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Owzabout That Then? The Jimmy Savile Revelations & Aftermath

Thanks for the directions!
the reason for posting: I've just been reading the interesting autobiography of comedian Frankie Boyle, My Shit Life So Far. It's funny, laugh-out-loud funny, and marked throughout by the way Boyle will begin with a reminiscence of childhood, or school, or early career which starts out as pretty much wholly factual - then gets more and more surreal as he embellishes on it and takes it to a completely crazy over-the-top conclusion. Yuo sense he's setting the reader a deliberate challenge - not so much "sort out the fact from the fiction" as "can you spot the moment in this anecdote where the fiction begins to outweigh the fact?" and "What is reality anyway?" (He lets slip he is a devotee of Robert Anton Wilson, so I suspect he's deliberately applying Operation Mindfuck here and applying it to writing an autobiography, sending up and subverting all the conventions).

Boyle paints a picture of the British stand-up comedy scene as being fuelled by alcohol, desperation, and lots and lots of recreational chemicals. Given the caveat about this book that he starts with fact and then takes it up way past eleven, his account of the circuit of TV panel game shows , which all British comics appear to be contractually obliged to move around, is eye-opening. I'm prepared to believe that a lot of people on the circuit are no strangers to recreational drugs - maybe not to the extent Boyle cheerfully alleges when he talks about everybody associated with Mock The Week regularly performing a recorded TV show whilst in an altered state of consciousness. But it's plausible. Boyle says a lot of the stuff he comes out with on stage, or used to, he wouldn't even have thought of if he were not taking lots and lots of drugs at the time. (Hard not to agree: he realised the drugs were taking over when he came down and read back some of the truly weird sketches he'd written with a head full of MDMA and energy drinks. He reproduces a few pieces: they are just crazy, with occassional flashes of humour. He took this as a warning sign and seriously scaled back his drug use.)

Anyway, Boyle gives an account of a comedy circuit with occassional TV exposure that was populated by desperate, somewhat neurotic and needy, people who were fuelled by not enough sleep, too many drugs, too much alcohol, and painfully aware of the financial insecurity of it all. TV work comes over as a balance between not wanting to piss off the BBC too much lest this be his last TV gig, balanced against wanting to get artistic and creative freedom to do things his way. He describes BBC staffers in less than flattering terms and points out they were either dullard office-drones mindful of their careers and pensions, or else they were almost as crazy as the performers. Boyle lists a lot of occasions where he was censored or vetoed by BBC production staff terrified he was going too far, and notes all this contributed to an altered state of consciousness in which everybody was a bit paranoid for one reason or another, and conceded he only had a fingernail grasp of everyday reality. He also notes how many people in the business were fantasists and Walter Mitties prone to creating, and getting other people to beleive in, the weirdest and wildest and most outrageous stories.

It was in this state of mind that Boyle, in a late-night drink with a BBC producer known for telling outrageous fantastic stories, heard about a well-konwn BBC presenter who among other things did children's shows, who drove around the country in a converted ambulance which he then used as a base for abusing children, special needs children for preference, or else kids from children's homes.

Boyle claims he refused to believe this, taking it as being one tall tale too many, too outrageous and too ludicrous to take seriously. The BBC producer insisted this was common knowledge and a lot of people at the BBC knew about this. The anecdote appears in the autobiography, published in 2009 (two years before Savile's death and the stories beginning to emerge) with no further comment. Boyle does wonder if this was a product of his drug-addled mind, however.

Now, Frankie Boyle first started to appear on BBC Scotland conedy shows in the late 1990's. He got to move to Mock The Week, with national BBC exposure, in 2005.

What we have here is a reference to Jimmy Savile, in a book published two years before the stories began to emerge, as a recollection of a conversation with a BBC insider from the early 2000's. It can't be something Boyle invented as part of an unreliable tale - it fits horribly with what later became known. You could take this as a sort of proof that many, many, people knew within the BBC?
 
