Speaker 1: All Media, Hey everybody, Robert Here and the International Academy
Speaker 1: of Digital Arts and Sciences have announced that three different
Speaker 1: Cool Zone media shows have been nominated for awards at
Speaker 1: the thirtieth annual Webby Awards. You can vote on these
Speaker 1: now if you just google the name of the podcast
Speaker 1: and the category. Behind the Bastards has been nominated in
Speaker 1: the Experimental and Innovation Podcasts category. It Could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is in the News and Politics Podcasts category, and James
Speaker 1: Stout's mini series Migrating to America A Dream Worth Dying
Speaker 1: For has been nominated in the Podcasts Documentary category. And
Speaker 1: you can find links to vote for each of these
Speaker 1: podcasts in the episode description and in the posts on
Speaker 1: social media for episodes that It Could Happen Here and
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, Thank You, Welcome pod. Behind the Bastard's
Speaker 1: cast Robert Evans with Courtney Kosak and Sophie Lichterman. How
Speaker 1: Everyone be?
Speaker 2: We are good?
Speaker 1: Is that good?
Speaker 3: Sophie?
Speaker 1: Is that to get intrail?
Speaker 4: I liked it. I just gave Anderson my dog, like
Speaker 4: a really big treat and she's enjoying it, which makes
Speaker 4: me happy.
Speaker 1: Good good. I just scarfed a bunch of trail mix. Uh,
Speaker 1: I thought for you tidied up slightly upstairs? Hey, Courney,
Speaker 1: what's we're now recording part two?
Speaker 4: What's that cute thing behind you?
Speaker 5: This?
Speaker 2: This is my book cover our Girl Gone Wild?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do you want to tell the audience about it
Speaker 1: a little before? We talked about a pedophile more?
Speaker 2: Well, hopefully you listen to the first episode, but it
Speaker 2: if that would be weird.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's called Girl Gone Wild. It's about when I
Speaker 5: sold t shirts on the Girls Gone Wild tour. It's
Speaker 5: about acting in independent films. It's basically about learning about
Speaker 5: what society thinks of women, which is a lot like
Speaker 5: this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, So well, I guess let's get back
Speaker 1: into it, shall we.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when we left off, Jimmy had just mate tried
Speaker 1: his hand, or at least his legs, at becoming a
Speaker 1: professional cyclist and found out that he wasn't quite good
Speaker 1: enough for that, but he was really good at being
Speaker 1: a weirdo, and that got him a gig commentating for
Speaker 1: bicycle races. Right, So his first proper media job was
Speaker 1: calling races for the Daily Express, because that was the
Speaker 1: newspaper that was funding the first tour of Britain race
Speaker 1: Back in the day, newspapers used to have money and
Speaker 1: they would like fund or support stuff like big races
Speaker 1: in the like for a while. Since newspapers worked that way,
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 2: Like a pain laugh. That was like a was like
Speaker 2: a triggered cackle.
Speaker 1: It was like yeah, but it wasn't all good because
Speaker 1: clearly that's how Jimmy Savile gets his fucking break, right.
Speaker 1: So this newspaper that's funding the races he's doing like sees, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy might have this guy might have like it.
Speaker 1: You know what it takes to be a sta. So
Speaker 1: they make him a race commentator and he is very
Speaker 1: good at that job. They pay him a sizable fee.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty four and this jump starts his career
Speaker 1: as a bona fide celebrity. He becomes the face and
Speaker 1: voice of the Daily Express and that starts to earn
Speaker 1: him attention from the BBC and from Radio One, which
Speaker 1: is the BBC's radio thing of a jigger right now.
Speaker 1: Back then, the British media environment was much more restrictive
Speaker 1: than it is today, and the BBC has essentially a
Speaker 1: monopoly on legal radio play. Right You're not allowed to
Speaker 1: just have another radio station, right, you can get in
Speaker 1: trouble for that. Now. As a result, the BBC is
Speaker 1: like they're very much see themselves as cultural gatekeepers of
Speaker 1: like what should be acceptable and popular in Britain. And
Speaker 1: this pisses off every because people who run the BBC
Speaker 1: are old, stuffy, rich assholes and they have terrible taste
Speaker 1: in music. And this is the moment in which pop
Speaker 1: music is starting to explode. You know, you have this
Speaker 1: period of time like the mid to late fifties, early
Speaker 1: sixties where we've talked We talked about this on our
Speaker 1: episodes about Phil Spector with my buddy Will Greasy Will.
Speaker 1: This is the first time in which teenagers are like
Speaker 1: a demographic that you're marketing towards and selling towards, and
Speaker 1: that music is angled heavily towards the teen set because previously,
Speaker 1: you go back fifty years, teenagers are all working in
Speaker 1: the minds or something. They're not dancing at party clubs
Speaker 1: or whatever. They're not they're certainly not like a chunk
Speaker 1: of the of the populace that you are like trying
Speaker 1: to sell stuff to.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: That is also started to change right now now because
Speaker 1: the BBC has essentially this monopoly on what can be
Speaker 1: on the radio. There's this vibrant community that pops up
Speaker 1: of pirate DJs who are like very literally pirate DJs.
Speaker 1: This is some very cool stories that come out of
Speaker 1: this because these guys are like living on boats and
Speaker 1: old defense platforms in this scene broadcasting youth music illegally
Speaker 1: to the island. It's fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: They're legit pirate DJs.
Speaker 1: Like literal pirates. Yes, there is a movie called Pirate
Speaker 1: Radio that's at least ostensibly about this. I don't remember
Speaker 1: how good a job it did, honestly, I just remember
Speaker 1: it exists. So the very idea again of youth culture
Speaker 1: is new and scary to a lot of influential people
Speaker 1: in British media because these are members of the upper
Speaker 1: class and they're kind of worried in part because they're
Speaker 1: all everyone who's got money in the Western world is
Speaker 1: terrified of the communists, right, and so there's this fearful
Speaker 1: understanding that these young people have different values, maybe it'll
Speaker 1: lead them towards like socialism and all these other scary things.
