SAVILE ROW

 

IT SEEMS RATHER REDUNDANT TODAY to want to discover whether in fact Sir Jimmy Savile OBE, the former “BBC icon”, “national treasure”, “children’s saviour” and overall heart-of-gold do-gooder was really a hands-down-kids’-knickers-come-and-see-the-puppies-in-my-dressing-room paedophile or not; weight of evidence, guys and gals, seems to be gathering to make any case against this being true almost impossible.

 

ACCORDING TO SOME, MUCH-LOVED SAVILE would find it somewhat more difficult today to endear himself to the nation given the fact that he was both a heavy chain smoker and heavy chain wearer, two elements of presentation which would be frowned upon in most decent dancehalls and TV studios in these our enlightened times.

 

YET IT APPEARS THAT THE MOST PROMINENT TRAIT of his character – ie that of his “feeling up” and “touching up” (as they used to say) of female guests on his shows, of grooming girls and of – to put it bluntly – raping girls in order to get them a place on his rather pointless and bizarre TV shows – was either ignored or tolerated by everyone at the BBC, principally, and at all of the entities for whom he would put in an appearance; including, worryingly, Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

 

I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT ANYONE who came into contact with this absurd man did not think that, as my late father used to say about him, he was not “a full shilling”.

 

THE SADDEST ISSUE INVOLVED in all of this rather grim business is that now that someone has lifted the cloak on the crimes supposedly committed by Savile, everyone is now coming forward to say that they “always thought” he was “odd”, or “we always knew he was messing with youngsters”, or “most of us thought something was wrong”, or “I found him in his dressing room with a young girl, naked” – all of these quotes are taken ipsa verbissima from interviews or statements made by contemporaries of Savile over the last week.

 

WE HAVE NOT YET GOT TO THE STAGE when people who saw, and understood, that a girl was being raped and did not report it can be convicted under the law. Or have we? One tends to think of the film “The Accused”, written by Tom Topor and directed by Jonathan Kaplan.

 

THE LEGAL ARGUMENT AND THEN ROW OVER what one can do with the – if one thinks about it – hundreds and hundreds of men and women who must have known what he was doing with these poor girls may rattle on for some time. The best the BBC can do is to assure us that there are no more Saviles hanging around waiting for a break.