Thanks for the directions!
the reason for posting: I've just been reading the interesting autobiography of comedian Frankie Boyle, My Shit Life So Far. It's funny, laugh-out-loud funny, and marked throughout by the way Boyle will begin with a reminiscence of childhood, or school, or early career which starts out as pretty much wholly factual - then gets more and more surreal as he embellishes on it and takes it to a completely crazy over-the-top conclusion. Yuo sense he's setting the reader a deliberate challenge - not so much "sort out the fact from the fiction" as "can you spot the moment in this anecdote where the fiction begins to outweigh the fact?" and "What is reality anyway?" (He lets slip he is a devotee of Robert Anton Wilson, so I suspect he's deliberately applying Operation Mindfuck here and applying it to writing an autobiography, sending up and subverting all the conventions).

Boyle paints a picture of the British stand-up comedy scene as being fuelled by alcohol, desperation, and lots and lots of recreational chemicals. Given the caveat about this book that he starts with fact and then takes it up way past eleven, his account of the circuit of TV panel game shows , which all British comics appear to be contractually obliged to move around, is eye-opening. I'm prepared to believe that a lot of people on the circuit are no strangers to recreational drugs - maybe not to the extent Boyle cheerfully alleges when he talks about everybody associated with Mock The Week regularly performing a recorded TV show whilst in an altered state of consciousness. But it's plausible. Boyle says a lot of the stuff he comes out with on stage, or used to, he wouldn't even have thought of if he were not taking lots and lots of drugs at the time. (Hard not to agree: he realised the drugs were taking over when he came down and read back some of the truly weird sketches he'd written with a head full of MDMA and energy drinks. He reproduces a few pieces: they are just crazy, with occassional flashes of humour. He took this as a warning sign and seriously scaled back his drug use.)

Anyway, Boyle gives an account of a comedy circuit with occassional TV exposure that was populated by desperate, somewhat neurotic and needy, people who were fuelled by not enough sleep, too many drugs, too much alcohol, and painfully aware of the financial insecurity of it all. TV work comes over as a balance between not wanting to piss off the BBC too much lest this be his last TV gig, balanced against wanting to get artistic and creative freedom to do things his way. He describes BBC staffers in less than flattering terms and points out they were either dullard office-drones mindful of their careers and pensions, or else they were almost as crazy as the performers. Boyle lists a lot of occasions where he was censored or vetoed by BBC production staff terrified he was going too far, and notes all this contributed to an altered state of consciousness in which everybody was a bit paranoid for one reason or another, and conceded he only had a fingernail grasp of everyday reality. He also notes how many people in the business were fantasists and Walter Mitties prone to creating, and getting other people to beleive in, the weirdest and wildest and most outrageous stories.

It was in this state of mind that Boyle, in a late-night drink with a BBC producer known for telling outrageous fantastic stories, heard about a well-konwn BBC presenter who among other things did children's shows, who drove around the country in a converted ambulance which he then used as a base for abusing children, special needs children for preference, or else kids from children's homes.

Boyle claims he refused to believe this, taking it as being one tall tale too many, too outrageous and too ludicrous to take seriously. The BBC producer insisted this was common knowledge and a lot of people at the BBC knew about this. The anecdote appears in the autobiography, published in 2009 (two years before Savile's death and the stories beginning to emerge) with no further comment. Boyle does wonder if this was a product of his drug-addled mind, however.

Now, Frankie Boyle first started to appear on BBC Scotland conedy shows in the late 1990's. He got to move to Mock The Week, with national BBC exposure, in 2005.

What we have here is a reference to Jimmy Savile, in a book published two years before the stories began to emerge, as a recollection of a conversation with a BBC insider from the early 2000's. It can't be something Boyle invented as part of an unreliable tale - it fits horribly with what later became known. You could take this as a sort of proof that many, many, people knew within the BBC?

True; however, other people knew about Savile who weren't showbiz insiders.It was like a huge national private joke.

I knew he went after young girls because I read about it in a Sunday tabloid serialisation of his autobiography decades ago. There was also the Jimmy Savile Joke that everyone knew, for example, when he was still a big name on t'wireless.
 