Speaker 1: And there's also just this aspect of this has never
Speaker 1: been a thing that existed before teenagers and they're being
Speaker 1: a whole media industry geared towards teenagers. Is it good for?
Speaker 1: Is it making them bad? Is it going to damage them?
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of concern about that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and unfortunately the concern is focused on like
Speaker 1: the kind of music as opposed to maybe the people
Speaker 1: making the music and playing on the radio, which is
Speaker 1: who they should have been scared of harming the youth
Speaker 1: of Britain. The music itself isn't really doing any damage.
Speaker 1: But I bring all this up to point out that
Speaker 1: it is very difficult and is a very strange and
Speaker 1: noteworthy historical fact that within this kind of sclerotic and
Speaker 1: very much like not welcome, not open to newcomers, not
Speaker 1: open to like different ideas, this list like media culture,
Speaker 1: that a guy like Jimmy Savile becomes prominent because Jimmy
Speaker 1: talks like a working class man from Leeds and he
Speaker 1: dresses well like this. Sophie'll show you one photo of
Speaker 1: the guy where he he's got like he's wearing like
Speaker 1: a black velvet mask around his face, he's got his
Speaker 1: hair slightly curled, his long white hair, and he's got
Speaker 1: like a lace fucking gauntlet around his hand. It looks
Speaker 1: like it's hard to tell what is going on with
Speaker 1: his sleeve there. Yeah, he looks like.
Speaker 2: Hey, Loki loved the sleeve.
Speaker 1: And he's always every time he goes out in public,
Speaker 1: every time he's DJing at an event, every time he's
Speaker 1: like broadcast he's doing because he's going out to these
Speaker 1: like races. He's always dressed weird in some way. He's
Speaker 1: always wearing costumes, and he never talks about it.
Speaker 4: I hate to be the person I would wear the
Speaker 4: shit that blazer with the lace cup.
Speaker 5: Yes, the mask is an improvement over the just the maskolse.
Speaker 1: The mask helves.
Speaker 2: Weirdly enough, hides his But you know.
Speaker 1: Is he never talks about the way he's dressed, and
Speaker 1: when people ask him, he'll try to deliberately avoid the question.
Speaker 1: And he taught he writes about this. I think it's
Speaker 1: because he knows. Basically, if you talk about it or
Speaker 1: explain it, it's not nearly as it doesn't it's not
Speaker 1: nearly as interesting. If you just show up dressed like
Speaker 1: a maniac and pretend like you're a normal person like
Speaker 1: everyone else, that gets you more retention. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's what he's doing at this point in time, he.
Speaker 5: Learned his lesson from the coal mine situation.
Speaker 1: He really did. And part of what he's learned is
Speaker 1: that if you're dressed like a weirdo, not only does
Speaker 1: it get you attention and can't quote unquote pay off,
Speaker 1: but people don't poke too much around you. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna look to see they're not. No one's going to
Speaker 1: investigate to see if you're like a dangerous weirdo, because
Speaker 1: they already know you're some kind of weirdo. Right, That's
Speaker 1: something he starts to realize about about this, about like
Speaker 1: dressing this way, is it weirdly enough? Standing out and
Speaker 1: looking like a maniac divert suspicion and interest away from
Speaker 1: his actual behavior.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Jimmy is immediately successful as a broadcaster. People love him,
Speaker 1: particularly teenagers, even though by this point he's well into
Speaker 1: his twenties. He talk, he understands their slang, He talks
Speaker 1: like a teenager. He understands the music they like, He
Speaker 1: understands how they're spending their time because he socializes almost
Speaker 1: exclusively with teenaged girls. Right, and he's doing this because
Speaker 1: he is having sex with slash molesting them. The legal
Speaker 1: definition is dependent upon the age that they are. Again,
Speaker 1: as I've noted, but that's exclusively who he hangs out with.
Speaker 1: So he does understand them, right, And at the time,
Speaker 1: other people in the media are just like, well, he's
Speaker 1: the only one these kids seem to really like get
Speaker 1: you know, he understands the kids, and we know there's
Speaker 1: a lot of money there, so we better keep paying
Speaker 1: Jimmy Savile because he's the only adult we know who
Speaker 1: can communicate with the teenagers.
Speaker 2: Right now, nobody thinks to go and I wonder that is.
Speaker 1: And I will no doubt not at this point in time,
Speaker 1: nobody's concerned about that they.
Speaker 2: See in the twenties.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yeah, he's in his twenties. He's in like his
Speaker 1: mid twenties by this point, Okay, mid to late twenties
Speaker 1: during this period, and part of what's happening is they're
Speaker 1: scared of the teenagers, right This is a frightening and anarchic,
Speaker 1: seeming new segment of the culture, and Jimmy can control them.
Speaker 1: So a big part of his early success and famous
Speaker 1: his ability to convince people in the media who come
Speaker 1: from money and who are part of this like, you know,
Speaker 1: this rarefied air of people who got to do that
Speaker 1: job back then, that I can make these kids less
Speaker 1: scary and uncontrollable to you. I know how they tick
Speaker 1: and I can control them. Right, that's why they're hiring him, right,
Speaker 1: So that's great. Basically, he he provides these media elites
Speaker 1: in Britain at the time with a degree of control
Speaker 1: and predictability over a bunch of teenagers who scared the
Speaker 1: living shit out of them. Now, good stuff. Nothing like
Speaker 1: this has ever happened since his main job was still djaying,
Speaker 1: and by this point he's helping to manage the Mecca
Speaker 1: dance hall. He is like the manager of the whole
Speaker 1: dance hall, and he's often doing shows and he hits
Speaker 1: upon the brilliant idea in nineteen fifty five of playing
Speaker 1: top pop hits for his audience while they waited for
Speaker 1: the house band to rest between sets. So normally you
Speaker 1: just have the band stop and I either maybe you
Speaker 1: have a secondary band do something or whatever. But Jimmy
Speaker 1: comes in and he starts DJing and just putting on
Speaker 1: playing the hits for these kids. And he's really good
Speaker 1: at knowing what they want to hear, and he's good
Speaker 1: at you know, he's talking in between putting on these songs,
Speaker 1: he's getting the crowd amped up. You guys know what
Speaker 1: a DJ does, right, but very few people are doing
Speaker 1: that at this point. He's one of the first generation.
