From the information provided by the hundreds of people who have come forward to Operation Yewtree, police and the NSPCC have concluded that Jimmy Savile was one of the UK’s most prolific known sexual predators. Indeed the formal recording of allegations of crime on this scale is, to the best of our knowledge, unprecedented in the UK.” For those who do not know, Jimmy Savile was a pioneering DJ, Sportsman and philanthropist. He also sexually abused over 450 people, male and female ranging from the ages 5 to 75 from the late 60’s to 2009 (he died in 2011). Yet he was seen as Britain’s national treasure, with even Prince Charles as a close confidante. Due to his connections in high places he was able to get away with everything. When there was a problem his ‘friends’ would deal with it quietly. Another oddity of Savile’s TV CV is that the most influential film about him has never aired. In December 2011, two months after Savile died, a planned BBC Two Newsnight investigation into rapes and assaults by the presenter at Duncroft House, a a school for emotionally disturbed teenage girls in Surrey, was pulled. The producers’ view was that the BBC feared a tonal clash with Savile tribute films in the Christmas schedule. A quasi-independent inquiry, the Pollard Review, broadly cleared managers of that charge, though it found their actions “flawed”; some editorial figures were moved by the BBC to equivalently paid alternative roles. Waterson, Jim (28 February 2023). "BBC Jimmy Savile drama to air this year despite concerns". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 1 March 2023. The closing credits include the statement "Based on extensive research, interviews and based in part on the book 'In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile' by Dan Davies" (56:14 on iPlayer)

He said: “Six girls were selected and all of them were given matching mini-skirts and white boots. They looked good enough to eat. The first thing was that the father of one of the girls arrived and hauled her off home. She protested loudly but dad would have none of this preposterous situation.” People remain endlessly fascinating to me, and personality interviews are one of my favourite forms of journalism to produce. The piece was going to be a bit of colour - some journalistic whimsy to break up the more serious stuff. When the news broke I felt ashamed that I’d been unaware he’d even been ill. My wife had organised a surprise birthday party for me in a pub near our home in London. My friends were there waiting for me, but I was in no mood for socialising. Savile’s passing provoked such a storm of conflicting emotions that I cried tears of frustration, anger and, I’ll admit it, sorrow. He took Louis around the Duchess's old bedroom, showing him her wardrobe which still had his mother's clothes in. "My cleaner takes them out and gets them freshened up about once a year," Savile told him. "These make better souvenirs than photographs," he added. Unusually for someone who presented TV and radio programmes for six decades, Jimmy Savile is most significantly represented in the archives by shows he didn’t host. In When Louis Met Jimmy (BBC Two, 2000), Louis Theroux raised questions about longstanding rumours of paedophilia, which were rebuffed but later certified by Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile (ITV, 2012). Screened after the broadcaster’s death, that film triggered institutional investigations concluding he had sexually abused at least 450 people, 80% of whom were young people and children.The weakness of this documentary is that it features only those who knew or suspected; there is no challenge to those who claim not to have noticed. Yet health ministers and officials who allowed Savile accommodation keys to, and a bedroom for his use at, Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor (where multiple assaults took place) are still alive, as are bosses from Savile’s other places of predation. Spending so much time in Savile’s company was like being in a hall of mirrors. I was never quite sure of where I stood or what I believed. The rumours were so persistent, and he was so brazen about the “fun” he’d had with youngsters during his years as a pied piper for the nascent pop generation, a fixer of dreams and a latter-day saint, and yet he had never been exposed. He was supremely controlling – both of the people around him and the myth he’d spun. I struggled with my conflicted feelings, both about him and the project, and I had to keep reminding myself that here was a man who had gone to such great lengths to become one of the most conspicuous people in Britain, and yet simultaneously remained utterly unknowable. He went to the funeral but the book languished. Publishers told him no one would be interested to read about the "darkness" at the heart of a national hero, "but I decided I had to keep on going anyway even if I self-published". And then, finally, it all came out. "After Newsnight's investigation was axed, I met with Meirion Jones [ Newsnight's investigations producer], who shared with me what was already in the public domain but only if you knew where to look…"

