Are Planet X still displaying his bikes? That must seem like a poor investment, in retrospect.
[url= http://road.cc/content/news/62676-planet-x-bid-and-win-four-jimmy-saville-bikes-auction ]Clunk[/url]
Watched both documentaries back to back last night. The first is uncomfortable viewing with hindsight, I wonder if I'd have had the same reaction at the time. I'd like to think so, it was pretty wrong in places. His candid remarks about his "zero tolerance" policy when he thought he was off-camera was incredibly telling.
Having watched the new one, one thing that struck me was the final sequence, where he said something like "anything you want, you just let me know." The whole thing was about [i]power,[/i] wasn't it. He'd set himself up as a sort of Godfather figure, the whole "Jim'll Fix It" schtick wasn't a puff piece TV show, that's [i]how he was in real life.[/i] Mr Fixit, the head honcho, the grand fromage, building his empire of people who variously admired him, befriended him, were terrified of him, were victimised by him. Your best friend and your worst enemy.
The other thing I took away with it was, he was so very, very clever with it. Cold and masterly manipulative, and the perfect self-publicist. (I've broken my leg, quick, call a journalist!) For all JHJ's one-handed typing insistence that they were all in it together, I can't help but wonder whether they were all [i]duped[/i] together. He'd turn on the charm and people would fall under his thrall, even Queenie.
Couple of replies:
Watching his old assistant defend him was very odd too.
That felt an awful lot to me like Stockholm Syndrome. She'd served him faithfully for 28 years and then one day he'd binned her off for no discernible reason (I can only speculate that she was no longer pretty enough). She'd every right to be really bloody angry; but after 28 years? Maybe she was (is?) in love with him.
Interesting really how people like Savile make such a huge deal over their charity work, which kind of suggests he was doing it all for the wrong reasons.
I thought the same. How can anyone be a bad man when they do such wonderful work? It was pretty clear to me from the report that he wasn't buying hospital wings for the benefit of the hospital, but rather because it was a massive PR stunt for him (and a show of power). And of course, the small matter of him wanting to pop round to offer his own brand of one-on-one private counselling.
This charity worker disguise also allowed him free reign to pick and chose his victims from hospitals and care homes. He could ask the patients history from the staff pretending to be concerned so he could pick the ones that had already suffered sexual or emtional abuse knowing they would be the least likely to report him or deny his advances.
Yeah, I spotted that too; it was a common theme in the interviewed victims (though that could just be statistical chance). I did wonder whether it was no accident that they were all people likely to just go "oh well, here we go again."
I remember Esther Rantzen being interviewed about the beginnings of Children in Need, she said something along the lines of "We were told: Don't let Jimmy Savile become involved".
When does "odd" or "eccentric" or any other similar description become "creepy", "illegal", "immoral"? I saw the original documentary when it was broadcast. Odd? From the sixties? Could have been drugs but of course we now know it wasn't that.
Never met him nor do I know anyone who met him, just had a feeling he wasn't "right", got told he did a lot for charity.
Not the best advert for Oakleys.