Speaker 1: He's not. He'll often claim to have been the first DJ.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's really true. But he's part of
Speaker 1: the first generation of guys doing this right. And this
Speaker 1: proves to be extremely popular and it earns him a promotion.
Speaker 1: So he's a job managing a different, much larger dance
Speaker 1: hall in London. So he's now moved from Leeds to
Speaker 1: London and he's running this big dance hall and he's
Speaker 1: got access to this full size ballroom and the power
Speaker 1: and funding to try something more ambitious than that crude
Speaker 1: gramophone wired to a speaker that he'd used previously. According
Speaker 1: to the book in Plane Sight, he was connected to
Speaker 1: the company Westrex, who made turntables, and quote he said,
Speaker 1: he walked into the pala which is the dance hall
Speaker 1: he's running to find an electrician fitting a record deck
Speaker 1: in the box from which the lighting was operated. He
Speaker 1: told the man he wanted two turntables and for them
Speaker 1: to be installed on the stage, one next to the other.
Speaker 1: It was. He claimed the first twin turntable system in history.
Speaker 1: Now it wasn't an article I found on CNN notes
Speaker 1: commentators have pointed out they were available decades earlier, But
Speaker 1: he was one of the very first guys to do this.
Speaker 1: Jimmy is legitimately quite novel. I'm sure he saw someone
Speaker 1: else do it, maybe, but there aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: people who did that before. Or Jimmy Savill who had
Speaker 1: a twin turnsable system running right, probably a black guy.
Speaker 5: Everybody in music's ripping off right, right black people at
Speaker 5: this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, But Jimmy does get that reputation as being
Speaker 1: like the first DJ to do this, like, and he's
Speaker 1: got that reputation for quite some time. He also develops
Speaker 1: a reputation for always traveling with a security team of
Speaker 1: large and angry bouncers, which he bragged about for years,
Speaker 1: using to brutalize people who stepped out of line during
Speaker 1: his shows. He had a zero tolerance policy, and he
Speaker 1: talks about this a lot in interviews and stuff because
Speaker 1: he was he really liked telling stories about having these big,
Speaker 1: dangerous men beat the shit out of people at his command. Now,
Speaker 1: the fact that Jimmy was always surrounded by dangerous men, was,
Speaker 1: Davies suggests, probably due in part to the fact that
Speaker 1: at night he would pick out one or more of
Speaker 1: the girls at his shows to invite backstage, and he
Speaker 1: was scared of their parents. Right, So Davy suggests he's
Speaker 1: kind of lying about the fact that he needed these
Speaker 1: guys to keep ordering his shows. He wanted a bunch
Speaker 1: of scary, big guys around him because he's fucking a
Speaker 1: bunch of teenagers and their parents get angry. Right, And
Speaker 1: at this point this is when this stopped by the
Speaker 1: I mean it had happened at some point previously, but
Speaker 1: by this point he's like twenty eight years old. It
Speaker 1: is no longer. Even within the standards of the time,
Speaker 1: people think it's a bit weird that he's pretty much
Speaker 1: exclusively going after like sixteen year old girls, sometimes young.
Speaker 4: So he's molesting a bunch of teenagers. He's sexually abusing
Speaker 4: a bunch of teenagers.
Speaker 1: Some of them for in legal I would say, in
Speaker 1: moral terms, yes, in legal terms, a lot of these
Speaker 1: are still sixteen year year old girls, and that is legal. Right.
Speaker 1: This is important in terms of like why nothing is
Speaker 1: done right. So one of his first victims was Kathy Kirby,
Speaker 1: who became a prominent singer later herself, but at age sixteen,
Speaker 1: went to see twenty eight year old Jimmy Savile at
Speaker 1: the Palais. She claims he pursued her and her even
Speaker 1: young her sister, which is not legal now. She turned
Speaker 1: him down, but the next year, in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: Kathy got to perform on stage at the Palais and
Speaker 1: was invited to tour with the band leader Bert Ambrose,
Speaker 1: and she says that she hit on Bert, but he
Speaker 1: turned her down because he was forty years older than her.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is Burt actually trying
Speaker 1: to be a good guy or just being creepy, but
Speaker 1: the way he frames the way he explains turning her
Speaker 1: down is that like, you need to get some experience.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: He may have just meant I don't I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get with a teenage girl. That's fucked up, but she
Speaker 1: interprets this as, oh, I need to go have sex
Speaker 1: with somebody else first, that that's what he wants. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's what Burt did want. I don't know the guy, right,
Speaker 1: but Kathy, because again she's a teenager and she's using
Speaker 1: the logic of a teenager, decides not to say no
Speaker 1: the next time that Jimmy propositions her so that she
Speaker 1: can get experience. And again, she's seventeen at this point.
Speaker 1: This is legal, right, But that's one of the first
Speaker 1: stories we have of she's very uncomfortable. She's particularly uncomfortable
Speaker 1: that he's hitting on her fifteen year old sister. But
Speaker 1: she does eventually sleep with him because basically she thinks
Speaker 1: it'll get her in with someone in the industry she
Speaker 1: really like wants to have a relationship with and work with.
Speaker 1: And this should get to kind of how murky a
Speaker 1: lot of it is at this period of time, right,
Speaker 1: this is this is not at all something we can
Speaker 1: talk about directly using all of our modern terms.
