newsJimmy Savile 1926-2026: Centenary year of the birth of a paedophile who groomed a nation and fooled a pope and a future king
Steve Coogan played the role of Jimmy Savile in the four-part BBC documentary “The Reckoning.”
The magician’s trick is to make the audience look the wrong way. Jimmy Savile did that for 60 years while his BBC bosses had their eyes glued on what rabbit he’d next pull out of the hat. TREVOR GRUNDY remembers a time that too many people in British royal circles would like to forget.
For nearly 60 years, Jimmy Savile was the biggest and most popular TV personality in Britain.
But after his death in 2011 at the age of 84 it came to light that Savile, who was honoured by Pope John Paul 11 who made him an Order of St Columbus and knighted by Elizabeth 11 in 1990, had been one of the world’s most serious sex offenders.
Police investigated 450 cases of sexual abuse against elderly women and teenage boys and girls.
For millions of people in the 1960s and 1970s ‘Good Old Jimmy’ was the smiling figure of fun who made the dreams of children come true.
Jimmy Savile as shown to the world by Jimmy Savile
He was the biggest and most popular entertainer in the UK who raised over £40 million for charity.
He was everywhere and anywhere hosting TV shows like ‘Top of the Pops’ and then’ Jim’ll Fix It’ as well as appearances on religious shows which gave the impression he was a devout Roman Catholic.
He was awarded an OBE in 1973 and he was knighted, on the recommendation of Margaret Thatcher, in 1990.
Everywhere you went there were pictures of him with famous people.
He was honoured and befriended by Margaret Thatcher, Diana and Prince Charles, Mary WhItehouse, Lord Longford. There were pictures of him with the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, The Beatles and even Muhammad Ali.
Savile’s public image was so strong.
It was like the ‘Sweet Caroline’ chorus – ‘So good, So good, So good.’
He was a member of MENSA. He drove a Rolls-Royce and was accepted as a member of the Athenaeum, London’s most exclusive “gents” club.
The then Prince Charles with his friend and part-time adviser Jimmy (Sovile) Savile. The prince, later king, always said he never knew anything about Savile’s paedophile activities, or any other of the famous entertainer’s sexual perversions.
Prince Charles was a one-time close friend of Bishop Peter Ball (pictured in mitre).The then prince told delegates in a written statement read by delegates attending the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in March 1997 that he never knew this senior cleric had committed sexual crimes involving 18 men and boys.
Prince Charles even went to Savile for advice during the breakdown of his marriage to Diana. Letters between the two men showed that Charles referred to Savile as “that bloke who knows what’s going on.”
Sadly for victims, Prince Charles didn’t appear to have a clue what was going on.
In 2022, the Netflix documentary “Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story” revealed that Charles reached out to Savile over the course of 20 years.
Speaking to The Times in 2022 the documentary director Rowan Deacon said Savile wrote an in-depth dossier “on how the Queen should behave and how members of the royal family should not be in competition with each other.”
In a note to Savile, Charles wrote: “I attach a copy of my memo on disasters, which incorporates your points and which I showed to my father. He shoed it to the queen.”
In a note written in 1989, Charkes asked Savile whether he would meet with his sister-in-law (Sarah Ferguson). It said: “Can’t help feeling that it would be extremely useful to her if you could. I feel that she could do with some of your straightforward common sense.”
It’s said that he future king and most of the royals did not have a clue about what was going on.
Margaret Thatcher fought to have Savile knighted. Earlier, he was awarded an OBE
After Savile’s death and after his crimes were made public, Clarence House issued a statement saying that the Prince of Wales had no knowledge” of Savile’s abuses and had not been in contact with him since 1999.”
Senior royals live such busy lives they sometimes get dates wrong.
On Savile’s 80th birthday, Charles sent him a gift with a note saying: “Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country, Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”
At Savile’s lavish funeral in Leeds, Charles said in a message to mourners that he was “saddened” to learn about Savile’s death.
