures of Saville are nightmare fuel.

Seriously! After looking at pictures of Savile I had to look at pictures of hot naked guys with big hard dicks to cleanse my brain. I'm not kidding!

The vast majority of his television appearances were boring rather than creepy, even when dealing with children

Gay?

The creepiest part was when they showed footage of him talking about the monster of Loch Ness and he looks directly into the camera, winks and says that “monsters don’t like opposition.”

He had the Queen and Charles in his pocket. You don't fuck with them.

[quote] Abused people often become abusers themselves.

No they don’t.

The Brits are generally very naive socially. They would never discuss such things such a child abide. They still can’t wrap their heads around parents killing their own child. They’re basically children at heart.

Yes they do r259. Quite often.

I watched the documentary which never discussed the allegations of necrophilia against Savile.

Saville clearly had all the shit on so many people. Those people would have crushed anyone who brought legal charges against him.

[quote] His pictures may be nightmare fuel, but his headstone was even worse.

The garish headstone was removed at the behest of his family. They issued this statement: "The family members are deeply aware of the impact that the stone remaining there could have on the dignity and sanctity of the cemetery."Out of respect to public opinion, to those who are buried there, and to those who tend their graves and visit there, we have decided to remove it." A crew came, and under cover of darkness (the removal took place at night) removed the hideous memorial; The granite stones had their inscriptions ground off, were broken up and disposed of in a landfill. I think the Vanity Fair article suggested that Savile's body should have been dug up and disposed of somewhere else too, with a stake driven through its heart.

Savile supposedly still has fans who leave flowers at his now unmarked grave.

[quote]“monsters don’t like opposition.”

This underlines the apt comparison with Trump, for all their differences. Ugly, vulgar, pushy, talentless, crude, cunning, ruthless, criminal, sociopathic. Smug about how far they were allowed to get away with it all - leading to that repulsive aura of untouchability.

He was quite handsome when he was young

before he turned into a clown

I'm too young to remember the height of Savile's fame, but by the 2000s his entire persona revolved around revelling in his own weirdness. He'd occasionally make a cameo on a game show or panel show or whatever, shuffling on set in sunglasses and a tracksuit, munching on a cigar and gurning for the camera. Heineken ran a series of adverts featuring annoying celebrities, including Savile, with the tagline "Buy a pint of Heineken and we'll take this off the air". That summed up his public image by that point: an eccentric who doesn't take himself at all seriously. As previous posters have pointed out, he was similar to Michael Jackson in terms of hiding in plain sight.

The scene in the documentary with Gary Glitter was really creepy. Two pedo's doing nudge nudge wink wink. Enough to make your skin crawl.

They should revive Top of the Pops. I think it has the potential to work in the era of social media. All the Twitter stans could go crazy every week over Adele or Stormzy or whoever's performing that week. They still do a Christmas special every year and its sister show TOTP2 is still popular, so it clearly hasn't been tainted too much by its association with Savile. It's a bit grim with retrospect that the last ever regular edition of the show ended with him turning the lights off in the studio.

The documentary encouraged me to read the award-winning bio of Savile that came out shortly after his death. I just finished reading about his childhood and young adulthood. It's pretty clear that SOMETHING happened to him as a young child that started him off on the dark path he took, but of course we can't know for sure what that was. His family members aren't helpful either. Apparently, he sustained some kind of serious injury or illness as a toddler that nearly killed him, but its exact nature is unclear.

His experiences as a teenager during WWII probably contributed as well. He was never honest about his childhood or his teenage years, frequently changing up dates and events in an effort to obscure the truth. Was he a teenage coal miner? Was he using a dead cousin's identity to get out of mining? Did he experience a serious injury in the mines that affected his ability to walk for years afterwards? Maybe. Maybe not.

The bio gives a lot more detail on Savile than the documentary. Highly recommended.

The garish Savile headstone took months to make and was only in place for about three weeks. They got rid of it in the dead of night and busted it to pieces which went directly to a landfill.

Garish is an understatement. It was sheer lunacy!

I figured Savile was an only child. So I was surprised to learn he has six siblings.

He was the youngest of seven and described himself as an "oh no not again" baby. He was five years younger than his next oldest sibling, and his mother turned 40 the day after he was born. He was not wanted or expected.

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That increases the likelihood that both were abused as children. Not every abused person becomes an abuser themselves, but many abusers are former victims. Doesn't excuse what they did, of course.

Or he learnt that kind of behaviour from Johnnie? Johnnie was a lot older and kids often look up their older siblings. Or is it some kind of genetic thing that they inherited (a lot of who we are including our personalities is from genes).

I don't think there's an American equivalent - both Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby had brilliant careers based on talent. Jimmy just seemed to be this weird host and TV personality - he never sang, acted or did anything except for 'being famous'.

Some of this points to all the things we have learned in the past few decades about pedophiles - a strange, close, consistent association to children, moving around a lot, being cosy with authorities and police - and other patterns that we can now point to for Jimmy and say - hold, on a sec.

Him living in a caravan for many years and just driving around the country when he seemingly had a lot of money - that's weird. And of course the outfits and hair and all that.

But decades ago - this stuff wasn't talked about or known. Look at all the shit the Catholic Church did AROUND THE WORLD. Even as a young non-Catholic kid in the 70's, there were all these comments about pedophile priests and to watch yourself around them. And yet adults looked absolutely astounded when tens of thousands of sexual abuse cases came to light after the 90's. I recall thinking - DUH - I thought this was common knowledge.

And the problem about sexual abuse is that - unless there's semen and rape - how do you prove it? Yes - he did rape some - but it sounds like he molested most of his victims.

The Brits love their eccentrics - so while this weirdo would never have become popular in the States - so be it. I think all of this speaks to the little amount of support and knowledge there was of this. In the documentary, they said the FIRST child pornography investigation team started in 1995 and was woefully understaffed.

It's sick what happened - but hopefully a lesson for everyone. I don't think he could have gotten away with this today - no way.

I just finished watching the documentary and it is hard to comprehend how this person “hid” in plain sight for so long.

As many posters have already commented, there really isn’t an American equivalent of Savile, and I think that leaves a lot of us here across the pond a bit flummoxed as to how a person such as him could’ve been such a “national treasure” for 50 years. That’s a long fucking time to get away with such extreme levels of depravity and debauchery, even if it was a different social mindset for much of the time in which he lived.

But then again, there is no UK equivalent of Michael Jackson either, and it’s easy to counter-argue how could we not see the obvious before our very eyes for over two decades. And for that matter, how was Elizabeth able to dupe some of the most powerful, intelligent, and influential people in the US and around the world?

As far as Savile, Jackson, and Holmes go, it really sums up a basic human flaw existing from the beginning of time: we see and hear only what we want to and disregard the rest. All of the just aforementioned people had red flags flailing all around them and people who knew, and those should’ve known, chose to ignore them or looked the other way. There were voices in the wilderness heeding people to look at the obvious staring them in the face, but few did.

* Elizabeth Holmes

I hardly think Elizabeth Holmes should be mentioned in this discussion. People get swindled in the business world all the time - there have always been and will continue to be crooks.