In 1981 a girlfriend explained how her mate who was an adolescent TV presenter had been groped on air by Savile. A mate's girlfriend had to refuse Glitter's advances after a gig when she was a very young teenager. We're deluding ourselves if we think this behaviour stopped in the past, though.
 
I will confess something very personal. I was a late developer in the sexual stakes and I lost my virginity when I was certainly over 18 to a girl who I subsequently found was 14 or 15. Unless of course when I learned her age a few years later she was pretending to be younger than she was. I'm going off the age she said she was when she got married. I had met her in a pub I used regularly so it really didn't occur to me to ask her age.

All I know is she knew a damn site more than I did about the sexual act - and that is in no way meant as a criticism. I still remember her name - I wonder what she is doing now.

Edit: I feel really guilty about it, but I can do sod-all now about it.
 
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I will confess something very personal. I was a late developer in the sexual stakes and I lost my virginity when I was certainly over 18 to a girl who I subsequently found was 14 or 15. Unless of course when I learned her age a few years later she was pretending to be younger than she was. I'm going off the age she said she was when she got married. I had met her in a pub I used regularly so it really didn't occur to me to ask her age.

All I know is she knew a damn site more than I did about the sexual act - and that is in no way meant as a criticism. I still remember her name - I wonder what she is doing now.

Edit: I feel really guilty about it, but I can do sod-all now about it.

If it helps, I don't see what you've got to feel guilty about. Doesn't sound like you did anything she didn't want to do.

And it is possible she was lying about her age. She doesn't sound 14 or 15 to me, anyway.
 
If it helps, I don't see what you've got to feel guilty about. Doesn't sound like you did anything she didn't want to do.

And it is possible she was lying about her age. She doesn't sound 14 or 15 to me, anyway.
That helps. With subsequent hindsight I do suspect that although she was a well developed girl she was quite young.

I may be unusual among men in that I remember every woman I have 'been to bed with' and I would help any of them if they needed it. It's not a thing to be done lightly.
 
That helps. With subsequent hindsight I do suspect that although she was a well developed girl she was quite young.

I may be unusual among men in that I remember every woman I have 'been to bed with' and I would help any of them if they needed it. It's not a thing to be done lightly.
I remember all the women I've slept with too. Sometimes I briefly forget her name, but then it comes back to me.
 
Colston statue plinth in Bristol has Jimmy Savile dummy placed on it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...n-replaced-dummy-paedophile-Jimmy-Savile.html

30678088-8515171-image-a-4_1594573049086.jpg
 
True; however, other people knew about Savile who weren't showbiz insiders.It was like a huge national private joke.

I knew he went after young girls because I read about it in a Sunday tabloid serialisation of his autobiography decades ago. There was also the Jimmy Savile Joke that everyone knew, for example, when he was still a big name on t'wireless.
Exactly nearly the whole country knew about him, when you look back it was rather strange
 
There were sites with obsessive investigations into the Savile story that brought up multiple anomalies (people documented as not being where they said they were, others wrongly identified as various people, etc), but I don't know if they're still around. Frankly I have little enthusiasm to find out at this stage.

Certainly the Westminster paedophile ring turned out to be a hoax, but it would be a brave/foolhardy individual who claimed the Savile scandal was, to put it mildly.
 
There were sites with obsessive investigations into the Savile story that brought up multiple anomalies (people documented as not being where they said they were, others wrongly identified as various people, etc), but I don't know if they're still around.

Site lost and (mostly) recovered. Author now sadly deceased:

https://annaraccoon.com

Not sure I'd say she was obsessive, but she certainly turned up anomalies.
 
Yes, and she knew the person who kicked off the main accusations and didn't have a great opinion of her. There was another one I'm thinking of, called Jim Cannot Fix This, which pored over every news item and picked them apart. After a while you think, fair play to his dedication, but if ever there was a losing battle it's this one.
 
Exactly nearly the whole country knew about him, when you look back it was rather strange

It was as if everyone knew what he was up to but it was somehow OK because he was SO important and the victims weren't.

