How Jimmy Savile, master manipulator, evaded exposure as a paedophile
Jimmy Savile was in a foul mood; he was clearly not his normal, brash, cheery self.
The revelations raise serious concerns
that the BBC covered up Savile’s sex crimes at the time to protect the
reputation of one of their biggest stars. Photo: PA
It was late in the evening in 1958 and in those days – long before he would
become one of Britain’s best paid radio and television presenters – Jimmy
Savile, a former professional wrestler, ran the Mecca Locarno Ballroom
nightclub in his hometown of Leeds.
This was his domain and Savile, then aged 32, ruled it with a terrifying rod
of iron. But that evening Savile was perturbed.
“He came in and just ignored us all, walked straight past us,” recalled Dennis
Lemmon, one of the club’s bouncers but also Savile’s de facto personal
bodyguard, “I remember saying: 'what’s up with him?’ and someone in the club
replied: 'He’s up in court tomorrow – interfering with young girls. He’s
worried’.”
Lemmon, now aged 80, saw Savile again three days later. He was back to his
irrepressible self, the swagger restored. “He was really worried but
everything was dropped. I was told he had paid them [the police] off. And
apparently that wasn’t the first time either but I don’t know about that. He
had a lot of friends though.”
It was a chance to capture Savile early on. It was a chance missed. In the
early 1960s, according to Savile’s autobiography, Savile referred to another
brush with the law after being approached by police asking him to help trace
a missing girl. “If she comes in I’ll bring her back tomorrow but I’ll keep
her all night first as my reward,” he wrote of his encounter with a female
officer, who had gone to question him. He went on: “The lady of the law …
was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues, for it was
well known that were I to go I would probably take half the station with
me.”
Mr Lemmon, tracked down by The Sunday Telegraph last week, said everyone who
worked at the club knew Savile preferred young girls – the 14- and
15-year-olds who hung around the club. When asked why nobody did anything,
Mr Lemmon said: “I suppose because it was Jimmy.”
The club even had its own house for the use of the managers. “It was just for sleeping, and parties,” recalled Mr Lemmon. Savile took full advantage. The Mecca house was about three miles from where Savile was born. (He once told Joan Bakewell in an interview in 1974 – a year after the death of his mother the beloved 'duchess’ – that the area he grew up in was now a slum. “It’s all spades and student communes now.”)
The narrow escape of 1958 and again in the early 60s coincided with a seismic shift in the times and correspondingly in Savile’s own fortunes. Pop music was the new big thing and with it came the accompanying rise of the disc jockey. Savile, a nightclub manager, seamlessly moved into DJing – first on Radio Luxembourg and then to the BBC.
It was at Top of the Pops – whose first episode he presented in 1964 – which saw him truly achieve fame. With it came perhaps his closest brush with the law yet. The programme’s first producer was Stanley Dorfman. Now living in Los Angeles, Mr Dorfman, who is in his 80s, told The Sunday Telegraph that in the late 1960s police mounted an investigation of the show over allegations that under-age girls had been sleeping with musicians in the changing rooms. Savile as far as Mr Dorfman knew, was not involved and nothing came of the inquiries. The incident though will inevitably form part of the BBC’s review into what happened back then – and just what co-operation was given by the corporation to the authorities. We now know of allegations of rape and sexual assault of young girls by Savile back stage at Top of the Pops and other programmes he presented.
“I knew nothing about his personal life at all apart from he was weird and lived in a caravan and was very strange,” recalled Mr Dorfman, “The only police inquiry I remember was when they came and interviewed us all because there were girls in the dressing rooms of the rock and roll musicians. There were girls running around.”
Police came knocking on Top of the Pops door again in 1971 following the suicide of Clair McAlpine, a dancer who went by the stage name Samantha Claire on the show. An investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Hooker, who was leading an inquiry into allegations of bribery and sex parties involving disc jockeys and others. Clair McAlpine’s death brought attention on Savile. She had written a diary, apparently a mixture of fantasy and reality, which her mother Vera had found a month before her death. What Vera read in there so shocked her, she banned her daughter from attending Top of the Pops again. Clair, just 15 at the time, reacted badly and swallowed two bottles of her mother’s sleeping pills in the bedroom of her home in Watford.