What really disturbed me were all of the people on television defending him time and again and calling out the complaints as being 'one-sided' - of course, almost universally from men.

Just one of the perks of power.

[quote] He was quite handsome when he was young.

Like hell he was! He still had that ugly, horsey face when he was young.

He was always repulsive

Elizabeth Holmes kept pushing her blood tests knowing they were inaccurate. Seventy percent of medical decisions are based on blood tests: Had her machines gone wide in Walgreens nationwide as she wanted, hundreds or even thousands of people could have been sickened or died. She didn't give a shit and fought tooth and nail to keep the truth from coming out.

I'd say the comparison is warranted.

How did such an ugly person make it on TV?

^^^ THAT is the real question.

If Savile never did so much as feel up someone with his eyes - his fame is still inexplicable.

His lewdness was considered part of his charm. When hospitalized for some ailment it was reported that good old Jimmy was on the mend, back to his old self and "pinching nurse's bottoms."

I wanted to smack that fucking cigar out of his fucking mouth.

Talk about running a gimmick into the ground.

R287 - there's a Charlie Brooker sketch in which he argues that Savile was only famous because TVs were so small in the 70s that viewers couldn't see quite how hideous he was.

I'm watching the documentary now, it's quite boring so far. I still don't understand how the infatuation people had with this guy. In the late 90s, I spent a couple of years in the UK and I remember some friends there being shocked that I didn't know who Savile was or why he was a big deal, (I'm Canadian). Looking back, I recall thinking that he was just some quirky, low-brow television persona that could only make it in the UK.

The documentary was both overlong and underreported. There should have been much, much more about how the revelations kept coming out after his death, the public reaction, etc.

Yeah, it feels like they went out to find the creepiest clips they could find and showcased them while they were too lazy to find more victims. I think they only talked to one. And I don't get why they didn't talk more in detail about the claims against him, including the necrophilia. He is dead so nobody can sue them.

The American equivalent.

There was way too much filler about his silly life/face.

Regarding how it was made, the docu reminded me of this video:

The documentary was clearly made for an American audience. It assumed the viewer wouldn't know who Savile was and so it went in-depth with his career and such. The UK documentaries that came out right after Savile's death get straight to the point and have a lot more testimony from victims.

[quote] , I recall thinking that he was just some quirky, low-brow television persona that could only make it in the UK.

R292, you put your finger on it. Two factors may play into it. One was the nature of television in the UK throughout the period. You had the BBC and Granada television. British DataLoungers -- were there other channels? So, a personality like his had the reach of a national audience. Plus, the UK was still (and remains to some degree) a very class conscious society. Here's a guy from a lower middle class background who made it. He hobnobbed with royalty. The audience could relate to him. Perhaps project their own hopes onto him.

[quote] Yes they do [R259]. Quite often.

The majority don’t.

The Brits have never really dealt openly with child abuser or parents killing their children like Americans have. Hanks to this, hysteria is sweeping the British nation. This still can’t believe that the McCans killed their kid because of how they’ve acted like Jesus whores. Meanwhile, the US has mothers who have drowned their kids and gone on television hysterical saying that someone else did it. Brits are very, very naive.

[quote]The audience could relate to him.

But only after the revelatia.

A messy, thinly conceived doc, for sure.

One thing that was interesting, though ultimately wasted - lots of clips with people watching themselves interview/engage with Saville. Many of the clips implied "why the hell didn't you say something, it's so obvious..." But other than their mildly embarrassed faces, these segments weren't used much.

Boring doc until the last 20 mins when you found out what he'd done.

It was interesting how he kept confessing, but it was always just a "joke."

And that "My case comes up on Thursday" sequence shows how thinly spread his schtick was.

What a hideously unattractive man--with the worst haircut/color in history. Those poor people who had to suck that nasty dick!

I have not read the entire thread so this has likely already been said. I watched the 2 part doc and was appalled and confused at how someone so obviously creepy, unfunny and ARROGANT could have achieved the level of fame he had? I get that he did a lot of fund raising for charity but he acted like he was doing it for purely altruistic reasons (he was doing it for fame and the money that came with it, and to have access to little girls as we now know).

He was an obvious creepster, solely based on his many inappropriate comments during public interactions and interviews - inappropriate even for those times one would think?

I guess tastes and what constitutes "comedy" changes through the years and varies by country, but good God. Really, Britain?

R305 After the "my case comes up on Thursday" clips, I concluded that his "almost explicit" admissions of the sex abuse was a rush, part of the high for him. Like exhibitionists who like to jerk off in public. Not a well cracker..

R301 That's not true. There are plenty of cases in the UK where a parent who killed their kid has been prosecuted. If you're referring to the McCann case, that's because there isn't evidence that will stand up in court to convict the McCanns. And in fact, there's a better suspect police think it was (a paedophile in prison in Germany).

Not from either country myself, but I find it weird that fully 85% of the posts on this thread are all Americans wondering how this freak could have been so popular and beloved. Literally every country has their inexplicable celebrities who has zero career or appeal outside their borders. You all seem so surprised.

r309 since you're not American you have no idea why Americans are shocked that this repulsive freak could've been a star in Britain. Believe me, we're all amazed. Savile never would've been famous in the US.

R310 Trump is a repulsive freak and he's famous in the US. Please.

r311 it's not the same thing. Not everything is about Trump.

R312 It is very comparable. Stop pretending that Americans are above this kind of thing.

Not comparable at all. Savile was a no-talent tv presenter who was disgusting and gross right from the get-go. He looked grotesque. Watching this series you think "why was he ever famous?" In the realm of entertainment, this man never would've been allowed on American television, never mind achieved the kind of popularity he did in Britain.

R314 It sounds like you're used to Trump but trust me, the rest of the world thinks he's gross and disgusting. And he had rape, sexual harassment accusations out in the open but Americans still elected him to be president.

Trump was (is) also a repulsive person.

And yet half of America ADORES him like he is a god.

If anything, the American version is even more mystifying, as Saville was just a source of amusement, not salvation.

What do you mean, not salvation? Jim'll fix it!

Trump was a television star before becoming president. He was a strange-looking, untalented man with creepy characteristics.

99% of pedos don’t look like ugly freaks like this guy. His appearance is irrelevant to his perversion. People are acting like they would have known this guy was diddling kids if they’d had the opportunity to see him on TV. Not how it works.

I love it when non-Americans try to lecture Americans that we know nothing about our own fucking culture and THEY have all the answers.

If Jimmy Savile had been an American politician, he never would've been elected to city council, never mind the presidency. Yes Trump is gross, but Savile was on a whole other level of vomitousness. Trump was a television star, true. But his format was that of a business competition show and he wasn't an emcee (for lack of a better word) in a platinum blonde wig and a track suit, making unfunny quips and acting like a creep. The whole premise of Trump's show was a race to fuck over the other guy to be a Master of the Universe, something that is deeply ingrained in American culture. The show was about the contestants, not really the host. Savile's shows were all about HIM.