People believe what they want. On this very site some people defended his reputation.

Yup, I was more or less called a fantasiser myself when I talked about him. It was like being accused of blasphemy.
 
@Cherrybomb mentioned National Treasure. Which starred Robbie Coltrane, who was also in the Tracey Ullman sketch about Minipops!

Elsewhere on this thread there was a discussion about who'd play Savile in a biopic. There was a feeling that most actors mightn't fancy the role.
This reminded me that Coltrane was advised against taking National Treasure because of the possible stigma. He didn't turn down the Middle Paedo in the Chorus role though!
 
It was as if everyone knew what he was up to but it was somehow OK because he was SO important and the victims weren't.



Yup, I was more or less called a fantasiser myself when I talked about him. It was like being accused of blasphemy.

Like I said it was very strange, I am not sure people thought it was OK but they were powerless to do anything about it, he yielded an immense amount of power and influence, and I am still baffled as to how a former DJ and TV presenter managed to pull it off.

But if people were laughing and joking about it on Building Sites in Manchester in the late 80's early 90's it was more or less common knowledge

It seems to be the prevailing Zeitgeist of the age, celebrities abusing their power, its an age old story updated for our modern civilisation
 
After the disturbing image Victory posted above, this is much nicer and a lot more relevant (it's only my opinion but I found it pretty tasteless that someone would hijack the plinth for something that was probably more to do with their dislike of the BBC than anything to do with the vile Savile, and certainly nothing to do with the long-debated issues in Bristol about Colston)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-by-sculpture-of-black-lives-matter-protester
I've always liked Marc Quinn's work (not that that's got anything to do with it).

edit: didn't last long https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...culpture-of-jen-reid-removed-colston--bristol
as the council said it wasn't given permission. But if they wait until they decide what's suitable to give permission to, they'll be removing something different every week. Unless they just remove the plinth I suppose. And I'm guessing they don't want revolting sights like that Savile effigy again. (Honestly, that made me feel a bit ill. The Colston debate is a big deal in Bristol. And somebody thought that was a good idea. Whatever)
 
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After the disturbing image Victory posted above, this is much nicer and a lot more relevant (it's only my opinion but I found it pretty tasteless that someone would hijack the plinth for something that was probably more to do with their dislike of the BBC than anything to do with the vile Savile, and certainly nothing to do with the long-debated issues in Bristol about Colston)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-by-sculpture-of-black-lives-matter-protester
I've always liked Marc Quinn's work (not that that's got anything to do with it).
Right, but what's it got to do with Jimmy Savile? Unless it's wheels within wheels...
 
Yup, I was more or less called a fantasiser myself when I talked about him. It was like being accused of blasphemy.

Have you read Jon Ronson's book on shame? I'm reminded of it now as I try and stop myself from seeing exactly who was defending him.
 
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Have you read Jon Ronson's book on shame? I'm reminded of it now as I try and stop myself from seeing exactly who was defending him.

If by 'defending him' you mean actually coming out and saying that it was okay for him to indulge in sexual abuse, then I don't recall anyone on this site actually doing that; I'm happy to be corrected on that - but I'd also really be quite surprised.

Yes, and she knew the person who kicked off the main accusations and didn't have a great opinion of her. There was another one I'm thinking of, called Jim Cannot Fix This, which pored over every news item and picked them apart. After a while you think, fair play to his dedication, but if ever there was a losing battle it's this one.

I think the danger with Savile is that he's actually become a bit of a distraction. Personally, I have no doubt that he was a malevolent sleazeball of the first water - but the accusations against him will forever remain untested in any legal sense: his victims will remain alleged victims, and the fact that the dead have no legal rights means that his actual crimes will forever attract a crust of false allegation and lurid tabloid fantasy which will only ever serve to muddle the focus on any actual criminal activity.

His death allowed the subject to be turned into a grand guignol horror carnival, where the media can indulge in every lurid fantasy without the least concern of legal comeback. But, unfortunately, for any real victims, his is now an 'over there, then' thing - whereas what society really needs to be doing is looking over here, now. Yes, we need to learn from past mistakes but we need to do that in order to bang up the Weinsteins, not shout at ghosts.
 