Speaker 5: Right. Well, actually, people today love to cite that this
Speaker 5: was quote unquote normal.
Speaker 1: Back it's not normal, we can say, because again she
Speaker 1: thinks it's weird that he's hitting on her sister, right,
Speaker 1: But she also doesn't think it's weird when she's seventeen
Speaker 1: to hit on like a forty year old guy. Right,
Speaker 1: So there is this is a different time with different values.
Speaker 1: But what you should note is that by this point
Speaker 1: in time. This early in the story, people know it's weird,
Speaker 1: and that Jimmy likes some young and that that is weird,
Speaker 1: even within a time period in which it's not at
Speaker 1: nearly as abnormal for older men to have sex with
Speaker 1: much younger women. Right, even in that period of time,
Speaker 1: Jimmy is weird and gets a reputation for liking them
Speaker 1: young women and girls, right because he's doing both, you know, professionally.
Speaker 1: During this period, Savill seems to go from strength to strength.
Speaker 1: He starts mixing popular songs together when he's on stage,
Speaker 1: in a manner much more familiar to modern day listening
Speaker 1: as DJing. But again, he's not interested in making music
Speaker 1: or the artistry of any of this. The appeal to
Speaker 1: him here is always control. Hence, once he turned his
Speaker 1: second dance hall into a hit, he started stopping shows
Speaker 1: regularly to announce Smooch Time, in which he gave the
Speaker 1: teenage participants permission to grind and make out with each other.
Speaker 1: This was totally novel, As one regular this is someone
Speaker 1: who was attending these shows as a teenager at the time,
Speaker 1: later told biographer Dan Davies he was giving teenagers the
Speaker 1: chance to get together. Teenagers had the chance to hug
Speaker 1: each other and fall in love. It was a romantic,
Speaker 1: fantastic time. And I can see how for the teenagers
Speaker 1: at the time this would be really nice. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got a culture that's much more repressed, and there's you're
Speaker 1: suddenly getting this permission in a public space that like
Speaker 1: it's okay to make out with other teens. Right. It's
Speaker 1: like you're with your boyfriend, you're out at the club
Speaker 1: and he's like, okay, it's not you can all make
Speaker 1: out now, right. It's very popular, I guess, is what
Speaker 1: i'd say, like a lot of people. And again he's
Speaker 1: not this is he's the one on stage. He's not
Speaker 1: making out with anyone at this point in time. He
Speaker 1: will after the shows. But what he's doing here, as
Speaker 1: much as a lot of these kids like it, is
Speaker 1: he's normalizing the fact that it's like it's not weird
Speaker 1: to have sexual and like romantic physical contact at what
Speaker 1: is his place of work. Right, And even though he's
Speaker 1: on stage when he's announcing smooch time, this is going
Speaker 1: to help to normalize what is going to become predation
Speaker 1: from a nearly thirty year old man to a bunch
Speaker 1: of largely fifty to seventeen year old girls. That is
Speaker 1: part of what's happening here, but nobody it's not noticed
Speaker 1: as that because all the teens are just happy that
Speaker 1: someone's saying it's not bad for you to make out
Speaker 1: with your boyfriend a girlfriend, right, Yeah, like you could
Speaker 1: get how that camouflage is it? Right?
Speaker 2: It's excellent camo. I mean it's really good. Kind of
Speaker 2: a genius, yeah, evil genius.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, he is very good at this. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: he's hired by Radio Luxembourg, an independent station on the
Speaker 1: continent that was popular with the youths. This gives him
Speaker 1: access to pop musicians, to the biggest stars of the days.
Speaker 1: He's talking with the Beatles, he's talking with the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: He's talking with fucking Elvis, right, I mean at varying
Speaker 1: points in time, that's not all starting in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: But if someone is a pop musician who is famous
Speaker 1: and beloved, he knows them, and you've heard him talk
Speaker 1: to them on air, so you know he knows them,
Speaker 1: and this gives him a huge amount of power over
Speaker 1: the teenage girls his audience. Now to the adults who
Speaker 1: are running the business, and who own these venues. This
Speaker 1: helps to reinforce Jimmy's status as a teen whisperer, right,
Speaker 1: although this is largely based on a misconception they have
Speaker 1: about his fame because they see like, oh wow, the
Speaker 1: teenagers love Jimmy. What's really happening is the teenagers know
Speaker 1: Jimmy has access to the musicians they love, and so
Speaker 1: they follow him because he provides access to these pop stars. Right,
Speaker 1: and he increasingly grows skilled when he's talking with these
Speaker 1: teenage girls who are lining up outside of his office
Speaker 1: after the show, at making himself into a gateway between
Speaker 1: these kids who are obsessed with their favorite musicians and
Speaker 1: those musicians. That is what provides him with the bulk
Speaker 1: of his victims. He is the door. If you make
Speaker 1: Jimmy happy, Jimmy can introduce you to the fucking Beatles.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: What won't you do for that guy? If you're a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old girl in this period of time, Right.
Speaker 2: It's like Weinstein can get you a part of it.
Speaker 1: Maybe, yep, yep, it's how it works pretty much always right, yep.
Speaker 2: Disgusting.
Speaker 1: One former employee at the Plaza, which is one of
Speaker 1: the dance halls, he managed recalled seeing a line of
Speaker 1: girls outside of Jimmy's office queuing up regularly for what
Speaker 1: was euphemistically called a chat with jim No, he used
Speaker 1: to always say, I'm going to interview this young lady
Speaker 1: for a job. That's all. He'd say. I don't know
Speaker 1: what went on behind those doors, but I do know
Speaker 1: that he was a man. I we know what was
Speaker 1: going on behind those doors.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: And again, while a lot of these girls are legally
Speaker 1: of age, a lot of them aren't. And we know
Speaker 1: a lot of them aren't because people talk about him
Speaker 1: hitting on them when they were fourteen or fifteen or
Speaker 1: even younger. Right, And I don't have an exact list
Speaker 1: of And here's the age and number of the girls
Speaker 1: that he molested and the girls who you know were
Speaker 1: of age and maybe consent to I don't know how
Speaker 1: that breaks out as a ratio. But none of this
Speaker 1: is okay because none of this, all of this is
Speaker 1: even in the case when they're legally of age. He
Speaker 1: is making them have sex with him to get access
Speaker 1: to famous musicians. And that's bad. Like it may not
Speaker 1: have been a prime at the time, but it's bad.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: Jimmy's making good money now and despite the fact this
Speaker 1: is something that will be within most of his life,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he now makes good money, he's
Speaker 1: always driving around like fancy sports cars, rolls, royces and stuff.