Furthermore, watching the documentary it was apparent that the peak of Savile's fame was in the 70s/80s, and he inexplicably achieved a level of fame in the UK that was comparable to Johnny Carson's (look him up) level of fame in the US. No. Way. In. Hell. would Savile have ever been famous at all in the US, but at Carson's level of fame? Completely implausible. If Savlie had tried to be an entertainer in the US, he never would've gotten past being a public access personality on a local UHF.

But please continue to lecture us Americans on the nuances of our culture and the intricacies of American celebrity (especially in the period of the 70s and 80s) , which you clearly have no understanding of.

R319 Agreed, I can link to several convicted paedophiles who look relatively normal (British ones). Like Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins who was sentenced to 35 years for child sex offences.

Cghhj

[quote]People are acting like they would have known this guy was diddling kids if they’d had the opportunity to see him on TV. Not how it works.

That kind of is how it works in Savile's case. I had no idea who this man was and when I was visiting London and saw him on tv in the 90s, my first thought was "that man is a total kiddie fucker. Who the hell is he and why is he on television? And why are they letting him near children?" Again, you don't really understand Americans. And before you bring up Michael Jackson, look at all of the above posts to explain what happened in his particular situation. r205 is a good place to start.

At the end of the day the US still has soft power to burn. Our pop culture is so much stronger than Britain's that OUR sex criminal with frightening style tics is so much better and HYUGE! Jimmy Savile, I heard some bad things, very sad.

[quote]But please continue to lecture us Americans on the nuances of our culture

Bitch, I'm American. Calm down.

In the news today: a MP has been convicted of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy. Probably wouldn't have thought so by looking at him or if you met him..

If you’re willing to stand back for a moment and give it some serious consideration, the more Trump makes sense as the American mirror of Savile on so many levels. They both are/were truly repulsive characters, and despite that, both the masses and the elite are/were truly enamored of them.

Both were, in essence, highly popular TV presenters for a substantial period of time, had deceptively charismatic personalities, coiffed their hair weirdly, had a highly tacky sense of style, pursued extreme sex fetishes (trump = pissing, Savile = necrophilia, not to mention other sexual nefariousness), played public sentiment to serve their own narcissistic interests for decades, and all the while they were doing it, had their detractors who either experienced their vileness first-hand or saw them for what they really were.

Trump is the perfect comparison.

People DID comment on Richard Dawson’s habit of kissing the women on the show. I used to watch this show with my dad as a kid and I remember him being disgusted by it and he wasn’t exactly a prude.

I think that people in both countries were inured to them. Excused them away as bigger than life personalities while the media and TV kept giving them a platform.

Coming up in the 80s Trump was a mainstay of sleazy NY tabloids, but at no time was he as viciously ugly and off-putting as Jimmy was. What gave Trump national fame was The Apprentice, where his asshole business man persona was played up to the hilt - but he was never marketed to teens or children. Think of Trump hosting TRL, for example!

I'd also say Trump has never been beloved by the majority of Americans. At best, there is a very small sliver of the US's 350 million people who actually worship the man. I predict when Trump finally leaves this mortal coil, most of the country will be celebrating.

R323. Two separate arguments have been made. One is that someone as unattractive and untalented as Savile would not have a career in the US. In the tread several examples of similarly unattractive and untalented celebrities on America have been provided. Trump is one

As pointed out in numerous posts, Jackson was in some ways more overt about his interest in children than Savile. Some posts have tried to claim that his interest in children became known only later in his career and that he had virtually no career thereafter. A lot of specific dates have been provided in the thread to demonstrate that is not at all true.

R330 The Netflix documentary showed the worst clips of Savile but in the early years of his career (which is all the way back to the 1970s), Savile was a lot more normal-looking. It was only later on that that the tracksuits, cigars and heavy gold jewellery became his permanent look.

R330, Yes, Trump has an obviously and substantially more polished veneer than Savile, but it’s a flimsy and transparent one. Trump also isn’t nearly as ugly as Savile, but he has a major sleaze factor about him that overrides that. If you put aside these differences they are comparable.

Different cultures and countries all have have varying social mores and values, some of them most likely with their own versions of Trump or Savile, and it is, in a sense, attempting to compare apples and oranges. For those reasons, I don’t think you’ll ever find an exact identical cultural twin between any two societies.

[quote]Some posts have tried to claim that his interest in children became known only later in his career and that he had virtually no career thereafter. A lot of specific dates have been provided in the thread to demonstrate that is not at all true.

Nobody said Michael Jackson had no career after the late 80s, just that he was seen as a freak and an oddity by a huge swath of the general public and the media as well. The immense popularity he had, the influence over the culture he had and the media ass-kissing he had was over after the late 80s. For the next 20 years he was seen as a sad joke. From looking at Savile's story, none of this happened to him. He was never exposed in his lifetime, and in fact the BBC had glowing tributes to him right after his death. When Jackson died, the coverage of his life and career always included the pedo stuff.

[quote]Both were, in essence, highly popular TV presenters for a substantial period of time,

Trump was never for children or the disabled, Savile's entire career centered on them.

Trump first gained fame as a businessman in the excess of the go-go 1980s. He was a decadent symbol of American prosperity and business acumen. Yes he's always been an awful person but he's always been marketed as something aspirational for adults, as odious as that is.

Jimmy Savile was essentially a children's entertainer. And he was the ugliest, creepiest man who ever lived. There really is no comparison to him and Trump.

So was the Jim'll Fix It show his major thing? The kid show? That's even more fucked up. Jerry Sandusky is the real US parallel case, I guess.

[quote]Trump also isn’t nearly as ugly as Savile, but he has a major sleaze factor about him that overrides that. If you put aside these differences they are comparable.

When did Trump ever appear half-naked in flimsy track suits and host children's tv shows? Trump was always something for adults. Savile's whole fame was based on children and teens. He was frightening to look at and oozed creepiness around all those kids. There really is no comparison.

R334. Sorry. You have to distort the chronology on both sides to make that argument. You have to argue Jackson’s career died earlier than it did and extend Savile’s popularity later than it lasted. You also have to push back the date at which Savile began to look extremely louche. Savile looked more normal and behaved more normally during the peak of his career. As he aged and appeared more freakish, his career was considerably diminished.

Jackson still got major platforms into the 2000s. Yes, people talked about how weird Jackson was but people also talked about Savile being weird. It’s also not at all clear that Jackson’s decline in popularity resulted from disgust at his abuse. Musical fashion simply had moved on, as it usually does. Jackson was a much diminished figure but he still got exposure that most singers would kill for. And there wasn’t much hand wringing about whether such a suspect figure should get that exposure. His severe decline only occurred once his private behaviour was exposed. His career survived fairly publicly suggestions of pedophilia. The exposure of Savile’s private behaviour occurred after his death.

[quote]You have to argue Jackson’s career died earlier than it did

Nobody said Jackson's career died. He still had a core fan base but he was an object of ridicule and derision by a great swath of the mainstream public. As well as the media.

[quote]It’s also not at all clear that Jackson’s decline in popularity resulted from disgust at his abuse.

Were you even around back then? Are you even American? That was a major factor. After the first pedo scandal in '93 he was pretty much finished with "normal" people. There were no more media puff pieces, for the most part.