Clair’s diary – in which she described being 'used’ by celebrities – was seized by police and its contents poured over. Officers concluded it was the work of a fantasist. But more than 40 years on, Clair’s family are convinced Savile had a lucky escape.
Mark Ufland, Clair’s half-brother, told The Sunday Telegraph: “Jimmy was named in the diary for having some sort of sexual relationship with her. As far as I know, Jimmy Savile was interviewed as a witness.
“The diary was dismissed as delusional. It was the word of a 15-year-old with emotional problems against the word of the BBC. If these other women had come forward at that time, the chances are it might have been different. They would have put more weight on what she had claimed,” said Mr Ufland, “I don’t know what was in the diaries. All I know is that it was enough to stop her mother letting her go out again. Whether that contributed to the suicide I don’t know.
“There were some details in there which could be proved. At one point she says she went somewhere and she did actually go there. From what I know, it was celebrities who were involved.
“But there was no one else coming forward at that time. Clair could have done with all these women who are coming out now.
“I would suggest that it would be nice to have the coroner’s verdict changed, if what is said about Savile is right. It would be good to have her name cleared as not being completely mad.”
Savile was questioned by reporters at the time – Clair’s death was big news – but he brazened it out. “I studied a photograph of Samantha very closely. I cannot recollect ever seeing the girl in my life,” he said on the eve of Clair’s inquest in April 1971. As if to emphasise the point, Savile went on: “The younger ones, the 14 to 16-year-olds, don’t even think about sex. In fact they would be most offended if you suggested anything sexual to them.”
Savile then added darkly: “The BBC is a big family. Turn over any family stone and you will find all sorts of peculiar goings on. Our family is no worse than anyone else’s.”
Certainly in the case of Savile this proved to be true. His brother Johnny, five years his senior, would later lose his job as a recreation officer at a psychiatric hospital in south London for sexually molesting a female patient.
With mutterings over his private life, in 1972, Savile announced his engagement to Polly Browne, a pop singer then aged a distinctly legal 26. That too was a cover-up. Miss Browne emailed The Sunday Telegraph last week: “If your inquiry is about the 'engagement’ publicity stunt in '72, I’m gold to say that’s all it was.”
Inside the BBC family, there must have also been worries over Clair’s death. Her diaries name a number of prominent figures, including apparently some fanciful names such as Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson. By 1971, Tony Blackburn, who presented Top of the Pops on alternate weeks, was already keeping his distance from Savile.
Mr Blackburn, 69, who himself once boasted of sleeping with 500 women, told The Sunday Telegraph: “I am disgusted beyond words at the vile, despicable actions of Jimmy Savile.
“Whilst it is a tragedy that Jimmy Savile is not alive to face the justice that he deserves to face, I only hope that the victims are able to get some comfort from the fact that their stories are now being heard and believed.
“To me, Jimmy Savile was only ever a work colleague. He was never a friend. He was not a nice man despite how the public viewed him at the peak of his success. There were always rumours circulating about him, the problem at the time was that rumour was always hard to translate in to fact. Jimmy Savile was a master manipulator of the press and would do what he could to keep his image held high in the public conscience.
“It will be to the eternal regret of me and, I’m sure, so many of my BBC colleagues that he was allowed to get away with these monstrous acts. All of us who worked at the BBC during the time of these heinous crimes owe it to the victims to speak to the police and the BBC investigations unit and help them in any way we can.”
