RedHanded - Episode 200 - Jimmy Savile: Predator in Plain Sight - Part 1

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

For decades, TV presenter Jimmy Savile was idolised as a national treasure in Britain. But the power and adoration Savile enjoyed was matched only by his perversions and depravity... He was knighted, awarded an OBE, he rubbed shoulders with royalty, prime ministers and he ruled the roost at the BBC. Savile also raised millions for charity, for which he was rewarded with the literal keys to hospitals and children's homes across the country.  In part 1 of this 2 part series, Hannah and Suruthi explore the truth behind Jimmy Savile's eccentric facade, delve into his secretive childhood and ask why no one stopped this monstrous predator. Sources: redhandedpodcast.com  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to a very special episode of Red Handed. This is episode 200. I know. Do you realize we've said, I'm Hannah, I'm Sleutie Visceral Handed over 200 times that means.

Because 200 episodes, as in 200 main episodes. There are like fucking hundreds more on Patreon and everywhere else. And including the ones that we recorded and then never released because they weren't good enough. That's true. There's also those.

All of the ones that we've binned. All of those. So I hope you brought with you your brain bleach and your wire wall scouring pad because this episode will stay with you forever as a terrifying reminder of how celebrity can blind a nation. The most loved DJ and TV presenter was a predatory paedophile for his entire career and literally no one even tried to stop him. His home was littered with gifts from official bodies. The fraud squad, the Israeli Prime

Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the Royal Marines and even Big Liz herself, the Queen, whose birthday is on Saturday, if you care, which you shouldn't. If you hadn't guessed or haven't already read the title of this episode, today we are taking you through the national embarrassment that is the career of Jimmy Savile. I refuse to call him sir. Didn't they take it away? I don't know. I'll check before next week.

I hope so. I mean, they bloody should have. For our international listeners, if you're not sure who Jimmy Savile is, every British person knows. I can't describe how ubiquitous he is as a person. I can't think of anyone as ubiquitous as Jimmy Savile is. Every British person knows. I can't describe how ubiquitous he is as a person. I can't think of anyone as ubiquitous as Jimmy Savile, really. Just give him a quick goog, and I guarantee your first thought upon casting your eyes on the string vest wearing, teeny short loving, cigar chewing pervert will be literally how did people not know?

If there was ever the embodiment of hiding in plain sight, it is Jimmy Savile. Yeah, he did. Like, obviously, we'll get into this in depth, TV and has like little kiddies sit in his lap while he's wearing tiny shorts. But like that's so wrong that he can't possibly be a sex offender. Exactly. Exactly that. Spoilers, he is. The crushing truth is, although a lot of people say that nobody knew or nobody suspected, the truth is people did know. A lot of people knew. People in positions of great power, people in parliament, people who ran hospitals, people who were in charge of looking after paralysed children. And perhaps most poignantly of all, people in positions of power knew that it was like, well, we can't fucking out him because then the entire house of cards comes tumbling down and we're all fucked. Exactly. Which he knew perfectly and took, honestly, genius advantage of his entire

life. I mean, this is a man who, if you just were like, I am a massive fucking disgusting pervert and that's the only thing in my life that I care about and I'm going to spend every waking minute of my life perfecting it to make sure I'm the bloody best at it, then you could maybe be a fraction of how successful Jimmy Savile was because that's what he did. Yeah. So, right, let's get on with the story because of course now, when put on the spot, these people of great influence and responsibility say that they didn't know anything at all. Some will admit that they knew something was maybe up, something to do with money laundering

or inappropriate relationships with patients in hospitals. But across the board, these important people will say that they had no idea that children were being molested by this BBC superstar. But of course, all of us know now, and these children were, in their hundreds. Over the next two episodes, because yes, this is going to be a two-parter, we're going to tell you the story of Jimmy Savile, how he rose to fame, how he got away with being a predatory sex offender for his entire life, and how eventually he was found out in unfortunately the least satisfying of ways. The thing we all have to remember as we move through this story

is that no one, no matter how rich and or famous they are, gets away with crimes on such a scale for so long without a hell of a lot of people being at best unknowing accessories and at worst knowingly complicit allies. That's the thing that like obviously now it's all come out. Everyone knows he was a giant pervert and pedo and they sort of single him out as this lone figure that just massively manipulated everyone. People knew, people helped him. No offender of that level does it, unaided. They just don't. Absolutely. You just can't.

It's impossible. His perverted fingers were in so many influential pies. And the best you can say about these people is that they didn't want to rock the boat or they thought they wouldn't be believed because he was so powerful. And at worst, they were completely involved and somewhere in the middle, they were completely involved.

And somewhere in the middle, they're just like, I'll just turn a blind eye because it's too much hassle. Yes. But nobody didn't know. You only have to look at a picture of the late Jimmy Savile to understand why he is so often described as eccentric. His white hair lay lank over his shoulders for most of his career in the public eye, and he often wore bright, clashing colours, even when appearing on TV in black and white. This wasn't creative expression or even innocent attention-grabbing. It was a deliberate and ultimately successful attempt

to ensure people saw him as different, odd, even weird. This was a choice, so that people would witness behaviour that in anyone else would have set off violently loud alarm bells. But in Jimmy, these dangerous, predatory and chilling behaviours were written off by most around him as just the way he was. Just an eccentric. That's such an interesting reason, isn't it? And I also, I don't know, it just occurred to me as we were saying it. And the reason it occurred to me is when I was at uni, one of my good friends from back home decided to come and visit me. And he was like, look, I'm a student. I don't have a lot of money right now. And I've got to get the train from London to Birmingham. That's very expensive. And I was like, no, no, come. It'll be fun. So I go to meet him at the

train station in Birmingham. And he's dressed like a fucking Twinkie, like a fucking, was that the children's show? Twinkies? I can't remember. The Tenies that's it and he's wearing like a bright yellow top and bright red trousers i was like where the fuck did you get these clothes and why are you dressed like a child he said because i bought a children's ticket to come all the way up here because it was a lot cheaper and he got away with it and was jimmy Savile's brightly coloured weird clothes in some way remember whether they're in Broadcasting House or somewhere they go into the BBC offices Jimmy Savile shows up and he's like he's old by this point he's like in his 50s 60s he must be in his 60s actually so he's like properly old and he shows up to the office wearing like hot pants and a string vest and that's it and then he walks into this office and

starts speaking to this woman who's working there. And then he gets changed in the office in front of these people. If anyone else did that, you'd be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? But because he's created this air of like madness around him, people are like, oh, well, he's just a bit weird. He's harmless.