[quote] Jackson was a much diminished figure but he still got exposure that most singers would kill for.

Most of it was in the way a circus freak would get publicity. Trust me, the days of people fawning over Michael Jackson were over. That big tribute concert right before 9/11 elicted mostly "WTF?" reactions and ridicule from the media.

[quote] And there wasn’t much hand wringing about whether such a suspect figure should get that exposure.

There absolutely was.

Anyway, there are many good examples in this thread listing reasons why Jimmy Savile never would've been famous in the US and bewilderment at what the British public ever saw in him. And from the archive footage, he was definitely a gross freak in his early career.

R538. Trump had the miss teen USA pageant, and he publicly talked about spying on the contestants. He also made sexual comments about his children, one of whom was an infant at the time. I’m not sure Savile every publicly spoke about an infant’s breasts or his lust for a barely legal family member. He was spoke to journalists off air about his live of grabbing non consenting women’s genitals and not just the vague innuendo Savile used. That’s probably at least as creepy as wearing questionable clothes or having weird hair (which Trump also had.). Add to all of this that people knew as early as the 80s that Trump really had done nothing more than mismanage a considerable inheritance (I.e., the “talent” on which Trump built his entire career was at least as dubious as Savile’s if not more so).

There’s really no comparison. But we can agree they were both were creeps and Americans can be at least as obtuse and indifferent as British people.

[quote]But we can agree they were both were creeps and Americans can be at least as obtuse and indifferent as British people.

I don't think you truly understand how bizarre and creepy Savile is to American sensibilities, nor do you understand how he never, ever would've been famous in the US. There really is no comparison to him and Trump or Michael Jackson.

Yeah, well, we made Jim Jones and Charlie Manson and Dick Cheney, so there.

[quote]Yeah, well, we made Jim Jones and Charlie Manson and Dick Cheney, so there.

When did any of them ever host a children's tv show?

No, we don't have that, R344. Jerry Sandusky did run his own charity for orphans to recruit victims. That's monstrous. But the thought of Savile roaming the hospitals and morgues of the Midlands or wherever the fuck he was, that is really something else.

R342. I am American I just find the Americans commenting on this illogical

Just think of his decayed teeth and stogie breath on your fucking neck, yeeesh.

Actually r346 the arguments and examples put forth are pretty logical

R340. You undermine your own argument. You cite the 93 scandal as seriously damaging his career (but actually it went on pretty decently even after that). Jackson’s weirdness towards children was on considerable public display before 93—more overtly than Savile’s was—-but his career went on. It took someone exposing his private behaviour—-something that didn’t happen to Saville in part because he was at least a generation older than Jackson.—-before his career started to suffer. Even then, it went on at an okay level.

The other big way in which you fail in your argument is that you cite vague “ everybodies” who castigated him as a freak . Was there significant contemporary commentary in the media about the propriety of Oprah’s decision to give him an extremely prominent interview? Was there debate about MTV continuing to play his music? Were a large number of media outlets condemning his 2001 concert? I don’t recall it. The situation with Savile seems completely analogous. A general perception he was freaky but little public commentary or consequences. And Savile was less overt in his interest in children

[quote]You cite the 93 scandal as seriously damaging his career (but actually it went on pretty decently even after that). Jackson’s weirdness towards children was on considerable public display before 93

Again, your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired. Jackson was written off as a freak by the late 80s. His excessive surgery, bizarre behavior and going everywhere with little boys generated a lot of "WTF?" comments from the general public and the media. The '93 scandal only cemented those beliefs. His career continued, but his image in the media and in popular culture was forever changed.

[quote] Was there significant contemporary commentary in the media about the propriety of Oprah’s decision to give him an extremely prominent interview?

Yes.

[quote]Was there debate about MTV continuing to play his music?

Jackson was no longer a presence on MTV in the 90s, except in retrospective shows and ridicule for the most part.

[quote]Were a large number of media outlets condemning his 2001 concert?

Absolutely. It was seen as a joke when it was announced. Then Whitney Houston's emaciated appearance grabbed all the attention. Then 9/11 happened a few days later and it was all forgotten about.

[quote] A general perception he was freaky but little public commentary or consequences.

Jackson's bizarreness and likely pedophilia was talked about CONTANTLY by both the general public and in print. There was no longer any fawning media coverage of him like there was in the Thriller era. The coverage always centered on how strange he was and the child molestation accusations. The Martin Bashir interview as all about that.

I think you're really misremembering history or you're not old enough to have lived through this in real time.

[quote]Was there significant contemporary commentary in the media about the propriety of Oprah’s decision to give him an extremely prominent interview?

Have you ever seen the Oprah interview? It was not a puff piece. It was mostly about the pedophilia accusations and his strange behavior. She was certainly asking him questions about it.

I agree with R350. As an American teenager in the 80s, I witnessed Jackson's public disintegration. By the early 90s, the nasty jokes about him were ubiquitous.

[quote]How could people not recognize instantly that the guy was a fucking freak?

Why do you assume that they didn't? You're asking the wrong question.

Except for some hardcore stans, most people thought Jackson was a pedophile who paid off victims and law enforcement to stay out of prison. I remember hearing about the London concert series that was planned just before he died and wondering who the hell was buying tickets.

Both Oprah Winfrey and Martin Bashir appeared like they were both trying to stifle their wide-eyed horror throughout their respective Michael Jackson interviews.

Oprah also interviewed the two men who were the subject of the Leaving Neverland documentary. The interview appeared live on HBO as soon as the documentary finished. Oprah absolutely believed that the two men were molested by Jackson when they were children.

R352. Can you stop mentioning that people talked about how weird Jackson was. Everyone knows that. What is bizarre is that he was allowed a huge role in public life despite that. It’s also meaningless unless you can substantiate that people didn’t also regularly gossip about Savile.

Jackson was in a completely different universe of obviousness than Savile. Savile seemed quite creepy and the fact that he engaged in so many activities with children would today cause people to wonder—-Savile was at his peak almost a generation before Jackson. However, it would still be plausible for a person who is not a pedophile to be involved in children’s charities or to host a children’s program. What Jackson did was much more bizarre and overt. He essentially publicised from the early days of his career that his private life revolved around underage males. There is little reason to center your life around underage males, invite them as your dates to public events, have sleepovers with them, or build your own private playground for children unless you are a pedophile. On top of this he was publicly accused of abuse. None of these things was true of Savile.

I'll mention what I want, R357. We aren't in court and you aren't the judge. If you want to believe Jackson was a totally different situation, go ahead, but we aren't going to kowtow to your opinions.

I use facts instead of opinions. That is the differences between you and me. You can certainly say what you want. I just don’t see the point of repeating something no one is disputing.

[quote]On top of this he was publicly accused of abuse. None of these things was true of Savile.

Because the corrupt British media and other powerful people stifled all the stories. The victims were essentially told to fuck off because nobody would believe them. The same thing happened with the Rotherham sex abuse ring. The people who had a responsibility to report on these things did nothing. In the US neither one of these things would ever have happened.