There were other clues perhaps the BBC should have spotted then and which will no doubt form part of its own inquiry now. A News of the World investigation in 1971 accused Top of the Pops’ official photographer Harry Goodwin, a close friend of Savile’s, of taking pornographic photos of girls backstage and of even showing pornographic movies. Mr Goodwin carried on working on Top of the Pops until 1973. Asked about the newspaper’s allegations, Mr Goodwin, 88, from Manchester, said: “I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t want anything to do with this.” His agent threatened The Sunday Telegraph with a libel action if his name was mentioned. There is no suggestion Mr Goodwin was involved in the sexual abuse of under age girls.
Savile’s years of abuse at the BBC were prolific. But of course his offending didn’t end there. He worked tirelessly for charity, raising tens of millions of pounds, for hospitals and children’s homes. He counted among his friends members of the Royal family as well as Margaret Thatcher. It gave him the perfect cover. He had his own room at Stoke Mandeville and his own set of keys to Broadmoor. He is accused of abusing patients there and at Leeds General Infirmary, where he volunteered as a porter, and also at Haut de la Garenne children’s home in Jersey and at Duncroft Approved school for Girls in Surrey.
In the late 1970s, police were contacted again – this time by a nurse concerned at his behaviour at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire.
John Lindsay, then a CID detective based in Milton Keynes, told the Sunday telegraph: “I already knew this nurse and one day she came to me and told me it was a well-known fact at Stoke Mandeville that when Jimmy Savile visited the young girls on the wards were advised to stay in bed and pretend to be asleep for their own safety, because it was widely suspected that Savile was interfering with young girls at the hospital.
“She had not seen this herself, but it was suspected of him by other staff and she said it was known he was 'touching up’ young girls sexually, and she was concerned enough to bring it to my attention.”
Shocked by her claims, Mr Lindsay immediately reported them to his senior officer, a detective chief inspector who has since died.
However the DCI refused to take the allegations seriously, saying there was little that could be done against a celebrity of Savile’s stature without solid proof.
Mr Lindsay, who spoke to Scotland yard detectives again on Friday, said : “At the time CID dealt with burglaries, rapes and murders – really nasty stuff – and though what Savile was said to be doing was also nasty, we just weren’t geared up to deal with things like paedophilia. We didn’t have child protection officers in those days. So unfortunately my report went nowhere and, with hindsight, Savile was allowed to carry on doing what he wanted to those girls.”
Further police investigations followed. In 2007, Surrey police questioned Savile over allegations of child sex abuse in the 1970s. The matter was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which advised there was insufficient evidence to take further action. Newsnight, the BBC flagship news programme, got wind of the claims but dropped its programme – a decision that is subject to a separate BBC inquiry. In 2008, Sussex police received a complaint of sexual assault against Savile which allegedly took place in Worthing in 1970. Police said the victim was “unwilling to co-operate in any investigation” and the case dropped.
Saville, in his lifetime, evaded justice. The various inquiries will presumably now finally reveal the truth. For the BBC, the police, other institutions and well-known individuals, it is likely to make very uncomfortable reading. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9607133/How-Jimmy-Savile-master-manipulator-evaded-exposure-as-a-paedophile.html
The club even had its own house for the use of the managers. “It was just for sleeping, and parties,” recalled Mr Lemmon. Savile took full advantage. The Mecca house was about three miles from where Savile was born. (He once told Joan Bakewell in an interview in 1974 – a year after the death of his mother the beloved 'duchess’ – that the area he grew up in was now a slum. “It’s all spades and student communes now.”)
The narrow escape of 1958 and again in the early 60s coincided with a seismic shift in the times and correspondingly in Savile’s own fortunes. Pop music was the new big thing and with it came the accompanying rise of the disc jockey. Savile, a nightclub manager, seamlessly moved into DJing – first on Radio Luxembourg and then to the BBC.