He's completely harmless. He's not going to hurt you. But like if anyone else was like, I'm just going to get changed in front of you in your place of work, sweetheart, you wouldn't stand for it but because it was him everyone was like oh he's just bonkers it's kind of also a bit like matilda in there how they say the trunchbull goes so far in the punishments that she doles out so that nobody believes that it could possibly be real so it's almost like he goes so far stretching and pushing the boundaries of

like social acceptability and not in like circles of people who were like a bit punk rock and a bit you know like edgy this is the fucking bbc which like now is still a very conservative place before everyone yells at me i'm not just talking about politically i just mean like it's a reserved place it's not a place known for risk taking, especially then. It certainly would have been. And I feel like he's pushing the boundaries in very conservative circles in British culture and society back then. Which is what made him invaluable to the BBC. He was the people's person at a time when they were bridging this like stuffy, old fashioned reputation that they had. And he was the key to breaking that down. And that's why he was untouchable.

Absolutely. That's such a good point. The best book out there on Savile and the absolute burning pile of human shit he was is by Dan Davis. It's called In Plain Sight, The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile. Go and read it if you can stomach it.

Davis is probably the most qualified person out there to be talking about Savile, to be honest. Davis had, as every British adult alive today has, grown up with Jimmy Savile, but always knew that something was off. Savile had always given him the creeps, and his journalistic integrity and hunger to find out who the real Savile was led him to conduct many interviews with the man himself. These interviews meandered for hours,

but Davis never really felt like he'd nailed the knight of the realm. And when Savile died in 2011, Davis was furious. He thought he'd failed. But his book and his existence, frankly, have been absolutely instrumental in uncovering the real truth. As with most stories that span decades, there are many ways to tell it. This story has been told already in many different orders, but all with the same result. And we're going to start at the beginning. This week in part one, you'll be hearing about Savile's early life, his start in showbiz,

and how he managed to place himself in a position of almost totalitarian power at Leeds General Infirmary, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the BBC, and probably the most infamous hospital for the criminally insane here in the UK, Broadmoor. Next week in part two, we'll find out how Savile was often allowed by residential schools to take young girls off site with him in his car, along with his famous run-ins with actual national treasure, Louis Theroux. We're also going to be having a pretty good look at Savile's relationship with his mum, who he called the Duchess, by the way. Fuck's sake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing that really struck me when we started to open this one up, I didn't realise how old Jimmy Savile actually was.

Me either. Again, is it the bright coloured clothes? started to open this one up i didn't realize how old jimmy saville actually was me either again is it the bright colored clothes can he get on a fucking national rail express from london to birmingham and get a child's fare he just shows up at moore street and they're like who brought the child unattended minor quick jimmy saville was also characterized on the tweenies do you remember that what no so this was really famous so it was an old episode of the Tweenies. Do you remember that? What? No. So this was really famous. So it was an old episode of the Tweenies. And Milo, the purple one, is dressed up like Jimmy Savile presenting Top of the Pops.

And he's like calling, he's like, boys and girls, blah, blah, blah, saying Jimmy Savile catchphrases. And it obviously was aired before everything came out in 2011. And then a rerun was played afterwards and everyone just sort of forgot about it. And there were loads of complaints from parents being like, that's so obviously supposed to be Jimmy Savile and he's a sex offender. Why is he on the Tweenies? Oh my God.

I'll find a picture of it and show you because it's very funny. Anyway, I think the reason I didn't realise how old Jimmy Savile actually was, he's been old my entire life. He's always looked super duper old, but he is in actuality really old, like adult in the war old.

When British people say the war, international listeners, they mean World War II. I'm not going to change my pattern of speech, I'm just not. Jimmy Savile was born on Halloween 1926, if you can believe that. He's a year older than my grandma and she's 95. Wow. He was born in Leeds and he was the youngest of seven children. And he referred to himself throughout his life as a not-again child. They happened quite a lot to Catholics, which his family was.

Jimmy Savile's Catholicism is a very interesting subject for next week. The young Savile was a sickly child. When telling his own story, he said that he was afflicted by a mystery illness when he was young. Young, like two years old young, maybe a bit younger, and no one could ever explain it. He was so ill that a priest was called and the doctor wrote the baby a death certificate

to save himself from making two journeys to the Savile's house. So basically the doctor shows up and be like, this baby's definitely going to die in the next hour, but I can't be bothered to come back then, so here he is. Here's the death certificate. But after Mother Savile prayed to the newly dead Sister Margaret Sinclair, also known as Sister Mary Frances of the Five Wounds, which makes it sound like she's really interesting

and possibly had a stigmata situation. Nope, she's really boring. I looked it up. She just decided that's what she wanted to be called. So after Saville's mum prays to Sister Margaret Sinclair, baby Saville made a miraculous recovery. His death certificate was presumably disposed of and Mother Saville, whose name is Agnes, Savile made a miraculous recovery. His death certificate was presumably disposed of and

mother Savile, whose name is Agnes, made a pilgrimage to Scotland to Sister Margaret Sinclair's resting place to pay her thanks. Turns out the mystery illness isn't a mystery at all. It was a damaged nerve that righted itself. But when Jimmy told the story, it was this mystery thing that was taken away by God. So the impact of this miraculous recovery lasted in reality Savile was quite far away from the not again child he was the chosen one and youngest children usually are but it's an extreme case of that yes youngest children usually are being said by two eldest children standing in our box. Yes, exactly. Savile was cagey about his childhood. But one thing we do know for sure is that he grew up opposite an old people's home,

St. Joseph's home for the aged. And unusually for a young boy, Jimmy Savile spent quite a lot of time there. It seems that Savile liked old people. He liked doing things for them because they'd always be very thankful and they'd pay him special attention. An eerie foreshadowing of his charity work later in life and his worldwide fame for quote-unquote fixing it. The other thing old people do is die

and it was at St. Joseph's that Savile developed an obsessive and unusual relationship with death. When his old friends died, he would often kiss their corpses as they lay in the chapel of rest. Nothing else seems to have happened. Not that, of course, Savile would ever have admitted it. He gave multiple interviews where he expressed his distaste for people who blamed their flaws on traumatic childhoods. He thought it was a cop-out. He'd say things like, quote,

We were just survivors. None of that, oh, I was ignored as a child. All I know is that nothing particularly wrong happened, and I had a good time. Now, this statement could have been an attempt by Savile to stop anyone looking into his childhood too closely. And if it was, it worked. Because most of his childhood remains reasonably mysterious. It's the perfect ploy, isn't it? Ah, it's boring. Don't worry about it. And then no one's going to ask you any questions, are they? He's so good at it. He's so good at just misdirection, like sleight of hand stuff.