Davies begins with the dismantling of Savile's grave, a six foot-wide, four foot-high triple headstone that had taken the stonemasons eight months to complete. In the wake of the first outpouring of revelations, Scarborough council decided to take it down, a mechanical digger ripping apart the epitaph carved across the bottom: "It was good while it lasted." In addition to being a huge celebrity he also cultivated relationships at all levels of British society which included members of the Royal family, and Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister. He was also given the run of three hospitals and was able to lure children to his car, flats, caravans etc. No wonder he considered himself untouchable and, despite many a close call, and even dropping heavy hints in interviews, he got away with abuse on a horrendous scale. In a Radio Times interview on the eve of the first episode of In the Psychiatrist’s Chair in 1982, Clare spoke about the curious position occupied by the profession of psychiatry in the United Kingdom compared with the United States, and he hoped that his series would make the science behind psychiatry more accessible. I was sure that his evasiveness, his refusal to be known, was connected to the darkness that seemed to emanate from him. But while it proved impossible to access its source, and none of his victims had been heard, I was left only with conjecture. The programme started in 1982, when Clare felt that the time had come for a new series, on the basis that the public was now more knowledgeable about psychology, relationships, emotions and human behaviour. Greater openness about people’s inner lives meant that – in effect – the unconscious had shrunk since the time of Freud.

When this incident becomes public a decade later, the BBC line is that no action was taken because I failed to make a “formal” complaint. I have no recollection of ever being offered a choice of whistles to blow. My memory is that the BBC told me the matter could only be taken seriously if the complaint came from the victim. I will also later be informed that I am mistaken about the number of BBC managers among whom news of the 2006 assault was shared. BBC Broadcasting House , October 2012 The late DJ and Jim’ll Fix It host is at the centre of a storm after claims of child abuse and inappropriate behaviour in an ITV documentary last night. The clutter of the room's time-warp interior was in stark contrast to the panoramic views of Roundhay Park and the hills beyond. An ancient-looking exercise bike, a low sideboard with two This Is Your Life books lying open on the top and a glass-fronted cabinet stuffed with what looked like cups, medals, plaques and various awards from his career in entertainment dominated the first half of the room. What are the major differences between your experiences with Savile and how they come across on screen?

When I learned of his death, I felt a mixture of anger, sadness and frustration. I attended his three-day funeral, which began at Leeds Cathedral and ended with his gold coffin being lowered into a grave dug at a slope," he added. "It was later marked with a giant gravestone bearing the epitaph 'It was good while it lasted'. Less than a year later, the gravestone, like his legacy, was reduced to rubble. Born into poverty in Leeds in 1926, Jimmy Savile rose to become a knight of the realm, and a confidant of Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, and the Prince of Wales. Along the way, he invented the concept of the club DJ, gave the BBC two of its most iconic shows (Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It) and pioneered the celebrity as charity worker and fund raiser. These achievements alone make for a fascinating read, however it is Savile’s prolific and serial abuse of young and frequently vulnerable people that beggars belief. Clearly what helped Savile to operate “In Plain Sight” was his celebrity status. It is easy to forget just how popular he was during the 1970s - and to a lesser extent in the decades before and after. Unlike many reviewers, I never remember thinking Savile was dodgy or creepy. A bit weird perhaps, but not in a dangerous way. I grew up with him on “Top of the Pops” - which he pretty much invented, and of course “Jim’ll Fix It”, a Saturday night staple on BBC1 along with The Generation Game. I can well imagine being 12, 13 or 14 and being in awe of him and also trusting him - as did so many young people who encountered him. He was well practiced in grooming kids, and when necessary their parents too.In one of the most telling sections, Savile describes how six groupies once spent the night with him and his minder at a flat.