Speaker 1: He lives in Squalor. His apartments are always disgusting and
Speaker 1: like the cheapest place he can possibly get his house
Speaker 1: in this period of time is this gross, mold covered
Speaker 1: flat nicknamed the Black Pad because he painted the walls
Speaker 1: and everything else black to disguise the grime so that
Speaker 1: like it wasn't as obvious how gross it was. Rent
Speaker 1: was a pound fifty per week. He's just cheap, okay,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't I don't think he spends a lot
Speaker 1: of time in his apartment too, so he doesn't see
Speaker 1: the reason to spend much money on it. At this point.
Speaker 1: He spends a lot of money in his cars, and
Speaker 1: usually if he's not having sex in his office, he's
Speaker 1: having sex in his car. Now he does bring people
Speaker 1: back to his pad to party too, and he's lit
Speaker 1: the space with red light bulbs to further hide how
Speaker 1: disgusting it is. But it was it's gross.
Speaker 2: Did you get a better place with like a bullpit
Speaker 2: or something?
Speaker 1: We probably don't need to be giving him notes, but
Speaker 1: it is like weird. It's kind of a noteworthy thing
Speaker 1: about how he does this. You know who else lives
Speaker 1: in Squalor, Well, that may not.
Speaker 2: This is behind the products and services.
Speaker 1: They're death right, they're living in Squalor, living in living
Speaker 1: in mold covered apartments and trash pads. Uh and weird
Speaker 1: back so uh. In public, Jimmy always wore expensive, ostentatious
Speaker 1: clothes and drove luxury cars, particularly Rolls Royces, and these
Speaker 1: also helped to draw teenage girls and his orbit, and
Speaker 1: by the time they got back to his disgusting pad,
Speaker 1: he'd usually done a good job of roping them in, promising,
Speaker 1: I can get you backstage at this show. You can
Speaker 1: beat your heroes and get you to come in when
Speaker 1: you know we're gonna have Elvis in or whatever the
Speaker 1: studio and you can meet him, you know, if you
Speaker 1: just do something for me right now. Jimmy is as
Speaker 1: good as his word usually when he makes these promises
Speaker 1: for a very good reason, right, this isn't He's not
Speaker 1: fulfilling the promises he makes these girls, who he then
Speaker 1: molests because he cares about being as good as his word.
Speaker 1: He is also providing pop stars with groupies who are
Speaker 1: quote ready to go. That's the term he uses, and
Speaker 1: that's part of his job. He is a fixer for
Speaker 1: these musicians who are traveling all over the world. They're
Speaker 1: coming past, you know, they're doing part of their tour
Speaker 1: in London, so they're going on the radio to talk
Speaker 1: to Jimmy. He's talking to them about, you know, the
Speaker 1: show they're doing, and it's expected. Hey, you know, you
Speaker 1: guys are going to be in town for just like
Speaker 1: two nights. Jimmy can hook you up with some girls
Speaker 1: who are ready to go, you know, like that's that's
Speaker 1: what he's doing. We don't know, specif scifically who he
Speaker 1: did that for, but he does it a lot and
Speaker 1: it's part of the appeal. It's part of why you
Speaker 1: go to Savil's parties. Is if you're famous, he'll get you.
Speaker 1: He'll gee up with some groupies. Right, it's very normal.
Speaker 1: At the time, it's very bad.
Speaker 2: It's very bad.
Speaker 5: And yeah, you asked me at the beginning of the
Speaker 5: first episode how I knew him, And it's those stories.
Speaker 5: It's like the story of the girl who gets like
Speaker 5: a fish put inside her or like whatever that are
Speaker 5: like likely underaged girls with these famous musicians.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, even when it's they're not
Speaker 1: legally underage at the time, it's still bad. Jimmy Donnelly,
Speaker 1: who attended the Plaza starting at age sixteen right around
Speaker 1: this time, was interviewed about Davies for his book, and
Speaker 1: his recollections of Savel helped get across something important. Quote.
Speaker 1: We didn't have this word pedophile in them days. We
Speaker 1: had the word weirdo. And Savill was a weirdo. He
Speaker 1: always had the Bobby Socks girls, the young girls in
Speaker 1: his car. He'd always pull up with the girls in
Speaker 1: his car going home. He'd always have the girls in
Speaker 1: his car. Right. So, again, as normalized as aspects of
Speaker 1: this were, it's weird. Jimmy is a weirdo for the time,
Speaker 1: and people are using the term weirdo to refer to
Speaker 1: the fact that he's a pedophile.
Speaker 2: Right, that's known.
Speaker 1: It's not a secret. It's just not seen as as
Speaker 1: big a problem as it's later going to be seen.
Speaker 1: But it's not a mystery. Nobody doesn't think he's doing
Speaker 1: this now.
Speaker 5: Words important though, because weirdo can mean a lot of things.