With the baby on us out of the way, let's skip forward to 1944 when World War II was raging and an 18-year-old Savile was called up. He couldn't swim, so he couldn't join the Navy. He couldn't see very well, so he couldn't join the Air Force. And the army didn't want him either. So Savile was conscripted to the coal mines. I have been to the Imperial War Museum more times than I can physically count, and I had absolutely no idea that people were conscripted to the coal mines.

But like, obviously there were. It makes total sense that no one in the 40s is going to send a woman down a mine and everyone needed coal arguably in the war more than ever so it makes sense. So Savile wasn't called up. He was called down. Way down to the coal mines. And Savile's particular job in the mines was to sit in a literal hole two miles from the bottom of the mine and a mile from the top to re-rail trucks that came off the tracks. So essentially he sat in the dark on his own for years. And this is like coal mine underground dark. Like that is pitch black. Quite literally pitch black. That's exactly what it is. Fucking hell. Like I know obviously then it had to be done of course like what other choice did people have but like wow what a grueling job this job the sitting alone in a hole job was avoided by all

other miners who could possibly help it they were far too scared and superstitious to sit alone in the pitch black for hours on end but Saville actively sought out the position. God, I mean, it just tells you quite a lot about his, like, psychology and possibly, obviously, also his psychopathy. I mean, that low level of fear, that low level of, like, any sort of neuroticism about being sat in a fucking dark hole hours on end on your own. I mean, that is mad. Oh, totally.

Well, he's a real contender for the dark triad, I think, which will come on to next week. But I think there's certainly some psychopathy going on here. And he even says it in like his own autobiography and stuff. He's like, everyone else was like scared of ghosts and the dark and I just wasn't bothered. Of course. And also just the like charming superficial glibness of it all. Like he ticks so many boxes. Savile, he loves being alone. That's the thing. And all of this like eccentricity and yet just being this weird person, this other, is all completely constructed because he wants to be alone. And he did that by playing on the superstition of the minors too.

And this is the first example we've got this week of him purposefully setting himself apart because he wanted other people to see him as odd and even, in this particular case, supernatural. And miners are superstitious people. I mean, you would be too if you spent your entire working day underground where your life was placed squarely in the hands of those around you and by the grace of the coal gods. And Savile pounced on the magical thinking that hung in the air. One day he showed up at work in his best suit, made it look as if he had no time to get changed, and went down into the pit in his suit. I mean, can you just imagine the other miner's reaction to this?

This mind-boggling. It's exactly what you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And once he got to his hole-in-the-wall post, Savile took off all of his clothes and worked his shift naked. When his time was up, he put his clothes, meaning his fucking suit, back on and washed the soot off his face and his hands. So when he got back into the light of day, it looked as if he was completely clean. The other miners, of course, absolutely hated this. They kept away from Savile, thinking that only a witch could return to the surface completely clean after hours underground. Savile, having proved the

point that he was weird and other, was extremely pleased with himself and told this story for the rest of his life. Obviously, we don't know if that actually happened. We have no way of proving it. But the fact that he is telling that story, even if it didn't happen, kind of proves the same point. And I also think that had Savile not gone on to become who he was, that could potentially be quite funny. That is quite a funny story.

Right, exactly. But knowing who Savile is, obviously, I'm just like, if it was like your granddad, I'd be like, that's historical. No, Savile doesn't get to be funny. So fuck you. Savile's mining career was cut short when he was caught in a tunnel collapse that injured his back significantly and left him with little hope of being fully mobile again. Or at least that's the way he tells it. Saville claimed that he was down the mines for seven years. But we don't actually know if that's true.

There's no official record of the accidental tunnel collapse that he alleged he was involved in. But back then, one miner was killed every six hours. So it's pretty unlikely that a non-fatal tunnel collapse would have battered any eyelids or warranted a report of any kind. If you read In Plain Sight, which I do recommend you do because it's actually very annoying how interesting Savile's early life is, there's a good few chapters on this coal mining thing and there's just a lot of timeline things that don't really

make sense. But basically, no one's really sure how long he was down the mines for, no one's sure which ones he was in, and some people think that he was using fake names. It's unclear. And Savile himself told a lot of different stories of when this accident happened. He claimed that the accident left him wearing a steel boned corset and walking around on two sticks. He said that it took him three full years to recover, so that he was, you know, walking upright on two legs with no sticks but also he was on camera doing an extremely long cycle ride around Britain less than three years after he claimed the accident happened so both can't be true so he's telling stories like that's the point that we need to understand so the conscripted coal miners were often referred to as the Bevan boys and a guy

called Warwick Taylor author of a book called the Bevan boys cast doubt on whether Savile was ever really down the pit at all. No one knows how many years he did, but a lot of his locations, timelines and stories don't add up. Fabrication for the purpose of diversion would remain Savile's personal brand for the rest of his life. The war may have meant long hours underground, but it also meant a dearth of men, which young Jimmy Savile claimed to have taken full advantage of. Even before his coal mining days, according to Jimmy Savile, he claims that he lost his virginity at 12 years old to a 20-year-old woman. Again, we just don't know if this is true. Yeah, it's the 30s. Who the fuck knows what was happening in the 30s?

We have no idea if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. No, nor would I. So Jimmy Savile says that he knew this 20-year-old woman from a local dance hall where she worked in the box office. And his encounter with her, and one other sexual experience he had with another older woman on a train, taught him, quote, the 90% you can't see is just as important as the 10% you can. Vomit, vomit.

I think it is important to sort of consider, I mean, men still talk about women that way, but it was everyone all the time was making comments like that. Like even in the book, he's talking to Dan Davis and he's like, oh, well, when women got the pill, everything changed. They didn't want to be used as ashtrays anymore. Which like is a shocking thing now. But I feel like a lot of people were talking like that in 30s, 40s, 50s.

So yeah, it's disgusting and he really means it. But everyone was talking like that about women. So by 1943, Savile had figured out that playing music made you popular with just about everyone. He DJed his first party in Otley at just 18 years old. He also ran a scrap metal business to pay the bills. This would lead to an early career in dance halls. And that's the DJing, not the scrap metalling, which Jimmy later described in one of his books. And he actually wrote a few books.