It was at Top of the Pops – whose first episode he presented in 1964 – which saw him truly achieve fame. With it came perhaps his closest brush with the law yet. The programme’s first producer was Stanley Dorfman. Now living in Los Angeles, Mr Dorfman, who is in his 80s, told The Sunday Telegraph that in the late 1960s police mounted an investigation of the show over allegations that under-age girls had been sleeping with musicians in the changing rooms. Savile as far as Mr Dorfman knew, was not involved and nothing came of the inquiries. The incident though will inevitably form part of the BBC’s review into what happened back then – and just what co-operation was given by the corporation to the authorities. We now know of allegations of rape and sexual assault of young girls by Savile back stage at Top of the Pops and other programmes he presented.
“I knew nothing about his personal life at all apart from he was weird and lived in a caravan and was very strange,” recalled Mr Dorfman, “The only police inquiry I remember was when they came and interviewed us all because there were girls in the dressing rooms of the rock and roll musicians. There were girls running around.”
Police came knocking on Top of the Pops door again in 1971 following the suicide of Clair McAlpine, a dancer who went by the stage name Samantha Claire on the show. An investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Hooker, who was leading an inquiry into allegations of bribery and sex parties involving disc jockeys and others. Clair McAlpine’s death brought attention on Savile. She had written a diary, apparently a mixture of fantasy and reality, which her mother Vera had found a month before her death. What Vera read in there so shocked her, she banned her daughter from attending Top of the Pops again. Clair, just 15 at the time, reacted badly and swallowed two bottles of her mother’s sleeping pills in the bedroom of her home in Watford.
Clair’s diary – in which she described being 'used’ by celebrities – was seized by police and its contents poured over. Officers concluded it was the work of a fantasist. But more than 40 years on, Clair’s family are convinced Savile had a lucky escape.
Mark Ufland, Clair’s half-brother, told The Sunday Telegraph: “Jimmy was named in the diary for having some sort of sexual relationship with her. As far as I know, Jimmy Savile was interviewed as a witness.
“The diary was dismissed as delusional. It was the word of a 15-year-old with emotional problems against the word of the BBC. If these other women had come forward at that time, the chances are it might have been different. They would have put more weight on what she had claimed,” said Mr Ufland, “I don’t know what was in the diaries. All I know is that it was enough to stop her mother letting her go out again. Whether that contributed to the suicide I don’t know.
“There were some details in there which could be proved. At one point she says she went somewhere and she did actually go there. From what I know, it was celebrities who were involved.
“But there was no one else coming forward at that time. Clair could have done with all these women who are coming out now.
“I would suggest that it would be nice to have the coroner’s verdict changed, if what is said about Savile is right. It would be good to have her name cleared as not being completely mad.”
Savile was questioned by reporters at the time – Clair’s death was big news – but he brazened it out. “I studied a photograph of Samantha very closely. I cannot recollect ever seeing the girl in my life,” he said on the eve of Clair’s inquest in April 1971. As if to emphasise the point, Savile went on: “The younger ones, the 14 to 16-year-olds, don’t even think about sex. In fact they would be most offended if you suggested anything sexual to them.”
Savile then added darkly: “The BBC is a big family. Turn over any family stone and you will find all sorts of peculiar goings on. Our family is no worse than anyone else’s.”
Certainly in the case of Savile this proved to be true. His brother Johnny, five years his senior, would later lose his job as a recreation officer at a psychiatric hospital in south London for sexually molesting a female patient.
With mutterings over his private life, in 1972, Savile announced his engagement to Polly Browne, a pop singer then aged a distinctly legal 26. That too was a cover-up. Miss Browne emailed The Sunday Telegraph last week: “If your inquiry is about the 'engagement’ publicity stunt in '72, I’m gold to say that’s all it was.”
Inside the BBC family, there must have also been worries over Clair’s death. Her diaries name a number of prominent figures, including apparently some fanciful names such as Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson. By 1971, Tony Blackburn, who presented Top of the Pops on alternate weeks, was already keeping his distance from Savile.
Mr Blackburn, 69, who himself once boasted of sleeping with 500 women, told The Sunday Telegraph: “I am disgusted beyond words at the vile, despicable actions of Jimmy Savile.