Speaker 1: It can, and that's what Jimmy understands is that his
Speaker 1: very oddness, the fact that he is so strange and
Speaker 1: so so purposefully strange, is a cloaking device. It helps
Speaker 1: to hide the fact that he's a predator. Jimmy dressed,
Speaker 1: and it's not just that, it's that Jimmy dresses in
Speaker 1: a way. Because he's dressed so weird and ostentatiously, he
Speaker 1: regularly gets called a poofter or various other slurs for
Speaker 1: a homosexual person. Right, And he's fine with this because
Speaker 1: if people think he's queer or just off in general,
Speaker 1: then the fact that he's always surrounded by teenage girls
Speaker 1: is just another mark of his eccentricity. Right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in fact, part of his strategy is he deliberately doesn't
Speaker 1: have sex with or group most of the young girls
Speaker 1: that he's hanging out with, the majority of the girls
Speaker 1: that he's surrounded by at any given time, he is
Speaker 1: not molesting because that provides further cover. Right, most of
Speaker 1: the girls who were out there will say nothing happened,
Speaker 1: you know, And that makes him seem safer and it
Speaker 1: makes it seem less worth paying attention to. Dan Davies
Speaker 1: relates the story of Penny Anne Rolls, who met Savill
Speaker 1: when she was a teenage girl working at a coffee
Speaker 1: shop that was also a concert venue which Jimmy part owned.
Speaker 1: She recalled quote, one Sunday night, he used to take
Speaker 1: a few of us to a restaurant, an Indian place
Speaker 1: in the Curry center of Manchester. We used to go
Speaker 1: there for curry and he would park his Rolls Royce up. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: he would take us home with the roof down on
Speaker 1: his car and we'd all be singing our heads off.
Speaker 1: She remembers there were three or four girls that Savill
Speaker 1: took out regularly, but insists he never tried it on
Speaker 1: with her. I never saw him in a relationship with anyone,
Speaker 1: she maintains. Between you and I, I don't know whether
Speaker 1: he was gay. And tactics like this were very much
Speaker 1: in line with Jimmy's repeatedly elucidated approach to life. He
Speaker 1: talked about this as a strategy. I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from one specific interview he does near the end of
Speaker 1: his life, but he repeats this sentiment in numerous places
Speaker 1: over half a century. You see, I never ever thought
Speaker 1: that I was clever. Tricky. Yes, I'm a very tricky fella.
Speaker 1: But tricky is much better than being clever. If you
Speaker 1: are clever, you can slip up because you're clever. But
Speaker 1: if you're tricky, you don't slip up. You never slip up.
Speaker 6: If you're tricky, Fuck off, Fuck off Jimmy. Unfortunately it works, yea,
Speaker 6: but he talks like he's talking. This guy is being like,
Speaker 6: I'm tricky. I'm always around teenagers. No one ever has
Speaker 6: noticed what's wrong with me?
Speaker 1: What a mystery? This guy was molesting people for decades.
Speaker 1: We couldn't have known.
Speaker 4: What a sperry little fuck a little uh huh.
Speaker 5: Because like people expect less of the trickiness versus the cleverness.
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, yes, exactly now. In books and interviews,
Speaker 1: reporters would always note that Jimmy never talked about his
Speaker 1: inner life.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: You can go through all of the he wrote books
Speaker 1: about himself, multiple ones, and you don't get anything about
Speaker 1: what he actually does on his own or who he
Speaker 1: is as a person. And in fact, Jimmy claimed not
Speaker 1: to have an inner life. He would talk about this regularly.
Speaker 1: It Yeah, I kind of do too. He keeps incredibly busy,
Speaker 1: not just with work but with sporting events. He continues
Speaker 1: to be an athlete of varying kinds this whole period.
Speaker 1: And while he's rising to fame during this time when
Speaker 1: he's he's you know, m seeing events and running all
Speaker 1: these dance halls and stuff and this popular DJ and
Speaker 1: on the radio, he's also a prominent wrestler. And in fact,
Speaker 1: he tried to use his he gets into wrestling, and
Speaker 1: he tries to use his fame, the fact that he's
Speaker 1: kind of famous as a broadcaster to jump start his
Speaker 1: wrestling career, and the fact that he is so well
Speaker 1: known does make him popular to promoters. Like promoters love
Speaker 1: having Jimmy savalon because people will show up to watch
Speaker 1: him wrestle. But other wrestlers hate it because he's not
Speaker 1: really a wrestler, right, and he's kind of like he's
Speaker 1: kind of like stealing his way to the top.
Speaker 2: He's like logan fucking Paul and ww.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, real WWE fans hate that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The website Pro Wrestling Stories notes his toe was
Speaker 1: broken in his very first match. After one bout, he
Speaker 1: visited the hospital after his testicles had been kicked up
Speaker 1: into his body.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank god. Yeah love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a couple of good bits here of him
Speaker 1: getting hurt. Saville claims to have fought in over one
Speaker 1: hundred bouts and proudly lost all thirty five of his
Speaker 1: first matches. Despite this, and despite his appearance, he was
Speaker 1: very popular with female fans. One wrestler who did not
Speaker 1: like Savile and beat him brutally in the ring recalled
Speaker 1: years later that Savill bragged about girls lining up to
Speaker 1: see him after fights. He would tell them, I'll take
Speaker 1: you and you and you the rest of you. Come
Speaker 1: back another time. You might get lucky. Ew bro.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now for reference, here's how Jimmy looked back then as
Speaker 1: a wrestler. And just what an upsetting looking man. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like he looks like one of the like
Speaker 1: in this at least his hair isn't shock white. It's
Speaker 1: a bit shorter and black. He's like shirtless, Like he's
Speaker 1: in good shape, you can tell, but again he just is.
Speaker 1: He's so his face is so upsetting always to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's got like real potato shaped face.
Speaker 2: And then just yeah, crazy hair the bangs again.
Speaker 4: Not sure, I mean, I'm not I don't want to
Speaker 4: harp on his appearance, but also fuck him.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's I mean, but also his appearance is a
Speaker 1: big part his conscious His appearance is a performance, right,
Speaker 1: So there is you know, it's not totally.
Speaker 5: Question on the wrestling, because did you say at the
Speaker 5: beginning that he also messed with boys?
Speaker 2: Is there any evidence? Yes, we're getting there.