But the most revealing one, by far far was called God'll Fix It, meant to be a clear illustration of his Catholic belief system. He wrote in his years in the dance halls, quote, in my early years, I can tell you, I did a lot of things that need a bit of forgiveness. I was in a business that was fraught with temptations. Temptations of the flesh are all about. So in my early days, I was a great abuser of things and bodies and people. He's literally telling everyone. Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. He literally says it. He literally says it and nothing happens. He literally writes it in a book about his belief in God and no one is like, oh, something not right. Dance halls are a difficult thing to describe, but at the same time kind of do exactly what they say on the tin. They were an

absolute staple of post-war Britain. It was the second biggest industry after cinema and 200 million people went to dance halls annually. I actually think it's a really sad thing that we've lost in British culture social dancing yeah I just feel like it died with that generation though didn't it when they stopped being able to dance anymore my grandma used to go and jive every Saturday night she talks about it all the time that's so cute I know she was like I was so good I was so good at it now everyone's just into fucking like I don't know dogging and fisting and can't say drugs. I keep like, I really want to learn how to swing dance, but I'm too scared to go on my own.

There you go. Open invitation to anyone in the London area who would like to go swing dancing with Hannah. Like, oh my God, I'm just going to get murdered. I really do want to go. I do want to go. I think swing patrol, you don't have to go with a partner, but like, I just would rather.

Anyway, dance halls in the olden days had live bands. Savile said that he had stood in as a percussionist when he was a kid, but that's exactly the sort of thing he would say. Anyway, he felt right at home on the dance hall stage. He was good at it. He knew what the public wanted. And as the bands were replaced by turntables and music halls up and down the country, Jimmy Savile was right there with it.

Constantly invested in making a spectacle of himself, and still with access to scrap metal, he bought himself a Bentley and stuck a Rolls-Royce radiator on the grill. Ostentatious shows like this meant that people assumed he was on the financial fiddle, pocketing money from the dance halls he managed, which was certainly true, but according to his contemporaries, nobody was really worried about him being around young girls. But around them he was. Dance about him being around young girls. But around

them he was. Dance halls were totally full of them. Another guy called Jimmy, who frequented the Plaza in Manchester, which was run by Savile for a while, commented, we didn't have the word paedophile in them days. We had the word weirdo. And Savile was a weirdo. He always had the Bobby Sox girls, the young girls in his cars. He'd always pull up with the girls in his car. And going home, he'd always have the girls in his car. And I've also seen a lot of commentary that's in the vein of like, in the 50s and 60s, the term teenager wasn't as present as it is today. And I can kind of believe that.

They just sort of say that like there were people who wore children's clothes and there were people who wore adult clothes. And that was kind of it. But it's also an attitude you will often hear when discussing historical cases of sexual abuse. You'll just get this narrative, it was a different culture then and no one minded adult men sleeping with 14 year old girls, not even the 14 year old girls. And I just find it difficult to believe that there was ever a culture where a fully grown man could like grab a 13 year old girl, even a 12 year old girl and grope her and no one had a problem with that. Like, I don't think it's an excuse. No, it's definitely not an

excuse. I just wonder if it was obviously, you know, we're talking 50s, 60s, it was such a like patriarchal society where the man was at the core of everything, deciding everything, deciding even down to like morality, like what was acceptable, deciding legalities. And I wonder if, you know, we were talking, God, what case was it where we were like, who stands to benefit from all this rampant abuse that's taking place? And here, it's the men. And it's like, that's the closest I can imagine to why it was culturally acceptable or culturally looked over. Because the people doing it were the people who wanted to be doing it and they were the people who decided what was right and wrong. Exactly. But obviously no excuse at all and it's not like it was well a 14 year old back then is markedly different to a 14

year old now. No that's not what we're saying but I can imagine a situation. So Jimmy managed dance halls all over the north of England. He was sacked from a couple of them for sneaking more out of the till than he should have, but never for sexual misconduct. Even though we know for a fact that the earliest incidents of sexual abuse recorded by police were logged in 1955. So like, they had a lot of fucking time to like be on to Jimmy Savile. The first recorded, like, sexual abuse or sexual incident was logged in 1955, when he was managing the Plaza in Manchester. Savile didn't only have a reputation as a weirdo. In his own story, he was a violent and feared weirdo. In one of the only candid moments in Louis Theroux's first documentary on Savile,

he doesn't know that he's being filmed. And Savile talks gleefully about how he would deal with those who crossed him during his dance hall management days. And this is what he said, quote, Tied them up, put them down in the boiler house until I was ready for them. They'd plead to get out.

Nobody ever used to get out of my place. I was judge, jury and executioner. He's a children's TV presenter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, watch the Louis Theroux, Jimmy Savile documentaries. I personally don't think I can ever look at Jimmy Savile's fucking face again. But like, it's the only part of that documentary where you can tell it's not an act. And obviously, Louis Theroux did catch some heat when those documentaries came out didn't he well he had to do a redo and he even he even

in the first documentary he like broaches the like pedophile rumors with savile in the car and savile's just like nope and louis like I feel like an idiot for not digging into that. Like I should have known and I didn't. Absolutely. And this is why when we say about how Jimmy Savile manipulated a lot of people but pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, I would say that Louis Theroux is one of the most like intuitive interviewers that is working. And even he didn't spot what Savile was.

It's mind-blowing. So in his own tale, so Jimmy's own tale, it was in the clubs that he honed his skill at manipulating important people into letting him do what he wanted. So basically if he was in trouble for something or like the police came to him with anything this is what he would say. He'd say, you do know that your 16-year-old daughter comes in here, don't you? Would you rather she was in here safe with me or being preyed on by all the other scumbags and slags? This narrative obviously implies that Savile, the skinny, blonde, wispy was at the time, was a major player in the Manchester underworld, which undoubtedly dance halls were a big part of.

But again, according to the more believable and credible contemporaries, no one was even remotely bothered by Savile. He wasn't a hard man. Everyone thought he was gay. And that's one of the reasons no one worried about him spending so much time around young girls. Which, again, deliberate. Deliberate.

It's all so deliberate. People thought he was gay or asexual or all of those things. He never married, he lived with his mum, blah-ba-dee-blah-ba-dee-blah. All a total front. Whilst in Manchester and becoming a man that most people knew, Savile, having been on camera before due to his outlandish cycling exploits, found himself at Granada Studios. They were looking for someone in touch with the youth

who could review children's books for them on television. Savile jumped at the chance to appear on a weekly children's show. But his initial television career didn't last very long. He was asked to leave the programme when he gave the following review live on TV. I want to expose a book. It's for children and it's dreadful. There's this girl who's well underage and she takes up with a geezer who's yonks old and eventually they schlep off together.

I don't think it's a good thing because I don't think an underage girl should be exhorted by her parents to strike up a relationship with a guy five, six, seven times older than she is. And what was the children's book this review was for? Peter Pan. Fucking hell.

