Jimmy Savile

My family go to a local Catholic church where, to my wild schoolboy excitement, Leeds United players regularly attend mass. Sightings of Billy Bremner, ...

But I feel a duty as apparently the only person alive who ever tried to report a Savile assault to the BBC in real time. I don’t like talking publicly on this subject because it is painful even at my secondary level of exposure, and because some people seem to get jumpy when I do. The Smith report is officially published (expanded from the Exaro draft) and now details assaults from 1964 to 2006. However, they have never denied under oath knowing about Savile’s activities, so perjury is not an issue, and a retired detective has advised me that, as the boss’s gloss on the “child protection” comment is plausible, our exchange would become a they say/I say dispute, making further action impossible. (Many have suggested that his favoured baggy leisure wear was doubly calculated for easy removal and to advertise his arousal to his prey without doubt.) Let me be clear that this experience is nothing at all compared to the impacts on his victims, but it is a weird memory to have and gives me some tiny insight into the suffering he inflicted. She is doubtful of the BBC backing us against Savile (as, privately, am I) and asks me not to say anything. Apparently, the scope of the inquiry is “historical” and “focusing on the 60s and 70s”, which means that any managers involved are now lost to their pensions or eternity. There is no mention of 2006, or of other allegations in the latter part of the 20th century. I also want to keep my colleague from an encounter with a man whose greetings to women are known to involve laboriously kissing or licking the length of their arm (both Thatcher and Princess Diana reportedly suffered this). As he boasts that the black lines in the ledger add up to tens of millions of charitable donations, he is effectively confessing that the red entries have nearly equal value. But writing this piece, I have the feeling that my whole life is somehow heading from those Sunday mornings to a horrific encounter with Jimmy Savile 40 years later. I go with a producer who can now only legally be identified as C23, her code in Janet Smith’s 2016 report into Jimmy Savile and the BBC.