And I thought that only I did that! I can also recommend Arthur Morrison's books on Cunning Murrell.

I can go one better. Had a job where I'd have an hour free in London near the Wellcome Trust. I'd pop over, choose a nice book in the Library and spend a happy break reading.

There are some bizarre tomes in there! I carefully chose subjects like spirit photography, ghosts, the Day of the Dead etc that I wouldn't normally get to see.

One lovely work was Kate Lister's A Curious History of Sex, of which I read a couple of enthralling chapters. Had a look for it on Kindle and yup, there it was. Must've already treated myself! A stupendous book. Must read it again.
 
I can go one better. Had a job where I'd have an hour free in London near the Wellcome Trust. I'd pop over, choose a nice book in the Library and spend a happy break reading.

There are some bizarre tomes in there! I carefully chose subjects like spirit photography, ghosts, the Day of the Dead etc that I wouldn't normally get to see.

One lovely work was Kate Lister's A Curious History of Sex, of which I read a couple of enthralling chapters. Had a look for it on Kindle and yup, there it was. Must've already treated myself! A stupendous book. Must read it again.

There are two perfect places for first dates in London. Wellcome Trust and Sir John Soane's Museum.
 
I don't know anything about Savile except what would have made it across to here, but I can think of two well-known performing people off the top of my head that everyone around just knows or knew about (one is long-dead, one was eventually fired after decades of predation, but still no one with real evidence was willing to talk to the investigators). I think the attitude may have been "let's watch the rich and powerful, who know but don't care, continue to protect him because if I ask publicly why he's still employed I will never work again." I think people tried to alert young boys or their parents to keep a distance but many of course didn't know.
 
I think the danger with Savile is that he's actually become a bit of a distraction. Personally, I have no doubt that he was a malevolent sleazeball of the first water - but the accusations against him will forever remain untested in any legal sense: his victims will remain alleged victims, and the fact that the dead have no legal rights means that his actual crimes will forever attract a crust of false allegation and lurid tabloid fantasy which will only ever serve to muddle the focus on any actual criminal activity.

His death allowed the subject to be turned into a grand guignol horror carnival, where the media can indulge in every lurid fantasy without the least concern of legal comeback. But, unfortunately, for any real victims, his is now an 'over there, then' thing - whereas what society really needs to be doing is looking over here, now. Yes, we need to learn from past mistakes but we need to do that in order to bang up the Weinsteins, not shout at ghosts.

Yes, the undisguised glee at revealing every revolting detail the tabloid press took was pretty hard to stomach. If Savile was the world's most successful paedophile, then that's no way to go about presenting the story, as if it was some carnival of depravity your readers could safely tut at over their cups of tea. Let's not forget, however, that keeping the stories in the press as long as possible made the newspapers a shitload of money.

I suppose it's true that people of all kinds like a good gossip, but this went beyond that. I don't know what the answer is, but appealing to the public's lowest instincts can't be healthy. Not as unhealthy as what Savile was alleged to have done, mind you.
 
My ex was a good-looking (then) young actor who did some work at The BBC in the late 70s and early 80s - some of it when he was only a teenager and before he was 16. And he told me a story once about a very well known comedian propositioning him. He was a streetwise cockney kid and just told him to cease and desist although probably not too politely. But I wonder how some less confident and less street wise kid, wandering around that place at that time, and without a parent or guardian - would have been able to deal with adults coming onto them. Let alone someone "off the telly". Ex was very confident and tough as nails but I doubt most kids would have been. Savile, of course, went for the more vulnerable to start off with.

Re. Savile I think everyone in Leeds heard that joke about our worst nightmare being coming round after an accident or operation at LGI and seeing he was the porter... I do have vague memories of hearing things but can't recall details but I do remember seeing him on TV every week and wondering how people down South liked him as I don't suppose I realised at that age they hadn't heard the stories (of course now you wonder what weirdo producers gave him those jobs in the first place).
 
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