He says it on live TV in the fucking like, I don't even know when this is, like the 40s or some shit, like maybe the 50s. It must have been the 50s actually, early 50s. It just makes me want to scream. It really does. It also makes me want to like start a new segment where we write reviews for children's books as if we were Jimmy Savile and the other one can guess what it is. Fucking hell. Okay, I'll do it in under the duvet. Amazing, so shall I. So, we cannot include, even in this two-parter, every example where Jimmy Savile seemed to take an enormous amount of pleasure

in coming so close to revealing his true self to the public. But this one is a very perfect example. He does it all the time. As you say, he tells people what he's doing all the time, and he loves it. Because, yeah, after, like, all of this kind of stuff happened, like this particular, like, book thing, he continued to make TV appearances.

In 1958, Savile landed the job that would eventually lead to the fame he had always craved. He started DJing on Radio Luxembourg. Just like us bedroom DJs, he started it as a side gig, but it eventually became his full-time hustle. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness,

and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance,

but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Welcome back. This next little segment of the show is going to be a real crash course

in British culture for all of our international listeners. In the black and white times, basically the only radio you could get was the BBC. Almost a Radio Pyongyang situation. There was literally nothing else. There were several different stations,

but they were all BBC really. Then there were like local radio stations, but in terms of like national radio stations, the BBC was the be all and end all. The BBC has since done a lot to rework its image, but in the 50s and 60s, it was very much a lie back and think of England, stiff upper lip, classical music and woman's hour type stuff. But the kids still needed their beats and rhythms. So enter pirate radio, which I asked my mum about. And this is what she said. My mum described pirate radio as, this is a direct quote, Karen Maguire, cool dudes like Tony Blackburn went offshore to play banging tunes.

Karen, I love it. She's a meme and I don't know how to explain what a Karen is to her. So if you don't know who Tony Blackburn is, don't worry about it. Yeah, I don't know who Tony Blackburn is. Don't worry about it. Good, I won't. Your life will not be improved in any way by knowing who Tony Blackburn is. Excellent.

So essentially, a loophole in maritime law meant that vessels just three miles off the coast of the UK were in international waters and therefore did not have to comply to the Biebs fascist regime. So they could play whatever they wanted and they didn't have to pay for it. Radio Caroline and Radio London, also known as Big L, were the first pirate stations. They were commercial enterprises broadcasting current pop music with no license on a frequency they had no right to be on and they didn't pay a penny of tax and legally no one could fucking touch them and that my friends is punk as fuck i love it i love it so much so radio luxembourg although often associated with pirate radio stations was not

in fact on a rocky boat it was actually based in luxembourg and broadcast to the UK for over 60 years. Isn't that mad? I had no idea. That is mad. There's some radio station in Luxembourg. I just thought Radio Luxembourg is just a fucking edgy name and they're just like calling it that for jokes. But no, actually based in Luxembourg. So Savoy would go on to host many shows on Radio Luxembourg. The most famous being the Teen and Twenty Disc Club. He also had

his own pop column in People magazine. So to give you an idea of just how big the listenership was, including, of course, Karen, Hannah's mum, Radio Luxembourg had its own fan magazine called Fab 208, which was, of course, the frequency it was releasing on. And in 1962, the band B Bumble and the Stingers, single nut rocker, entered the top 10 charts without a single play on national BBC radio. So this gives you an idea of not only the listenership of Radio Luxembourg, but also its power, culturally speaking. I think that's something that I probably hadn't considered,

which is probably going to upset any radio DJs listening, and I know there's at least one, Yinka Bikini. I hadn't considered that, like, obviously radio DJs hold an enormous amount of power because they control what goes on the airways and therefore what people listen to, what they like and what they will buy. Like, I hadn't considered that. Definitely back then. But now I would say it's obviously much more like

the corporation just gets paid to play the music. Well, I don't know if they did because there was a big scandal called Payola where people were paying for radio listens and it was this huge thing. I don't know if you're allowed to anymore. Oh, I thought the whole thing of radio was like the DJs don't actually pick anything and they just get told what to play. Oh, I'm sure they do get told what to play.

I think there's like an approved list, but certainly on the BBC, payment for plays is not allowed, allegedly. Interesting, interesting. We're learning so much, guys. Let's keep going. So Saville was just as successful as Radio Luxembourg. He was the first DJ to ever be photographed with Elvis himself. An honour which, like his other achievements, he would never fucking shut up about. And it was at Radio Luxembourg that Saville was bestowed yet another honour.

His first run-in with the Royals. The Royals are all over fucking Saville and everyone's forgotten about it but they were all over him all the time. Every event, every opening, there's at least one royal there. Absolutely vile. Why? Is it because they know what he is and they're like,

delicious, let's get in because we're all in it? He's like, oh, one of us, one of us. Someone get him on the phone with Prince Andrew. Or again, it's just that them pandering to like this guy who was like from the north and like working class and they were like yeah look at us we're so normal with this guy he's gonna be the bridge between us and like the people or whatever i don't fucking know but anyway they fucking loved him and radio luxembourg donated some of its proceeds to the national playing fields association whose

patron just so happened to be Prince Philip. Prince Philip was impressed with Savile's style. And apparently, after this, the two remained pals. Which, well, you know, tells you everything you need to know, even if you want to just say that the royals were completely hoodwinked by Jimmy Savile. It shows you the calibre of manipulation that Jimmy Savile was able to implement. So whether anyone has ever been pals with Philip is just as much of a medical mystery as to how Prince Philip managed to stay alive for so long. But it does seem that Savile was also close to

Lord Louis Mountbatten, who up until his assassination by the IRA in 1979, was heralded by many as being the man who held the keys to the firm. And if you don't know what we're talking about, Prince Philip and all of that used to call, or well, he's dead now, so I don't know if anyone still does, the royal family, the firm, which I hate. When Philip died, everyone was like, oh, like Philip called it the firm.