Speaker 1: I don't know when that starts. I don't know that
Speaker 1: anyone does. But yes, he molests a shitload of boys,
Speaker 1: very young ones, as we'll be talking about. I don't
Speaker 1: know when he begins doing that. We really don't. I
Speaker 1: will we will be talking about it later. I have
Speaker 1: kind of the earliest point that we know he was by,
Speaker 1: but I don't know how far back that goes. Okay,
Speaker 1: I should also know the kind of wrestling Saville did
Speaker 1: was a mix of like the pure entertainment pro wrestling
Speaker 1: that we Americans know and love today in actual competitive grappling.
Speaker 1: So these are real fights, right, like where there's like
Speaker 1: a winner and a loser that's not decided ahead of time.
Speaker 1: And I will talk about one of those fights much later.
Speaker 1: At the end of these episodes. You're gonna need it
Speaker 1: as a palette cleanser, but that's getting We'll do that
Speaker 1: later because again, it's going to be necessary However, it's
Speaker 1: important you know that the fact that he's bad at
Speaker 1: wrestling doesn't mean that his time as a wrestler was
Speaker 1: a failure for Savil. In fact, it's one more thing
Speaker 1: that makes him seem terrifying and impossible to resist to
Speaker 1: his victims. The fact that he's a pro wrestler helps
Speaker 1: helps ensure that when he's molesting someone, they don't fight
Speaker 1: back because he's scary. He's in really good shape, and
Speaker 1: he's huge. He is a big man. He's physically dangerous.
Speaker 1: This is not a This is a guy who is
Speaker 1: in fights. This is a guy who knows how to
Speaker 1: hurt people, and who knows how to uses body to
Speaker 1: hurt people. He even told one wrestling magazine, if I
Speaker 1: arrive at the gates of Heaven and Saint Peter says,
Speaker 1: you've been a very tricky man. You can't come in here.
Speaker 1: I'll break his thumbs because I'm qualified to do that,
Speaker 1: because I've earned a living being a wrestler, and I've
Speaker 1: not had a problem yet with anyone who's thumbs I've broken.
Speaker 1: No one could have known, impossible to know this guy
Speaker 1: was preying on kids. There were no signs.
Speaker 2: Don't even think of that scenario in your head.
Speaker 1: Also the fact that again he's periodically in his life
Speaker 1: being like, I'm not clever, I'm tricky, and no one
Speaker 1: can catch you if you're tricky. And then in this
Speaker 1: he's like, Saint Peter wouldn't let me into heaven because
Speaker 1: I'm tricky. Really, let you know what he means when
Speaker 1: he says he's tricky exactly. In nineteen sixty four, the
Speaker 1: BBC asked Jimmy Savill to be the first host of
Speaker 1: a new television program. Well, I think it's a radio
Speaker 1: program that becomes TV later, but well, I think it
Speaker 1: is TV at this point in time. It's a little
Speaker 1: because a lot of media, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: find from nineteen sixty four, so I think this is
Speaker 1: a TV program at the time. It's called Top of
Speaker 1: the Pops and it's a video showcase of the hit
Speaker 1: bands of the era that becomes this massive hit. And
Speaker 1: Jimmy's not the only host. They rotate DJs, so like
Speaker 1: every episode you'll have somebody different, right, but Jimmy is
Speaker 1: like the first one to host the show, and he's
Speaker 1: like one of the most regular people that they bring
Speaker 1: back to host Top of the Pops during this period
Speaker 1: of time and throughout the sixties and I think into
Speaker 1: the seventies, he's repeatedly voted Britain's favorite DJ, like he's
Speaker 1: the top DJ in the country by pretty much any
Speaker 1: person's like standards. And so he also gets the job
Speaker 1: regularly when these huge bands that are honestly probably bigger
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways than any popular musician is today.
Speaker 1: When you talk about the Beatles or the Stones at
Speaker 1: their height, he's the guy on stage introducing them whenever
Speaker 1: they play in England, right, and he continues he'll dress
Speaker 1: in bizarre costumes. I saw one video where he's like
Speaker 1: opening for the Stones and he's dressed as like a
Speaker 1: stereotype of a Japanese woman, wearing like a kimono and
Speaker 1: like waving fans to cool himself down. As he approaches
Speaker 1: the microphone, he's got his catchphrases like now then, now
Speaker 1: then and now how about that then? Because catchphrases were
Speaker 1: easier to have back then, more than anything, Jimmy had access.
Speaker 1: This is a guy who talks to the Beatles repeatedly.
Speaker 1: He's in like a top of the Pops they do
Speaker 1: like a TV skit with the Beatles, where Jimmy, because
Speaker 1: he's so huge and tall, is like he's like the
Speaker 1: abominable Snowman, and they're all out like hiking, and he's
Speaker 1: like one by one like eating the Beatles basically. And
Speaker 1: I don't think they're actually friends. I don't think they know,
Speaker 1: Like they're certainly not hanging out socially the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives. But he knows them. And if you're a
Speaker 1: teenage girl, all you see is that, like, wow, he
Speaker 1: knows the fucking Beatles. You know. On stage, when Jimmy
Speaker 1: wasn't surrounded by pop stars, he was often quite literally
Speaker 1: buried in girls, which further helped to normalize and disguise
Speaker 1: his behavior. Here's one example from an episode of Top
Speaker 1: of the Pops in the nineteen seventies, that Sophie's gonna
Speaker 1: play for you here, I thought.
Speaker 2: Something I fought like the very souls.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm too going to come.
Speaker 3: Get used to it. So ladies and gentlemen, all can
Speaker 3: say is good night from all of the certain Top
Speaker 3: of the Toops, and it's number one time, and of
Speaker 3: course he's believed me. Now it's from the one and
Speaker 3: only she can go.
Speaker 4: I'd think there's to do so.