The heir to the throne– one of Sir Jimmy’s more illustrious fans – sent word that he would be carrying out engagements in Tanzania today, but the Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire would attend the funeral as the Prince’s representative.
A Prince of Wales doesn’t have to look up to many people. But he looked up to Jimmy Savile.
Long before Savile’s crimes became public knowledge, Charles asked Savile to tender advice on how to deal with young people, how to be more like them, what to say and do in the company of working-class people who he smiled at but never knew .
Charles thought Jimmy Savile, a former miner from Yorkshire would give him a bit of street cred.
In 1989, Charles asked Savile for advice on how the royals should deal with disasters after Prince Andrew insulted the people of Lockerbie during a visit he made to the Scottish town after the Pan Am flight that caused the death of 240 mainly American passengers and 11 Lockerbie residents in December 1988.
Brain dead Andrew told locals – “It was much worse for the Americans “and “statistically, something like this has got to happen at some stage”
Savile was a regular visitor to royal palaces and Chequers.
On one occasion, Savile is said to have spotted a boys’ choir practicing in the Queen’s Chape.
He was seen leading two boys away to a bedroom. When challenged by a cleric he said he was looking for the organ loft to show the boys.
Some loft.
Some organ.
Disgraced paedopihle TV presenter Rolf Harris (left) with Jimmy Savile and child on the popular Jim’ll Fix It programme
When the editor of ‘Private Eye’, Ian Hislop, asked Savile on a show called ’Have I got News for You’ what he got up to in his caravan parked outside the BBC in London, he smirked, shook his dyed blonde head of hair and said: “Anyone I can get my hands on.”
Sadly, for hundreds of Savile’s victims the BBC bosses hadn’t a clue what was going on.
After his death and the truth emerged like lava out of Vesuvius. No-one knew anything about Savile’s appalling sexual attacks on mature women, teenage girls and boys – even crippled hospital patients.
Everyone who should have known didn’t. All were shocked, amazed, regretful, apologetic.
They would never let anything like that happen gain.
Sound familiar in 2026?
In 2023 the BBC, thanks to ITV, made a four-part documentary about Savile, a film starring the magnificent Steve Coogan as Savile.
Martin Robinson in The Standard (9 October, 2023) wondered how this appalling man was able to sexually assault upwards of 300 people while hustling his way into a national institutions and into friendship with people Charles knew well – including Lord Mountbatten, Bishop Peter Ball, and Van der Post.
The great, the good and the greedy. How they loved the man.
In 1999, Peter Mandelson said he was the Jimmy Savile of politics and he should do a TV programme called Pete’ll Fix-It.
The film starring Cogan was “The Reckoning” and it showed how Savile managed to hypnotise so many in the media. Do yourselves a favour and watch it again, or for the first time.
Make sure there’ s a sickbag close at hand.
Jimmy Savile with Pope John Paul 11 who awarded the entertainer with one of the Catholic Church’s highest decorations
Savile was born in Leeds in 1926.
No-one in that Yorkshire city this coming October will be marking this vile man’s birth a century ago with flowers or prayers in Catholic churches.
His grave was moved and then destroyed a long time ago.
Savile is now an (almost) forgotten figure. You would have to be getting on a bit to remember Top of the Pops.
But this year it must be especially painful for King Charles to recall how awful it was to be lied to.
Liars are often totally convincing.
Painful, too, for survivors of Savile’s life-damaging crimes against mainly young boys and girls who only wanted to have fun.
Jimmy Savile: Born on October 31, 1926 at Burley, UK. Died October 29, 2011, in Leeds, UK ‘
“The Reckoning’ was based on a book by the journalist Dan Davies “In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile.”
The documentary was shown on the BBC thanks to the original work done by ITV
After the death of Savile, the BBC chose not to screen a Newsnight special about Savile’s victims. Instead, the BBC paid a nauseating tribute to the man.
Critics say that this remains one of the darkest moments of the BBC’s history.
It was left to ITV to first deal with the accusations made against Savile by several of his mature victims, followed by a documentary called “The Other Side of Jimmy Savile.”