No, everyone called it the firm. Yeah. And until Lord Mountbatten died, he was very much the gatekeeper. Yep. And Mountbatten would semi-regularly cut the ribbons at events, then slope off, allowing his chum, Jimmy Savile, to handle the press for him. This is how much Savile was in it with the royals, that they are like approving him to handle events

so that they can fucking leave he's the common touch so then Lord Mountbatten can just fuck off and smoke a zoot or whatever he was doing I don't know and I think this is the thing that when we say that Jimmy Savile's influence and power stretched all the way to the top it's not hyperbolic we literally mean that literally to the head of state. Yeah. So now we've covered Mountbatten, that takes us up to the early 60s, where TV history was about to be made. Not by the BBC, actually by their rival station, ITV. In 1963, ITV launched Ready Steady Go, which was a pop music programme that British television had never seen the likes of before. I thought you were going to say Ready Steady Cook

and I was like, no, not that show, I loved it. Don't tell me Jimmy was in that. No, Jimmy, I can promise you that Jimmy Savile never went anywhere near Ready Steady Cook. Actually, I can't promise you that at all. I don't know, I don't think so. But the BBC obviously couldn't let ITV win

so they came up with a competing concept. And so Top of the Pops was born. It's difficult to say how seminal Top of the Pops is. Everyone watched it every Thursday. My mum said she was like, if the phone hadn't rung before Top of the Pops on a Thursday, you weren't going out that weekend because no one was asking you. Nothing happened after Top of the Pops. It really was like the main line to pop

culture that doesn't really have a comparable thing today because everything is too everything. Like there's too much of like, it really was like a main line is the only way I can describe it. Top of the Pops had enormous power. It could literally make you a star. And if you weren't a musician, you could still queue up outside Broadcasting House and try and get into the studio audience that was usually around 250 people. So you had a good shot. The programme ran for over 50 years. That's success by anyone's standards. I mean, that's like your grandma watched it and then we were still watching it when we were teenagers. Yeah, I was asking the office today. Jake, who's extremely young, was like, I know it was on at Christmas. And I was like, oh my God. Absolute child fetus. Do you remember when Reggie Yates and Fern Cotton used to do it? I have to admit, I didn't watch it a lot. What? I think I

maybe watched it a few times, which is why I didn't want to implicate myself in this, which was why I was like, your grandma watched it and then you watched it. Yeah, I watched the shit out of Top of the Pops. It doesn't even run at Christmas anymore. It's completely died of death. Oh, and guess who presented the very first episode of Top of the Pops that aired on New Year's Day 1964? Was it Jimmy Savile? It was Jimmy Shitbag Savile. Although the higher-ups at the BBC held disdain for Savile's shell suits,

gold jewellery and general working-class demeanour, they couldn't argue that he wasn't box office. Now we can't tell you, even in this two-parter behemoth series of episodes, about every person that Jimmy Savile abused. We can't even tell you how many he abused on BBC property, which will become very important next week. But we are about to tell you a story that came to light in 2012. It undoubtedly happened to hundreds of others in different forms. This is Mary's story, and Mary isn't her real name, and it is the story as printed in Dan Davis's book, In Plain Sight. Saville took Mary's virginity in 1966, when she was just 15 years old

and only just starting puberty. So very much a child by anybody's standards. Mary had had a crush on Savile after seeing him at a dance hall event. She drew a picture of him and posted it to him, and when he didn't respond, she tracked him down in person. She explained that she was sad not to have heard from him, and then adult 40-year-old man Jimmy Savile said, I didn't know what you looked like then. The two then exchanged numbers, and Savile began to ring Mary and invited the 15-year-old girl to his flat.

She arrived on one occasion having changed out of her school uniform at the train station, much to Savile's disappointment, who was lying in bed waiting for her. He told Mary to put her uniform back on, and here are Mary's words. He beckoned me to the bed. I was still clothed, but he was all over me. When he got on top, I felt him start to slip his penis in. I said no, no, but he said it was okay. It was only his thumb. He said we wouldn't go all the way until I was 16, but he was having sex with me. I thought I loved him, and I wanted to please him. Saville abused Mary in front of his friends on numerous occasions and once took a call from his mother in the middle of it.

Mary's parents didn't seem to mind. They even had him over for dinner. They were too busy looking at his Rolls Royce to notice Saville groping their daughter right in front of them. And as soon as Mary turned 18, Jimmy Savile dumped her. 1966 began the most prolific sex abuse decade of Savile's life. He was rich and famous in a way that it's almost impossible to understand now. He was cross-class, cross-generation, cross-culture even.

And that is why he managed to abuse his power so totally. He was the BBC's secret weapon. Untouchable. And that is why he managed to abuse his power so totally. He was the BBC's secret weapon. Untouchable. And we know that's true. Here's an example. In Mary's case, her parents were told what was going on after a letter from Savile was intercepted by another set of more concerned parents.

And Mary's mum and dad simply didn't believe that it was possible for someone as famous and as kind as Jimmy National Treasure Savile to be raping their teenage daughter. mum and dad simply didn't believe that it was possible for someone as famous and as kind as Jimmy National Treasure Savile to be raping their teenage daughter. Again, they get literally told what is happening. He's written an explicit letter which is intercepted by other adults addressed to their teenage daughter. And they're like, no, couldn't possibly. It's baffling because it's like, is it that you don't believe that older men are interested in young girls because they say, you know, we didn't even have the word pedophile? I can't believe that that's the case. Is it that you believe that you're so hoodwinked by this man

that you believe he could never do it? Or is it that you're so worried about like raising concerns about a man who has this much power? Because we cannot stress enough how powerful Jimmy Southall was and how influential or some combination of the three. But it's still, thinking about it with today's mindset, it's baffling. So we know why Mary's parents thought of Savile as famous, that seems obvious. But why did they think of him as kind? It's not a word you'd attribute to radio DJs in general. I'm sure most of them are kind, but you're not like,

oh, what a kind radio DJ. It's not something that springs to mind. But the fact is, the second pillar of Savile's manipulation of the nation was his prolific charity work. No one did more or raised more money than Savile. It's what got him his knighthood.

He used his fundraising and volunteering as a cloak to disguise what an abominable piece of shit he was. He also used it to gain access to vulnerable people who he knew no one would believe if they told the truth. The first institution that Savile was looked to as a god

was the Leeds General Infirmary, and we have first-hand testimony of him being looked to as a god because that is where my mum did her nurse training, and she said it was absolutely mental. Just like this absolute, like, they literally talked about him like he was Jesus. That's because he didn't only perform stunts to raise money for the hospital. So he would do stuff like run from Land's End to John O'Groats and he would do shifts down coal mines and blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. Jimmy Savile also worked at Leeds General Infirmary as a hospital porter, voluntarily for free. And according to head porter Charles Hollinghan, Saville would work enormously long shifts in a personalised white coat. He often worked casualty on a Saturday, the busiest possible time. Was it to be a saint and help out when the team needed it most? Or was it because he knew that all of the staff, doctors and nurses alike, would be far too busy to keep tabs on him, who he was with or what he was doing. In later years, abuse stories from Leeds Infirmary,

for reasons that we will come on to in next week's episode, came pouring in. But some were reported as early as 1965. There's even a bit in one of the Louis documentaries where a hospital challenges Jimmy and they end up settling out of court. Louis through sort of questioning him about that. So, you know, reports were made and sometimes actions were taken, but nothing of significance. It was all just paid off and he would just be like, oh, well, I've raised all of that money for you. So, yeah. So basically, although these reports happened and maybe some cracks were starting to show,

nothing was done. Not by police, not by hospital administration, no one. Jimmy Savile was even given a flat inside the hospital. No one in their right mind optionally sleeps in a hospital. But again, this bizarre decision went totally unquestioned. Why are there even flats in hospitals? That makes no sense. I mean, for doctors, for nurses, maybe for like international people. I don't fucking know. Like, but why was one being given to a fucking DJ? I do not understand. This is the thing. Like he is not a medical professional.

