In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (26 page)

*

In November, Savile completed the next stage of his Marine Commando training at Lympstone in Devon, carrying 35lbs of equipment over a nine-mile course in less than 90 minutes. He was also photographed with his arms round the two ‘dolly birds’ chosen as the hostesses on his new BBC1 game show,
Quiz Bingo
. The format saw teams drawn from hospital staffs all over Britain. The armed forces, the BBC, the NHS, the Catholic Church; Jimmy Savile’s tentacles were spreading into all corners of British society.

An indication of his acceptance within rarefied circles was to be found in the suit decorated in bananas he wore on one episode of
Top of the Pops
. At the time, he was ‘chaperoning’ Hillary ‘Gussy’ van Geest, the debutante heiress to a banana fortune. His journey to the centre of the establishment was well under way.

Dave Eager, who worked as his personal assistant, said this was also a time when Jimmy Savile began to change. ‘One of the things he always said to me about this business is, “The most liked person is also the most hated because it’s worth hating something that other people like … This is why you are always good news for a newspaper. You’ve got to be aware … that the more you become known, the more you become part of the establishment, the more you’re going to get people hating you.”’

33. EINS, ZWEI, DREI IN THE SKY

T
oday’s shell suit was blue with solid blocks of red on the jacket and flashes of white and green on the sleeves. He was wearing a pair of glasses I hadn’t seen before: the old NHS-style in tortoiseshell.

The electric fire was on and Savile had classical music playing from his favourite satellite channel. A fresh cigar was smoking between his fingers while in the distance, above the boxy houses nestled on the slope overlooking the arcades and chip shops that stretched along the half-moon of the pleasure beach, a squall broke across Scarborough.

Whenever I stayed with him, the mornings were a time for reflection; it was a still, meditative, contemplative state he seemed to have perfected over the many years he had spent alone.

I sat down on the velour-covered sofa with its taupe and tan chevrons. Above the fireplace hung a large photograph of the
Queen Mary
cruise liner passing behind Scarborough’s whitewashed lighthouse.

I wanted to know about the mysterious powers of hypnotism he claimed to possess. The pitch and cadence of his voice, a voice that became the standard-issue impersonation for just about every British citizen born before 1980, occasionally induced a drowsiness in me, especially if subjected to it for long stretches at a time. After a few hours listening to his pulsing drone – and occasionally being scolded for interjecting with a question or a request for clarification – I invariably found myself needing a break.

Often we’d sit in silence, and if it was after six in the evening he’d pour himself a generous tumbler of scotch. He told me he’d never touched a drop until after his heart bypass in 1997, maybe because alcohol made him more apt to make the sort of throwaway comments that revealed more about the real Jimmy Savile than any of his vertiginously tall stories.

So when did he first realise he had powers? ‘I was in the Isle of Man doing a disc jockey thing in Douglas,’ he replied. ‘And in the hotel I was staying at, because I was the star DJ at the time, the waitress came across and said – er – er – what’s his name now?’ He groped for the name of the hypnotist he claimed had recognised his powers. I knew the name, and reminded him: it was Josef Karma.

‘Josef Karma. Yes, he was doing a one-man show at the Royal. So Josef comes over to my table. And I said to him, “That’s a fascinating game is that.” And he said, “You can do what I can’t do Jim.” And I said, “What’s that?” “You can do mass hypnosis. You probably don’t know you’re doing it but you know the effect you’ve got on people. You know what you can do but you don’t know how it comes or what it’s called. You can do mass hypnosis and I can’t.”’

Savile claimed that Karma had offered to teach him about hypnosis, and they worked together for a few weeks before he started to hypnotise people under his tutor’s guidance. He said he found that he could do it quite easily.

‘So when I came back to Leeds after the six weeks, I found …’ he paused for a moment to relight his cigar, ‘a hypnotherapy clinic. They’d get patients in and let me hypnotise them and try to sort them out, and I learned various techniques. I don’t use it very often.’

He cackled and looked straight out to sea.

‘There was one classic occasion in A & E at Leeds General Infirmary. This kid, about 12 years old, was in a cubicle having a massive asthma attack. I knew it weren’t an asthma attack because when he saw me I could see the light of recognition in his eyes. So I went in and said “Hello” and he couldn’t breathe. I gave him the
“
Eins, zwei, drei
in the sky”, and he stopped breathing like that.’ Savile snapped his finger.

‘The doctor and staff nurse had the needle and all the gear and the doctor said, “Ah Jim, you’re doing your black magic again. You know we don’t like that.”’

If he was telling the truth, it illustrated the extent to which he was able to penetrate hospital departments. I knew he volunteered in the casualty department at the hospital in Leeds, but was unaware his duties extended beyond wheeling patients as a porter. What he was telling me he was given a free rein to wander in and out of cubicles, and was free to touch as well as speak to the sick and injured.