I cannot even imagine NBC, ABC or CBS trying to kill the stories about Michael Jackson being an abuser and trying to dismiss his victims. It just didn't play out that way.

Watching the doc as an American, Jimmy was always gross and vile, unfunny and lacking in any kind of charisma. Take away whether the British public should or shouldn't have known something more evil was going on, he would have never landed a job as a top TV entertainment host in the US.

[quote]I use facts instead of opinions.

You stated opinions in your post @r349. And I countered your opinions with actual facts in my post @350.

As a non-American who has no real grasp on American pop cultural history, nor the history of the American media at that time, I suggest you STFU.

As YOU ARE a non-American, I should say....

Exactly r361!

This is the Louis Theroux doc from 2016. It's better than the Netflix one...

R362. Yeah. That was the classic oh dear of all time. I am American.

r366 you had opinions. They were countered with facts.

[quote] I am American.

Really? You wrote "realise" in one of your earlier posts. Just fuck off.

I currently live in Europe

r369 just give it up. Americans don't change their spelling when they move overseas. JFC.

The default English spell check is not always American in Europe. I know you think America is the center of the world but it is not.

r366 you haven't countered any of the FACTS presented that tore your opinions to shreds in my post @r350. You're just a shitposting troll.

[quote]The default English spell check is not always American in Europe. I know you think America is the center of the world but it is not.

That makes no sense. DL doesn't automatically correct spelling.

The fact that Britain didn’t have a sector of the police force for child sexual assault until 1995 is shameful.

R373 It's not DL, numbnut, it's the browser/computer. In fact when I wrote 'numbnut' there, a red line appeared underneath it.

R373. The phone does…

But even so a smartphone won't automatically correct your spelling if you don't want it to. Just admit it. You're not American. You fucked up.

You know you’ve failed in your arguments when you can only attack the person’s presumed background. You can assume I grew up in Zimbabwe for all I care. I just think it’s funny you make a silly assumption.

r378 all of the arguments countering your opinions are pretty solid. Mine and everyone else's. But there's no arguing with you.

BTW feel free to counter the facts laid out that rebutted all of your asinine opinions in r350. But since you have no understanding of American culture, nor the time period in question, you can't.

R377. If you bother to correct them all it doesn’t. But there are quite a few typos in my posts generated by my phone . It’s irrelevant to my arguments where I’m from since I cite evidence. I just find it funny you are wrong in this as well.

r381 you didn't cite evidence, you just posted your half-cocked opinions. Again, refer to r350

R380. If you’re not from the UK how can we trust your knowledge of how Savile was perceived and handled?

It sounds like you just did some random Googling, saw that Oprah interviewed Michael Jackson in 1993 and that there was a big Michael Jackson tribute concert in 2001. If you were truly American, and you truly were around back then, you never would've bothered to cite those two as examples of how Michael Jackson was "still hugely popular" because you would've immediately known how both of those media events were received by both the general public and the media.

[quote] If you’re not from the UK how can we trust your knowledge of how Savile was perceived and handled?

Umm.....because of the recent documentary? The BBC tried to kill the abuse story, and right after Savile died broadcast glowing tributes to him. The question of abuse was raised only once in that Haver (?) woman's interview and apparently it never again appeared in any major media.

The Netflix documentary wasn't very good. It was mostly a lot of clips of Savile looking weird. It didn't properly explain the TV shows he hosted, explain why no victims went public, and nor did it go into the abuse claims much (why nothing about the necrophilia claims?)

It would've been like NBC trying to kill the Sandusky story. Could you even imagine?

R384. To understand the US perception and treatment of Jackson (who was well known outside the US) you have to have lived a lifetime in the US. On the other hand, for an American to comment on Savile, he simply has to watch a documentary. I think you’ve cristallised pretty well why many people are amused by the provincialism and arrogance of some Americans. Since you’ve demonstrated it perfectly and I’m getting bored of this I will leave it at this point

'American Exceptionalism'!

r387 nice way to admit you lost an argument r387! The myriad examples of why Americans are baffled at a man who was as creepy and repulsive for his entire lifetime as Jimmy Savile have been laid out very well in this thread. As has been said, Savile was disturbing right from the get-go and Americans are baffled as to what the British public ever saw in him

Anyway, just go away. You clearly lost the argument everybody else has presented in this thread. Bye!

R389 You projecting again? It's pretty clear that you're the one who lost the argument here, pal.

[quote]On the other hand, for an American to comment on Savile, he simply has to watch a documentary.

Just from watching the various documentaries and reading many articles, it's crystal-clear that allegations of Savile were stifled by the British media, the various hospitals he preyed upon, law enforcement and other.

Just from watching the various documentaries and reading many articles, it's crystal-clear that Savile was held in well regard by the British public, despite being repulsive.

[quote]t's pretty clear that you're the one who lost the argument here, pal.

How so? Please counter with facts.

Just from watching the various documentaries and reading many articles, it's crystal-clear that Trump was held in well regard by the American public, despite being repulsive.

[quote]I think you’ve cristallised pretty

"Cristallised?" You're American?

[quote]Just from watching the various documentaries and reading many articles, it's crystal-clear that Trump was held in well regard by the American public, despite being repulsive.

Well, now you're just being a petulant brat who knows he lost a debate.

Sadly, only 54% of Americans who were eligible to vote, voted in the 2016 Presidential election. The number of people who voted for Trump were just over 25% of that number. Yes, it's still sickening, but Trump was hardly the choice of nearly 75% of Americans. Even fewer voted for him in 2020.

R395 Just showcasing how stupid your argument is. Lots of people found Savile to be gross including me. Trump will have huge crowds for his funeral too. The problem was that victims did not come forward or journalists and police did not work hard enough to expose his crimes.

[quote]. Lots of people found Savile to be gross including me.

But r396 if you're American how did you even know how Savile was? He was unknown to Americans at the peak of his fame, and even after.

[quote] Just showcasing how stupid your argument is.

What argument are you even talking about? You're all over the place.

And you still haven't addressed the points raised to blow your argument that was answered in both r350 and r384

R397 I am not American. That is a different poster. I am British. There's more than one person arguing with you.

[quote]There's more than one person arguing with you.

And your arguments have been refuted by myself and other posters.

R15. If you were the Queen, would you want to try to compete with this?

Going back to another poster's comment:

[quote]Watching the doc as an American, Jimmy was always gross and vile, unfunny and lacking in any kind of charisma. Take away whether the British public should or shouldn't have known something more evil was going on, he would have never landed a job as a top TV entertainment host in the US.

That really says it all

r400 that dress of Meghan's was totally inappropriate for that particular occasion. It was very ill-fitting, too.

Are you kidding, R400? The dress doesn't fit and makes her torso look perfectly square.

[quote] that dress of Meghan's was totally inappropriate for that particular occasion.

It makes her look like a whore.

R262 I think that is why the ambulance / decapitated head anecdote was included.

R365 Yes, but didn’t Theroux make that doc because he was embarrassed that he had admired Savile?