He has no medical experience, but they're thing, like he is not a medical professional. He has no medical experience, but they're like, sure, you can just live here. But again, that's the manipulation, isn't it? Because he was raising so much money for these places that who was going to say no to him? And he knew, he knew. That's it. Not that I'm excusing it. I'm saying that's just the reason clearly how he was able to manipulate these people.

So Charles Hollingham, that head Porterby just told you about, was later appointed as the secretary of a firm that dealt with Savile's earnings. His salary was upwards of £300,000 in today's money. So it's hardly surprising that Charles only had good things to say about Savile. And this is the thing about Savile that will become quite a running theme. Savile was incredibly good at placing his cronies exactly where he needed them in order to prop open the doors of institutions full of vulnerable people that he could abuse. He's a kingmaker. That's Savile's whole vibe.

Exactly. Another hospital Savile favoured is the birthplace of the Paralympics, Buckinghamshire's Stoke Mandeville Hospital. And you know, it's really horrible, but now I cannot hear the words Stoke Mandeville without just feeling a bit sick. Yeah, me too. Savile raised £10 million in three years to open what is now the National Spinal Injury Centre.

It was opened in all of its refurbished glory in 1983 by Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Saville took great pleasure in telling Dan Davis how he got everyone from the Governor of the Bank of England to the Duke of Edinburgh working for him in the drive to build the centre. And he added, quote, you've got to be a bit of a con man to make it work. Saville had volunteered at Stoke Manderfield since 1965.

And just like the Leeds General Infirmary, he had two offices and a flat in the hospital where he would often stay. Although part of his sort of press demeanour was like, oh, I live with my mum. In reality, he can't have been living with her in any meaningful sense because he has flats in two hospitals and a caravan that he lived in all the time as well. He didn't live with his mum. It just keeps him in that sort of the common man, the common touch thing in place. So now we know that there have been 22 sexual abuse offensives recorded during the time that he volunteered at Stoke Mandeville. And we know that those sexual offences included Savile molesting girls who were paralysed from the waist down. One survivor account comes from Sherry Wheatcroft, who is now an extremely talented painter, actually. Sherry was a patron at Stoke Mandeville in 1973, after she'd severely burned her hands.

As she sat on her bed on the ward after surgery, with her hands all bandaged up, Savile ran past her window, saw her, saw that she was alone and then changed his course. He climbed through her window and grabbed her by the face and then stuck his tongue down her throat and this assault was punctuated by Savile saying, you've been a naughty girl haven't you? Sherry describes this tirade as jabbering and this frenzied repetition was followed by extremely personal details about Sherry's health that could only have come from her head surgeon or from someone reading her medical records. So what that means is that Savile had researched her, he had access to her private medical records,

he researched her, he knew where she was, he knew that she would have been alone and he knew that she would be unable to use her hands to fight him off. I just don't even know what to say. He is the epitome of an opportunistic sexual offender. And imagine one of those loose in like a town where there's still police about, there's still like scrutiny, there's still doors that people can fucking lock. It's like take all of those things away and let that predator loose. This is Jimmy Savile. He's like a fucking snake in a cage full of baby chickens and he's just free to do whatever he wants. It is mortifying.

So the final place we're going to have a look at this week where Jimmy Savile had unbelievable influence is the hospital for the criminally insane, the highest security psychiatric hospital in the British Isles, Broadmoor. Another name place that sends chills up my spine. Jimmy Savile, TV personality, and in no way a medical professional,

had a set of keys to the women's ward at Broadmoor. And he was allowed to just wander around. I just, I don't know what. In what universe is that okay? Like, he's just a celebrity person who's just, oh, you're on top of the pops. Have access to these incredibly vulnerable, incredibly ill people. But of course, that's why he picks them, because he knows that nobody is going to believe an inpatient of Broadmoor. Exactly. One patient at Broadmoor described that Savile would

watch the female patients being bathed and no one would say anything. He would just drop in. I don't have enough what the fucks to fill this fucking paragraph, so I'm just going to keep going. So Savile even managed to wangle himself a title at Broadmoor of Honorary Assistant Entertainment Officer. He would hold concerts and a regular disco night. He loved telling people how chummy he was with Ronnie Cray of the fucking Cray Twins. He would say things like ain't nobody to mess with me because if I complain to Ron, that would be it. I was the man leaning on the gate as far as Ron was concerned and I could make life easy or hard for him. And that's really poignant because like Ronnie Cray is probably one of the most famously, certainly at that time, one of the most famously dangerous men in British

history. Like he's a bit of an icon in that way. And what Jimmy's doing by saying stuff like that in the press and in interviews is like, I'm so tough, Ronnie Cray listens to me. I mean, he is just one of the purest narcissists we've ever come across on this show. So Rampton Secure Hospital was built as an overflow hospital for Broadmoor and Saville, of course, also frequented there. He would take patients out for rides in his car and out for ice cream. There was a report made on these little outings,

but it didn't mention that Saville's caravan was parked in the Rampton ground for quite some time, and it certainly didn't mention the great number of female patients that staff witnessed Saville taking off to his caravan. No caravans. Ever. No caravans. Why does there need to be a fucking caravan there? What's happening? I just don't understand why no one would question why a TV personality would park a caravan in the grounds of a mental hospital.

I don't know. He has a house in which he lives. It is absolutely mind-boggling how this was allowed to happen. I was going to say, do you ever wonder if Jimmy Savile ever looked around and thought, how am I getting away with this? Like, how the fuck are these people letting me do this? Oh, I know he did. I mean, he's a narcissist, so he would have been like, I'm so good. That's what I was going to say. I was going to say, did you ever think that? But then, of course, he's a narcissist, so he would just think, of course they would let me do this. Yeah, exactly. Literally, how was this allowed to

happen? Well, when it comes to Broadmoor, the how comes in the shape of a guy called Alan Franey, who ran Broadmoor for most of the 90s. Franey and Saville were long-term friends. They ran marathons together, and Franey even appears in a tribute to Saville on the TV show, This Is Your Life. Franey was working at the Leeds Savile on the TV show This Is Your Life. Franey was working at the Leeds General Infirmary before he was appointed as the general manager of Broadmoor at the insistence of Savile. And Savile was a member of London's most boring members club, the Athenaeum. Savile had many a meeting there and he appointed friendlies wherever he could to keep the hospital ward keys in his hands and his access to vulnerable people totally unfettered. And as if that weren't enough, Edwina Currie, of all people, former minister for

health, appointed Saville to a government task force set on improving psychiatric facilities at Broadmoor. He's a TV and radio personality. Why is he on a government task force? That's absolutely outrageous. What the fuck does he know about psychiatric health? Mate, I don't know. What the fuck? Edwina, what the fuck? Like, stop it. Stop it.