‘I once found a geezer who was in a car crash,’ he went on. ‘I was in the ambulance and I jumped down and walked out and there was this fella, still in the driving seat. His windscreen had smashed and shards of glass had gone into his eyeball. These shards were sticking out of his eyeball. He was in a bit of a state so I did the “
Eins, zwei, drei
in the sky” – and I told him to hold still and not close his eyes. The ambulance men came and they said, “Uh, Jimmy Savile!”’

His voice lowered, and his eyes closed as he recalled how he warned the paramedics of what they were about to see: ‘Shards of glass in the eye, just take him out but don’t say anything to him. I whispered in his ear that he was going to be OK now and that everything would be alright.’

Despite his appearance and unsettling manner, Jimmy Savile succeeded in soothing the nation into believing that, in his hands, everything would be alright.

In the months after his former friend’s reputation had been reduced to smoking ruins, Dave Eager phoned me in a state of panic. He told me Savile had sent him to check out the venue in the Isle of Man before signing the contract for the summer season. Eager had met Josef Karma and known of Savile’s interest in hypnosis. He was now terrified that he too had been hypnotised; blinded to what was happening right under his nose.

34. MORE INSIDIOUS THAN FILTH

A
s the 1960s drew to a close, Jimmy Savile could reflect on the heights he’d scaled, the riches he’d accumulated and the view from his newly elevated position within both the BBC and society at large. And yet he cannot have been anything other than acutely aware of the appalling duality of his existence. On the one hand, the plaudits for his charity work and the promotions gained on the back of his audience-winning ability as a broadcaster; on the other, the almost total disregard for the risks to his reputation and the wreckage wrought by his darkest impulses and actions.

The popularity of his Radio 1 show,
Savile’s Travels
, and the changes afoot within the station only accelerated the pace of his ascent and frequency of his offending. In February 1969, Douglas Muggeridge, the 40-year-old nephew of Malcolm Muggeridge, the celebrated author and jouranlist who had become an outspoken critic of the permissive age, succeeded Robin Scott as controller of Radios 1 and 2. In his four years as head of Overseas Talks and Features, Douglas Muggeridge had described Bush House as ‘like a mini NATO’,
¹
with 40 different nationalities working in perfect harmony. According to Johnny Beerling, Muggeridge was ‘much straighter’ than Scott and wanted more ‘public service’ alongside the ‘pop stuff’.
²

‘I like pop music,’ insisted Savile’s new boss when news broke of his appointment. ‘I have this sort of sympathy with what it’s trying to do, as part of a social revolution.’
³
It did not sound like a glowing endorsement of the infant Radio 1’s
raison d’être
,
although Muggeridge went on to say his plans were to expand on the ‘tremendous success’ of the station – and that would mean further opportunity for one of its biggest stars.

Savile’s Travels
was a vehicle for promoting the brand of Jimmy Savile. It was predicated on constant movement and bringing its host into contact with ordinary people. In doing so, it provided a showcase for his extraordinary lifestyle as he variously got lost up Ben Nevis in a snowstorm while testing camping equipment, ran up the stairs of the Post Office Tower for charity or pushed a 13-year-old girl in a wheelchair the 24 miles from Watford to London to raise money for sick and handicapped children. The format established Jimmy Savile not so much as a man of the people, but
the
man of the people.

His world was now viewed through the prisms of publicity and profit. In pursuing seemingly philanthropic goals he still succeeded in advertising how much he was making. No chance was missed. A personal appearance to open a new extension of a Halifax biscuit factory allowed him to broadcast the fact he was donating his fee to charity. ‘I suppose the tax people could be awkward and say that as I did the job, it was my fee,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think they’ll mind. They know it’s difficult for stars to help charity. I don’t get the needle to the taxman – we have a very good relationship.’
⁴

He was a blur of perpetual motion, and ordered a custom-built motor home to facilitate his criss-crossing of Britain. ‘I want to live the life of a gipsy,’ he proclaimed on unveiling the £6,500 Mercedes Devon Conversions with its large double bed at the back, upholstery in red, gold tassels for looping back the curtains and a stained glass dividing door. It would provide his primary lodgings, and, more importantly, make him more elusive than ever. With its bed and guarantee of privacy, it was a vehicle built for purpose. As he said at the time, ‘There is no end of uses to a motor caravan.’
⁵

‘They never knew where I went,’ he told me of his bosses at the BBC. ‘I used to park it outside Broadcasting House. People couldn’t
believe it. For about four years I parked on a piece of dirt around the back of King’s Cross station.’