“Whilst it is a tragedy that Jimmy Savile is not alive to face the justice that he deserves to face, I only hope that the victims are able to get some comfort from the fact that their stories are now being heard and believed.
“To me, Jimmy Savile was only ever a work colleague. He was never a friend. He was not a nice man despite how the public viewed him at the peak of his success. There were always rumours circulating about him, the problem at the time was that rumour was always hard to translate in to fact. Jimmy Savile was a master manipulator of the press and would do what he could to keep his image held high in the public conscience.
“It will be to the eternal regret of me and, I’m sure, so many of my BBC colleagues that he was allowed to get away with these monstrous acts. All of us who worked at the BBC during the time of these heinous crimes owe it to the victims to speak to the police and the BBC investigations unit and help them in any way we can.”
There were other clues perhaps the BBC should have spotted then and which will no doubt form part of its own inquiry now. A News of the World investigation in 1971 accused Top of the Pops’ official photographer Harry Goodwin, a close friend of Savile’s, of taking pornographic photos of girls backstage and of even showing pornographic movies. Mr Goodwin carried on working on Top of the Pops until 1973. Asked about the newspaper’s allegations, Mr Goodwin, 88, from Manchester, said: “I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t want anything to do with this.” His agent threatened The Sunday Telegraph with a libel action if his name was mentioned. There is no suggestion Mr Goodwin was involved in the sexual abuse of under age girls.
Savile’s years of abuse at the BBC were prolific. But of course his offending didn’t end there. He worked tirelessly for charity, raising tens of millions of pounds, for hospitals and children’s homes. He counted among his friends members of the Royal family as well as Margaret Thatcher. It gave him the perfect cover. He had his own room at Stoke Mandeville and his own set of keys to Broadmoor. He is accused of abusing patients there and at Leeds General Infirmary, where he volunteered as a porter, and also at Haut de la Garenne children’s home in Jersey and at Duncroft Approved school for Girls in Surrey.
In the late 1970s, police were contacted again – this time by a nurse concerned at his behaviour at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire.
John Lindsay, then a CID detective based in Milton Keynes, told the Sunday telegraph: “I already knew this nurse and one day she came to me and told me it was a well-known fact at Stoke Mandeville that when Jimmy Savile visited the young girls on the wards were advised to stay in bed and pretend to be asleep for their own safety, because it was widely suspected that Savile was interfering with young girls at the hospital.
“She had not seen this herself, but it was suspected of him by other staff and she said it was known he was 'touching up’ young girls sexually, and she was concerned enough to bring it to my attention.”
Shocked by her claims, Mr Lindsay immediately reported them to his senior officer, a detective chief inspector who has since died.
However the DCI refused to take the allegations seriously, saying there was little that could be done against a celebrity of Savile’s stature without solid proof.
Mr Lindsay, who spoke to Scotland yard detectives again on Friday, said : “At the time CID dealt with burglaries, rapes and murders – really nasty stuff – and though what Savile was said to be doing was also nasty, we just weren’t geared up to deal with things like paedophilia. We didn’t have child protection officers in those days. So unfortunately my report went nowhere and, with hindsight, Savile was allowed to carry on doing what he wanted to those girls.”
Further police investigations followed. In 2007, Surrey police questioned Savile over allegations of child sex abuse in the 1970s. The matter was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which advised there was insufficient evidence to take further action. Newsnight, the BBC flagship news programme, got wind of the claims but dropped its programme – a decision that is subject to a separate BBC inquiry. In 2008, Sussex police received a complaint of sexual assault against Savile which allegedly took place in Worthing in 1970. Police said the victim was “unwilling to co-operate in any investigation” and the case dropped.
Saville, in his lifetime, evaded justice. The various inquiries will presumably now finally reveal the truth. For the BBC, the police, other institutions and well-known individuals, it is likely to make very uncomfortable reading. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9607133/How-Jimmy-Savile-master-manipulator-evaded-exposure-as-a-paedophile.html
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