I know you had an affair with John Major and that proves like how little fucking judgment you have. But this? For our non-British listeners, John Major was our prime minister. That was a very funny joke, if you didn't know. Edwina Curry and Alan Franey both appear in documentaries about Jimmy Savile. And they both claim that when they showed up, Jimmy was just part of the wallpaper at Broadmoor.

They weren't the ones that appointed him. He was just there and he already had keys and no one challenged it. He was just there before everyone got there, apparently. And even the idea of people having such bad judgment as to give this man keys. Why was nobody saying, isn't it weird that a man who, this isn't his profession, this isn't his expertise,

he isn't being paid to be here, wants to spend this much time hanging around in Broadmoor? Exactly. Nobody seems to have wondered why a totally unqualified and let's face it, the most obvious total fucking creep of all time wanted keys to psych patients' bedrooms. The Minister for Health didn't see a problem with that. Policy actually became a big part of Savile's existence. Again, cannot impress how famous he was. And I had to include this because this is absolutely fucking batshit. Savile was recruited by Myra Hindley's biggest fan, Lord Longford, onto a commission

that also included Cliff Richard for some reason, to clean up the British media whilst keeping Soho's red light district open and proving that adult magazines did no harm to the nation or its young minds. Longford, what are you doing, man? I know he's always been a bit rogue, but it's just, it's a very odd thing. I'm baffled by the entirety of the British fucking British society as a whole. Why is Cliff Richard on like a porn panel? Like, what the fuck?

Saville called this porn panel, quote, a worthy and well-meaning attempt to sanctify Sodom before it's too late. And he would know all about that, wouldn't he? But amongst his politics and his charity work, Savile still found time to appear on TV. And in 1973, the Department of Environment got obsessed with everyone wearing the relatively new seatbelt in cars. And so hired man of the people, Jimmy Savile, to front a campaign. The budget for this campaign was £750,000,

which in the 70s could have bought you the fucking West Wing of Buckingham Palace. Three quarters of a million pounds in the 70s. What the fuck? Yeah, it's fucking madness. It's a mad amount of money. Even for TV budgets, that is a mad amount of money. They really cared about seatbelts, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I guess like we would need to understand their cost benefit analysis by looking at how many pounds non-seatbelt, whereas calls the NHS every single year or something, I don't know. But fine, that's what happened. And the slogan of the seatbelt campaign was

clunk, click every trip. Catchy, isn't it? So catchy. And the brains at the BBC turned this into a chat show entitled clunk, click. Really earning that license fee money, aren't they? Yeah, fucking just finger on the pulse kind of programming. So this program was hosted, of course, by Jimmy Savile, surrounded by young girls on beanbags. And on one occasion, he was even joined by equally prolific pedo, Gary Glitter. This show was on BBC One, and it didn't run for very long, less than a year in fact. Savile struggled to carry the show on his own and couldn't help making jokes about the young girls surrounding him ripping his trousers

off. After Clunk Click died a death, it was replaced with a TV show that would solidify Savile's household name status forever. Burned into the retinas of every British person for years to come. Inspired by Savile's charity work and how he had been fixing it for so many people for so many years, big-time BBC producer Bill Cotton suggested a programme where Jim helped people, read children, fulfil their dreams on camera. And that programme was the famous Jim'll Fix It. The first episode saw a girl swim with dolphins at Windsor Safari Park. Essentially, the idea was that children would write into the show what their greatest wish was, and then Savile would make it happen. Like an all-season Santa Claus.

But rapey. But rapey, yeah. It's kind of like Make-A-Wish, but without dying. And this show ran for 20 years. Fuck's sake. And we have to remember that by this stage in our story, Jimmy Savile is almost 50 years old. And we are nowhere near done yet. But you will have to come back next week for part two

where we will tell you all about how Savile infiltrated a girls' school and a children's home. We're going to cover his death, his undoing, and whether he really did fuck dead bodies. But to find out, you're going to have to come back next week for episode 201. There you go, that is part one of Jimmy Savile, The Nation's Shame.

Well done for getting through it. And here we are. Here we are. Fucking hell. I actually feel, like, shaken by that. Me too. It's a lot. Well done, everybody. We got through it together. We've got one more part to get through next week. And if you are like, I just can't wait that long. I need some

more Red Handed, then head on over to patreon.com slash red handed right now. We're for $5 and up immediately after you listen to this show. And if you're a patron, you could be listening to it a day early and ad free. You can come join us under the duvet for some various chat here are some people who back in october did become patrons so thank you very much to evelyn boyer grace dunn lindsey hanselman jennifer commander lindsey little amy boatman ali harwood la vie love love levine laverne it was there it was there it was on the tip of my tongue Amy Boatman, Ali Harwood, LaVe, LaVe, LaVe, LaVeen? Laverne. Laverne.

It was there. It was there. It was on the tip of my tongue. The best one is still, it's Denise. Denzies? Denza? Chloe,

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Angela Facer. Helen Neville. Safa Khan. Sarah Chapman. Samantha Ladina. Katina Rivera. Emily Letts. Sophie.

Anna Rowe. Bethany Bowman. Amelia Lewis. Laura Pipe. Claire T. Jade Burnett. Burnett, sorry. Rachel Grant.

Mariella Klein. Ellie. Emily Popple. Kelly Marie Gallagher. I think I know you, Kelly Marie. Josie Garmory. And then a Kelly Gallagher, not Kelly Marie Gallagher. Emma Viena. Elizabeth Gordon.

Lilith Johnston. Elizabeth Sutcliffe. Christiana Knight. Gabriella Ralph. Jamie Lawrence. Catherine Steele. Beth Merci... I'm sorry. And Natalie Hearn.

Thank you all so much. We really appreciate it. You've changed all of our lives. Thank you very much. And we will see you next week. See you for part two. Bye. Bye. So So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader.

Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you.

A message from the Ontario PC Party. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.