While the summer of 1969 saw rioting in the streets around the old family home off Burley Road in Leeds, Jimmy Savile was having the time of his life. He became the first civilian to be presented with a Marine Commando Green Beret. Shortly afterwards, he stripped to the waist and cavorted on a float with a 20-year-old carnival queen at the Battle of Flowers parade in Jersey. His mother rode in a car behind, holding aloft a card with the message: ‘I’m watching you Jimmy’.
⁶
If Agnes Savile knew nothing of what her son was up to, their relationship was used to create the impermeable veneer of innocent fun that became his trademark.

In late September, Savile was asked to compère Radio 1’s very first talk show,
Speakeasy
. Produced by Reverend Roy Trevivian of the BBC’s Religious Broadcasting department, the 45-minute, Saturday afternoon discussion programme was designed, according to the
Radio Times
, to address ‘what really matters to teenagers today’. As the nation’s oldest teenager, Jimmy Savile would be required to interview experts and guests in between playing hit records and fielding questions from the studio audience of youngsters.

The novelist John Braine was one of the panel guests for an early show that tackled the subject of nudity. In admitting he liked looking at naked women, but still believed that ‘short skirts and transparent blouses were the engines of the devil’,
⁷
Braine epitomised the gulf between the old and young in a society that was in a state of flux. Other topics for shows included teenage marriage, drugs and alcohol.

In October, a
Speakeasy
on censorship played the controversial record, ‘Je t’aime, moi non plus’ by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg. The single had been banned by the BBC and described by the Vatican as ‘obscene’. Afterwards, producer Roy Trevivian said he agreed with the ban. Jimmy Savile had different ideas, however. ‘To my mind the words are completely innocent,’ he
said. ‘It’s just the heavy breathing that gives rise to certain thoughts.’
⁸

In another programme discussing the issue of birth control, Savile said something that would have stung the girl Alan Leeke knew in Manchester, or the young secretary raped in London: ‘I have never given anyone a kid in my life and I am sure that if I was having it off and the Pope said I had committed a sin by not producing offspring, I would say I’d wait to appear before Our Lord because I don’t think he’d be that unreasonable.’
⁹

Trevivian, a Methodist minister turned Anglican clergyman, was a brilliant but troubled character. ‘He was a quite extraordinary person,’ says Reverend Colin Semper of the man he succeeded as the show’s producer. ‘He was a really dynamic presence in religious broadcasting, but he drank quite a bit.’

An obituary for Trevivian bears this out: ‘The work of a producer-cum-performer perfectly fitted one side of his character, but left the damaged side cruelly exposed,’ it said. ‘The years of total abstinence required of him by Methodism were more than made up for in Broadcasting House bars.’
¹⁰

Despite Trevivian’s drinking and bouts of melancholy,
Speakeasy
quickly built a reputation for attracting high-profile guests. In the build-up to the 1970 general election, Defence Minister Denis Healey and Conservative party chairman Anthony Barber both appeared in a bid to appeal to young voters. In January 1971, Enoch Powell faced Jimmy Savile’s inimitable brand of questioning: ‘Now Enoch, what do you think about the permissive society at the moment?’. ‘Now Enoch, you’ve got two lovely girls and well, if they’d been lads instead of girls, what do you think about pre-marital sex?’

Bosses at the BBC were won over by Jimmy Savile’s ability to act as a bridge between generations and social classes. So much so that he was the controversial choice to present a BBC2 show,
Ten Years of What?
, that looked back on the 1960s. And rather than falling flat, as some critics within the BBC predicted, he earned fresh acclaim for the way he approached interviews with heavyweights
such as Cardinal Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster, Enoch Powell, Malcolm Muggeridge and Arnold Schlesinger, former aide to President Kennedy.

As a profile piece in the respected magazine the
Listener
later suggested, ‘The way he conducted himself in BBC TV’s review of the decade … persuaded many of those within television, who had dismissed him as a mere fairground huckster, that he had a keen understanding of current affairs; and in
Speakeasy
, his capacity to grasp the most esoteric of subjects and conduct discussions with some high-powered intellects betokens an active brain under the cloth and bells’.
¹¹

In August 1970, Jimmy Savile was invited by the BBC to sit on watchdog panels that advised on programmes and policy. ‘I’m very pleased about it,’ he said. ‘The governors realise that even though I have straw on the outside of my head, it doesn’t mean there’s straw inside it too.’
¹²

*

That same summer, Jill (not her real name) was a newly married 19-year-old living in Brighton. She told me about one day receiving an unexpected visit from a man driving a Rolls-Royce. The man told her he was Jimmy Savile’s chauffeur, and his boss, who was making a personal appearance at Worthing Town Hall, wanted to meet her. Jill had been a member of Savile’s fan club and had written to the disc jockey two years earlier.
¹³
She agreed to go.