I think Theroux made the follow-up documentary because he was to a degree embarrassed and ashamed that he'd somehow been cleverly used by Savile. Of course Savile came across as creepy and weird. We saw him still fetishing his long-dead mother's clothes; and admitting he tied up young thugs at nightclubs he once ran. But it was maybe the most flagrant example of Savile hiding in plain sight. He let Theroux into his life, obviously loved the fresh primetime attention, and got a buzz from getting away with it all yet again. There was the cunning aura of Savile calculating the public thinking: 'No way would he let Theroux and cameras into his life if he had anything to hide. Jimmy's weird, but he's done more for charity than almost anyone else in the country. What a character he is, to be sure.' As a documentary it was an intriguing face-off. Doubtless Theroux's most famous work, for good or ill.

In his heyday, Savile wasn't just the creepy host of junk TV. His charity work gave him the respectability to front advertising campaigns for British Rail, and seatbelt safety. Different times indeed.

He always gave me the creeps as a child. As I got older and began to hear the rumours, I believed them. He was always creepy towards women, making salacious overtures, kissing their hands and licking them, or kissing old ladies on the mouth. On Top Of The Pops he was always surrounded by young girls. I wonder how much planning went into that with the studio producers. They were all at fault.

Is this an Aspie thread or what? The constant bitching about who is, or isn’t American is both bizarre and tiresome.

USA! USA! USA! Land where the creepy child fuckers are instantly spotted, never employed

[quote]Jackson was no longer a presence on MTV in the 90s, except in retrospective shows and ridicule for the most part.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying about Jackson, but this is patently false. The HIStory album was 1995 and had several videos on constant rotation on MTV, especially "Scream" with Janet, which had like a dozen MTV nominations and won several. Hell, he OPENED the MTV Video Awards that September.

Jackson was the Super Bowl halftime show in 1993. The 1996-1997 HIStory tour was reported on constantly throughout the world. This coincided with him starting to have kids, which was also reported on constantly.

Still, I'd say that him having kids is what really turned the tide for his popularity; people seemed to ignore the allegations until they saw him acting weird with his own kids, especially Blanket, plus by the end of the 1990s, all of the lawsuits against him for skipping out on concerts and obligations were starting to pile up.

In short, his celebrity shielded him until he started costing producers and studios money.

It was the baby dangling incident that ended MJ.

I kind of agree, r412. There were a lot of people who fully believed the allegations against MJ, but many didn't, because the allegations went away and were easy to shrug off, and then he had the huge hit with "HIStory," and everyone was willing to ignore how weird and sketchy he was again because he was so popular.

The downfall started in 1997 with the weird marriage to Debbie Rowe, then the other kids who came from who knows where, then dangling Blanket over a balcony, that just was finally too much for people to take. The nose flaking off during testimony of one of his lawsuits was also a big hit to his reputation, that was 2002, same year as Blanket being dangled off a balcony.

I'd love to agree with the guy earlier in the thread who says that Jackson was unpopular and disavowed by everyone in the 1990s, but that's just not true.

The nose thing was the same year as the baby dangling? What a year!

What a WEEK, r414. The courtroom nose photo was November 13, 2002, and the Blanket dangle was November 20th, one week later.

Jesus Christ

Sin never dies.

The documentary was superficial, to say the least. Too much time on the Frau apologist “journalist” who wrote his biography and is clearly still in his thrall. The heinous accusations of necrophilia - very plausible based on previous articles - were ignored as was the fact that he stole glass eyes from corpse and had them made into garish jewel key which he’s wearing in a number of clips from this programme.

The Royal Family aspect was utterly played down too. Seems the UK establishment still has muzzle power. Systemic and wilful failings by the police and media should have had further attention.

R418,

I think he had information on establishment figures that gave him power over them. He was a gangster from the very beginning.

R418 Do you mean Lynn Barber? To be fair, she isn't an investigative journalist and she didn't write his biography, she interviewed him.

No, not Lynn. The long dark haired Frau that was in it entirely too much.

R419 he absolutely must have had dirt on establishment figures.

One of the most chilling and disgusting parts was him and GaryGlitter virtually joking about rape of minors on television.

[quote]The Royal Family aspect was utterly played down too. Seems the UK establishment still has muzzle power.

To an extent, though old man Murdoch (and maybe his devoted keepers of the flame) will always be likely to push against playing nice. The recent revelation of Royals seeking Savile's media advice was on the front page of The Times.

Somewhere out there is a letter from Charles to Savile, thanking him for some charitable bonanza, and concluding (paraphrase), 'No-one will ever know how much you've done for this country.' Then there's the Knighthood. However it's played down, the link will always be on record.

This thread is wild, so many hot takes. Someone wrote Oprah Winfrey isn't talented and she just filled airtime for a disinterested audience. Uhm, no, women from 22 to 65 would set their VCRs to record Oprah while they worked. College students scheduled classes around her program. She was a huge phenomenon in the 80s and 90s and yes, she's talented.

Also, no one said JS and MJ had the exact same career path, fame level or level of talent. The point it that both were beloved by the masses while appearing absolutely freakish while widely-traded rumors swirled around them, yet they faced few consequences during their lives. That's not the same as "Jimmy Savile was as talented as Michael Jackson and they had comparable levels of talent." Just calm down.

Maybe take a break and cool off a bit before posting? Some of you are rabid with anger, it's making you delirious.

Nobody is questioning her tremendous success. Everyone is already aware if that The point was that she didn’t produce anything anyone will be particularly interested In consuming 50 years from now, Just as no one will be interested in consuming Savile’s programming. She had a talent for creating ephemeral entertainment.

I agree OP! I always thought growing up as I’d read British papers “This guy seems like a pedo” yet he was so beloved. Well my pedo radar was spot on. So sad for the victims and shame on anyone who allowed it. They do it in Hollywood as well. If they make money, somehow they get a pass to commit crimes against kids. Bryan Singer ahem cough cough

[quote]Everyone is already aware if that The point was that she didn’t produce anything anyone will be particularly interested In consuming 50 years from now, Just as no one will be interested in consuming Savile’s programming. She had a talent for creating ephemeral entertainment.

You can say this about literally any celebrity. The same is true of Meryl Streep and the Beatles.

R427. That self-evidently isn’t true. You’ve chosen your examples particularly ineptly. The Beatles disbanded more than 50 years ago and their music is still an important part of pop music that continues to be listened to by many people and that continues to influence other musicians. Streep’s career is not quite as old, but close. People will still be watching her films in 50 years. Very few people in 50 years will be regularly pulling up Oprah episodes for entertainment or enlightenment. Probably very few people do even now.

R421 My bad ! I forgot about her because she came across like she was a personal friend of Savile's rather than someone who was supposed to be investigating his life. Louis Theroux also became friends with Savile after he made his documentary, staying in touch and occasionally meeting up with Savile, staying at his properties.

Which says a lot really..

If I had ever met Jimmy Savile, I would have run screaming in the other direction. Looking at the footage of him (including the Theroux documentary) he made my skin crawl with repulsion. He was clearly not right in the head and very creepy.

R430 which makes you wonder, why did Theroux and that other biographer woman stay friends with Savile for years afterwards? They were fooled. He was good at whatever he did.