When Savile spotted her, she said, he put his arm round her waist and frogmarched her to his motor caravan, locking the door behind them once she was inside. ‘He was standing up, and it was weird. He said to me, “Oh you’re a beautiful little dolly bird” and I just sat there and thought, “Is this a compliment?” I wasn’t sure. He said, “I’d like to lock you up in my cupboard and take you with me everywhere I go”, and I sort of just looked at him and thought, “What is happening here?” Then he said, “I could buy the house next door to your house and I’d be very happy.” He kept saying, “I’m the strongest man in England” and I remember I just looked at him and thought, “This guy’s a nutter.” Then it happened so
fast; he was on top of me. I was back on the bed and Jimmy Savile was on top of me. It was literally a fight. He was trying to rape me.’

‘He shoved my hand in his trousers. He had an erection,’ she says. His hands, meanwhile, were exploring under her skirt. According to Jill, Savile demanded to know whether she was on the pill. When she replied she was not, he got angry and shouted, ‘Why not?’
¹⁴

After twenty minutes of struggle, Jill managed to pull herself free. As she headed for the door, Savile asked whether she wanted to be a dancer on
Top of the Pops
and said she could take something from the motor caravan as a souvenir. She took a small crucifix with a deer at the foot. She still had it when she reported the attack to Sussex Police in 2007, and when she recounted her story for a second time to a Crown Prosecution lawyer in 2012.
¹⁵

*

‘Such an ectoplasm exists around [Savile],’ wrote Philip Norman in the
Guardian
in the summer of 1971, ‘that it has become difficult to perceive the actual man at all … He and the BBC are now one, and what a beast with two backs and several wigs that makes.’
¹⁶

Norman’s tirade broadened into a wider attack on what he saw as the insidious effect of Radio 1 on the nation’s intellectual health: ‘Savile and Young and Blackburn – how like the names on a death roll they sound – are in fact part of a life that will not change: a power stronger than government, more insidious than filth, and as permanent as the Inland Revenue.’

Although he was never able to laugh at himself – the wilfully bizarre appearance, the nonsensical catchphrases and the espousing of bizarre philosophies on life were all protective layers, and ones he managed – Jimmy Savile could afford to let such criticisms ride. The truth is that his burnished reputation, one that he had fashioned himself as an everyman saint, was now blinding all but his victims and those, like Norman, who were repelled by his very being.

And how appropriate that this elevation should be celebrated in the first month of the new decade with an appearance on
This is
Your Life
, after Eamonn Andrews surprised him by stepping out of an inspection parade of Royal Marines.

Jimmy Savile had discovered that people would do pretty much anything for him because of what he did for charity. ‘People leap about, yes they do, they leap about if I want something,’ he confessed.
¹⁷
On a wheelchair push from Rochester to Bromley in Kent, he revealed that he wrote to the organiser with his now customary demands: ‘Find me a blonde teenage bird who lives in a house with a drive so that I can park outside so she can wake me in the morning with tea at eight o’clock.’ ‘They leapt about,’ he said. And in the morning? ‘Knock, knock.’

Charles Hullighan, head porter at Leeds General Infirmary, enthused in a newspaper interview about Savile’s work at the hospital. ‘At present most of Jimmy’s work is in Casualty,’ he said. ‘He arrives at midday and stays till five the following morning. Sometimes he comes and works on the busiest nights in Casualty – Saturdays. Sometimes he goes on ambulance duty.

‘If you really want to know what Jimmy gets out of working in the Infirmary,’ added Hullighan, ‘I think it is for the relaxation of meeting people. People are his life. You have to see him handling them to realise how deeply he is involved.’
¹⁸

What Hullighan got out of it is another matter entirely. In 1972, he was made company secretary of the firm that dealt with Jimmy Savile’s earnings. He was paid a monthly salary and contributions towards a pension, sums that enabled him to own homes in Leeds and Scarborough. Exactly what he earned is not known, but the
Telegraph
reported that in 1981 he shared in directors’ pay of £91,500, the equivalent of more than £300,000 today.
¹⁹

At Broadmoor, Jimmy Savile had awarded himself the title of ‘Honorary Assistant Entertainments Officer’. He began organising concerts on Thursday evenings and a regular disco night. ‘I am the hospital’s contact with show business,’ he explained of his role. ‘I don’t work at Broadmoor as I do in Leeds Infirmary. It is not that sort of place. But I have access to all the wings and I visit to talk to patients. Chat, as you know, is a form of therapy, so I can be of
help.’
²⁰
The same method was working at Britain’s highest security mental hospital.