In the Theroux doc, there's a scene where the elderly Saville shows up at the BBC offices to meet Theroux in a mesh tank top and nylon booty shorts (his ass cheeks are practically hanging out) and he spots a couple of young women and starts trying to touch them. Then he proceeds to change clothes (!) right in the middle of the office. They thankfully cut away before he got down to his underwear. It was bizarre and repulsive. The doc is linked up above.

Again, it is unbelievable and baffling how this disgusting, sick man became such a big star in the UK.

R432 right, and why did people like Louis Theroux and that biographer woman become friends with him? I don't get it. Theroux has said that he thought that Savile had a secret but that it was he was gay or something like that. Theroux is utterly uninterested in listening to gossip and pursuing that. Probably because the victims were working class young women. Theroux is the epitome of upper middle class, likely with the attitude that working class women are not to be taken seriously. He went to Westminster School. If you board there, the fees are £43,272 per year. If you're a day pupil the fees are £29,961-£32,751 per year. That's more than what most people in the UK make as a salary per year.

Theroux's American cousins are also elitist snobs r433. Justin in particular is insufferable.

I may have missed it, but was his knighthood revoked or cancelled or withdrawn, or whatever it's called when the recipient turns out to be a scoundrel?

R435 He was knighted in 1990 but his crimes only became public after he died in 2011. As a Cabinet Office spokesperson said:

"[A knighthood is] a living order and then you cease to be a member when you die. There isn't an honour to revoke."

His knighthood would have been stripped if his crimes were exposed during his lifetime.

Yet wasn't Sir Jimmy (or James) carved on his gravestone?

[quote]If you’re not familiar with Scottish comedian Jerry Sadowitz and his work then that’s probably because he’s been banned from nearly every radio and TV station across the UK due to his controversial style of humour. In 2007 he was voted the 15th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and is an accomplished magician.

[quote]The audio above is an extract from one of his stand-up gigs, (location unknown), where he candidly refers to Sir Jimmy Savile as a ‘child bender’, before going on to explain that Savile’s charity work is ostensibly a protective jacket for him to wear if he’s ever caught, so that the public would never believe such claims.

[quote]Sadowitz actually states to his audience: ‘He may have fooled you, but not fucking me!’

[quote]This was back in 1988.

From Irvine Welsh's [italic]Lorraine Goes To Livingston[/italic] (1996):

[quote]There was nothing like the sight of a stiff to give Freddy Royle a stiffie.

[quote] – Bit bashed about this one, Glen, the path lab technician explained, as he wheeled the body into the hospital mortuary.

[quote]Freddy was finding it hard to maintain steady breathing. He examined the corpse. – She’s bain a roight pretty un n arl, he rasped in his Somerset drawl, – caar accident oi presumes?

[quote] – Yeah, poor cow. M25. Lost too much blood by the time they cut her out of the pile-up, Glen mumbled uncomfortably. He was feeling a bit sick. Usually a stiff was just a stiff to him, and he had seen them in all conditions. Sometimes though, when it was someone young, or someone whose beauty could still be evidenced from the three-dimensional photograph of flesh they had left behind, the sense of the waste and futility of it all just fazed him. This was such an occasion.

[quote]One of the dead girl’s legs was lacerated to the bone. Freddy ran his hand up the perfect one. It felt smooth. – Still a bit wahrm n arl, he observed, – bit too waarm for moi tastes if the truth be told.

****

[quote]Yes, the trustees knew all about Freddy Royle, Glen reflected bitterly. They knew the real secrets of the chat-show host, the presenter of the lonely hearts television show, From Fred With Love, the author of several books, including Howzat! – Freddy Royle On Cricket, Freddy Royle’s Somerset, Somerset With a Z: The Wit Of The West Country, West Country Walks With Freddy Royle and Freddy Royle’s 101 Magic Party Tricks. Yes, those trustee bastards knew what this distinguished friend, this favourite caring, laconic uncle to the nation did with the stiffs they got in here. The thing was, Freddy brought millions of pounds into the place with his fund-raising activities. This brought kudos to the trustees, and made St Hubbin’s Hospital a flagship for the arm’s-length trusts from the NHS. All they had to do was keep shtumm and indulge Sir Freddy with the odd body.

****

[quote]Freddy Royle had had, by his standards, a tiring day prior to his late afternoon arrival at St Hubbin’s. He had been in the television studios all morning filming an episode of From Fred With Love. A young boy, whom Fred had sorted out to swim with the dolphins at Morecambe’s Marineland, while his grandparents were brought back to the scene of their honeymoon, was all excited in the studio and writhed around on his lap, getting Freddy so aroused and excited that they had to do several takes. – Oi loike em still, he said, – very, very still. Barry, the producer, was not at all amused. – In the name of God, Freddy, take the rest of the fucking afternoon off and go to the hospital and shag a stiff, he moaned. – Let’s see if we can dampen that bloody libido of yours.

Very interesting, R439.

Can you imagine being so jaded that you can calmly tell your perverted star to go fuck a corpse so he can restrain himself from molesting little boys on camera? WTF?

He was buried in a gold coffin encased in concrete, he knew that as soon as he was dead it would all come out. He had himself buried in an almost impenetrable grave so that people couldn't get to his body to defile it.

He had two headstones on his grave saying “it was good whilst it lasted” The coffin was buried at an angle so that Jimmy had a sea view. Almost as soon as the stories started piling up a forklift truck was sent into the graveyard in the middle of the night and the headstones were smashed and taken away. The grave is now unmarked.

Apologies if this was mentioned on the show bit I still haven’t seen it yet.

They should dig his ass up and bury him at sea like bin Laden.

Relatives of people who are buried near Savile want his body removed - I don't blame them.

He should be buried with his good friend and enabler Margaret Thatcher.

They should dig him up, cremate him, and dump his ashes down the toilet.

R446 Ironically, my request is to be cremated and my ashes flushed down the toilet.

I do think my suggestion at R445 is the better option. Savile and Thatcher were so close.

Gawd, the Brits are an unattractive lot.

“I cannot even imagine NBC, ABC or CBS trying to kill the stories about Michael Jackson being an abuser “

Can you imagine NBC covering up stories about popular morning show host Matt Laurer sexually harassing employees? Or refusing to run Ronan Farrow’s s investigation of Harvey Weinstein? Because that happened.

But r449 it only happened for a second and the stories still broke. The BBC covered shit up for years and years.

It was known by a lot of people. I heard an interview w. Francis Rossi, from the popular-in-England band Status Quo. They were on Top of the Pops or some show in the late-60s or so, Savile was there and Rossi said he saw Savile being disgusting, horrible, etc., with young girls.

I wonder if more would have been out there if social media or similar were around. I reckon a lot of people would have aonymously put out a lot of info about Savile.

It was out there all over the place, but he was incredibly powerful in the 70s and 80s and was careful to target people who wouldn't be believed. Read the Davies book--there were plenty of reports from the early 70s onwards, but even after he died the BBC killed a story by Meirion Jones because it didn't want it interfering with the Savile tributes they had planned.

I remember reading that quite late on, when Savile was still in his revolting pomp, a Sunday tabloid had a strong story to run against him. As is the custom, they called Savile to mention this intention, and ask if he had any comment to make.

Savile said, 'Run the story if you like. But if you do, a multi-million pound new hospital wing I'm involved with won't go ahead.' The story obviously didn't run. In that era of sensational Sunday paper scandals, Savile was untouched.

It's very unlikely to be the only such incident. Can only imagine Savile got off on the thrill of going to the wire, playing his aces, and 'winning' again. He took on the might of the brutal tabloid press to come out ahead.

Keep in mind that Savile wasn't just a sociopath, he was a sociopath with a genius IQ. He did an IQ test early in his career and came out with a 150 score. Manipulating people and institutions, even the fearsome British tabloids, came easily to someone whose mind worked that quickly. Of course, the posh, overbred British Royals were putty in his hands.

I worked at Sony in the mid 90s. Jackson was still huge. I was appalled. I don't know who that fucked in the head poster is who keeps insisting that he was over by the beginning of the 90s. He really needs to give it up because he clearly doesn't know shit about Jackson's popularity at the time.

r455 Michael Jackson still had his fans, but by the early 90s a huge swath of the mainstream public thought of him as a freak and a curiosity. Then the first kiddie touching trial in '93 happened and he was pretty much written off by normal people. To say he was still at his "Thriller" era level of popularity after the late 80s is absurd. He was a sick joke for many for the last 20 years of his life.

[quote]I don't know who that fucked in the head poster is who keeps insisting that he was over by the beginning of the 90s. He really needs to give it up because he clearly doesn't know shit about Jackson's popularity at the time.

Nobody said Jackson's career was over by the beginning of the 90s, just that his career and public image were irreversibly damaged due to his freakish appearance, bizarre behavior and the constant presence of little boys who were always with him. He was still popular in some circles, of course, but was seen by many as a freak from then on.

We knew, it wasn't a big secret that he was a pervert.

My Mother went to a Top of The Pops show in the 1960's and said he was a Cunt.

She also didn't like Shane Fenton (Alvin Stardust) or Paul Gadd (Gary Glitter)..

She was a backing singer with another band and almost tore Paul's cock from the root

R458 What has your mother not liking Alvin Stardust got to do with this thread?

For those of you who insist Michael Jackson was a has-been by the time of his death, are extremely delusional. Michael at the age of 50 who hadn't been on a stage in nearly a decade and was virtually a recluse. Sold out 50 London concerts in less then an hour in Londons biggest concert venue, the O2 arena roughly 6 months before he died. That's not someone the public regards as a freak or has moved away from. Not to many people can do that at 50 years old.

Please go check the record. Has-beens don't sellout Londons biggest arena in less then an hour at 50 if you're a weirdo freak no one cares about. Michael was one of those people who always had it. The public was always there for him. They always waited on Michael as well as the media.

Kim Kardashian could only dream of that type of attention. When Michael died, the world literally stopped! His death completely overtook the media and it was endless. A lot of people forget Farrah Fawcett died the same day Michael did.

Michael died on top of the world!

The British Royal Family absolutely knew what was going on. They're a corrupt institution who are stuck in the past with that antiquated concept of a "Royal" family.

They are not innocent in thus mess by a long shot. If anything, they're worse then JS. I can only imagine what they get up to behind closed doors at those palaces they live. I bet it's a lot of eyes wide shut type of shit. I'm sure it's a lot worse then that though.

And why the fuck was it up to Jimmy Savile to fix "it"?

The UK is one fucked up place. America is definitely not clean, but there is something seriously wrong with Britain. I see people on Twitter bitching about the UK constantly on a daily basis. I follow a lot of Brits on Twitter.

At least Theresa May went away.

r460 Michael Jackson still had his loyal fans, esp. in Europe, but he was most definitely a sick joke from the late 80s on with most of the general public.

[quote]The UK is one fucked up place. America is definitely not clean, but there is something seriously wrong with Britain. I see people on Twitter bitching about the UK constantly on a daily basis. I follow a lot of Brits on Twitter.

They've never gotten over losing their Empire and having the US replace them as the alpha dog on the world stage.

[quote]The British Royal Family absolutely knew what was going on.

The BRF wasn't buddy buddy with Jimmy Savile. He was a popular entertainer and Prince Charles hung out with him a few times to look like he was in touch with the Great Unwashed. Like Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen.

It was much more than that. Charles frequently sought advice from Jimmy, to the point where Jimmy created a booklet for the BRF advising them on how to deal with the media, which they actually followed.

I'm sure they only saw his good side, though. Savile was a past master at kissing up and kicking down.

R465, where have you been? Russia and China are manipulating the West from every angle. The US is helpless against them.

R465 didn't say he was posting about the present day, R469. He's also clearly posting about the two countries in relation to each other and not the entire world at large. The US overtook the UK as a world power at some point during or before WW2 -- this is fact. The US's power has eroded since the 1970s, especially in this century, particularly in terms of the two countries you mentioned, but that doesn't dispute anything that R465 wrote.

[quote]The UK is one fucked up place. America is definitely not clean, but there is something seriously wrong with Britain.

PM Johnson allowed drinks to be consumed within No.10. Failed 'President' Trump allowed and encouraged a vicious organised mob to smash up his own country's centre of government, and if they'd been able to murder the Speaker and the VP they would have done.

Johnson has paid a fine for his trivial offence and accepted the police verdict. Trump has now said he wished he'd marched with the rioters who invaded and smashed up the Capitol. He has thus far escaped any penalty whatsoever for his grotesque treasonous cheerleading.

Given the amount of weaponry carried by the moronic rioters it's thankfully amazing that there weren't more random deaths. Senior politicians needed to hide in their offices and cower under desks at their famous place of work. Obviously they were terrified of an indiscriminate killing spree of the type not rare in America.

Can't recall the last time any such mass event occurred in Britain. January 6 was a fair example of serious wrongness.

Britain has got it's own issues. But in terms of sheer insanity, stupidity, and dysfunction.... America wins. In that sense we are number one. Some weirdo being successful in the UK 30 or 40 years ago doesn't change that.

I remember in the Louis Theroux documentary, Savile explained that the reason he'd professed that he didn't even like kids was a defense against rumors that he was a pedo. ... That seems like protesting too much, no? If you're not, you don't really need to twist into a pretzel to launch a defense.

The main reason I remember this because later someone I knew, who "hated kids," turned out to be a pedophile. Creepy shit.

I'm almost done watching. I'm struck by how "on" the guy was, every second. He loved the attention. And of course how truly unfunny and unentertaining he seems, at least now.

I had to google who he was, then it hit me. I remember this guy!

Going to start it now thanks OP

I’m reading writer Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am about her 17 brushes with death, and the big climax is the encephalopathic incident that left her all but paralyzed as a child and completely helpless in the hospital. Jimmy came to visit her and dismissed the 24 hour attendant nurse, but the nurse refused to leave her post despite his many attempts to get her to leave the room. It was the creepiest turn of events in a memoir that I’ve ever read.