Speaker 1: For those of you who couldn't see that, Jimmy is
Speaker 1: surrounded by like a dozen young, very young women, I
Speaker 1: can't tell their age, and one of the girls, the
Speaker 1: girl next to him, keeps like jumping and making like
Speaker 1: oh sounds. I think because he's grabbing her the whole
Speaker 1: Oh no, this is the most popular show in the country,
Speaker 1: one of them at the time. He's just on stage
Speaker 1: with a bunch of teenage girls groping one of them
Speaker 1: on video. This is so normalized, This is not hidden,
Speaker 1: This is not like I have to really emphasize there
Speaker 1: was no reason not to know what Jimmy was doing here.
Speaker 1: While I was looking for that clip, I accidentally came
Speaker 1: across another clip from a nineteen sixty five episode of
Speaker 1: Top of the Pops, and Jimmy's only on for the
Speaker 1: first second, but once I heard the words to the
Speaker 1: song he's introducing, I had to include this too, just
Speaker 1: because it's just a very I had a funny bit
Speaker 1: of irony Sophie's to play that clip to you now
Speaker 1: from the sixty five episode. The song is called little Children, Jay,
Speaker 1: little Children, You dare not tell on me? You tell
Speaker 1: what you Why was that a song I Know, just
Speaker 1: to kind of talk make the point about how like
Speaker 1: some of this is that things were fucked up at
Speaker 1: the time. Why is that a song? Yeah, just Jimmy
Speaker 1: sat the Pedophile introducing a song about telling kids not
Speaker 1: to tell on adults. Great. So by this point, by
Speaker 1: the time, and again we're in kind of like the
Speaker 1: mid sixties. In this era, Jimmy's moved on from the
Speaker 1: Mecca he's hosting, he's running things at a new thirty
Speaker 1: three hundred person dance hall called the Top Ten Club,
Speaker 1: which promised music by famous pop stars and top international
Speaker 1: DJ Jimmy Saville. On ads for the club, Jimmy was
Speaker 1: pictured with a chimpanzee for some reason, and the text
Speaker 1: it's a gas, it's a ball, It's like crazy man.
Speaker 1: The club only allowed people sixteen and up, which was
Speaker 1: again the age of consent, but numerous people who attended
Speaker 1: in those days have made it clear that lying about
Speaker 1: your age was so easy as to be essentially encouraged.
Speaker 1: No one's checking or cares if you're not actually sixteen, right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's some evidence that, you know, the bouncers,
Speaker 1: the people like at the gate are specifically trying to
Speaker 1: bring in younger girls for reasons I probably don't need
Speaker 1: to elaborate on here. Now, the Top ten Club becomes
Speaker 1: Jimmy's primary like hunting area, and he, in order to
Speaker 1: maintain sort of this h like his kind of specialness,
Speaker 1: he forbade none of the other DJs were allowed to
Speaker 1: play Top twenty hits, right because Jimmy knows his popularity
Speaker 1: is based entirely on his perceived closest to fame, and
Speaker 1: this further helps to make him seem special and make
Speaker 1: it seem like he's got access. Jimmy Donnelly, who we
Speaker 1: heard from earlier, recalled that Savill always left with girls
Speaker 1: from their mid to late teens and that it was
Speaker 1: well known Jimmy Savill liked him young. Now the Top
Speaker 1: ten Club is going to become probably his most reliable
Speaker 1: hunting ground in this period of life. That's the term
Speaker 1: Davies uses for it through the mid to late sixties,
Speaker 1: and both he and the BBC are recruiting girls from
Speaker 1: the Top ten Club right. Saville is recruiting them because
Speaker 1: he wants to molest them, and the BBC is recruiting
Speaker 1: them for the studio audience of their hit new TV
Speaker 1: show Top of the Pops because they have just teenagers
Speaker 1: come into dance, right, Like these girls are bringing brought
Speaker 1: into like dance on stage to be in the background.
Speaker 1: It's like in that clip I've shown you, you just
Speaker 1: have them as set dressings, right. And so you've got
Speaker 1: like Cecil Korr, who's the assistant producer for the show
Speaker 1: and a twenty nine year old man. He'll go talent
Speaker 1: spotting out at club nights at the Top ten club
Speaker 1: and he'll hand out tickets to girls. And he had
Speaker 1: said later, I was looking for girls aged thirteen to seventeen, right,
Speaker 1: that's who he's handing out tickets to be on TV too,
Speaker 1: said one Top of the Pops director. If they were
Speaker 1: dancers or were attractive, obviously they got on. So again,
Speaker 1: both the BBC and Savile are preying on underaged girls.
Speaker 1: The BBC because they the BBC recognizes that they have
Speaker 1: sex appeal quote unquote to the audience, to the musicians,
Speaker 1: to the DJs, and they want there to be girls
Speaker 1: younger than sixteen.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 1: The BBC makes that decision too. This is not just
Speaker 1: Jimmy deciding to molest kids. The BBC wants to put
Speaker 1: kids in a position where they will be molested. That
Speaker 1: is a choice made by the people running the BBC,
Speaker 1: and it is a choice they keep making for decades.
Speaker 1: That is a very important part of the story.
Speaker 5: Surely they're not getting paid like no, no, no, they're
Speaker 5: getting paid in the ticket to get They're.
Speaker 1: Getting paid in the ticket. You know that, and maybe
Speaker 1: you'll get you know, with your favorite pop star or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: that's there. I think what draws a lot of these
Speaker 1: kids in right, because obviously they're kids. Jimmy maintained his
Speaker 1: reputation as Britain's oldest teenager by speaking like kids, knowing
Speaker 1: their lingo and their music. But his larger appeal was
Speaker 1: the simple fact that he represented access to the pop
Speaker 1: stars they idolized. Savell was constantly on the air on
Speaker 1: TV or in concerts introducing the Beatles, Manfred Mann and
Speaker 1: of course the Rolling Stones, and while the kids perceived
Speaker 1: him as having a close relationship to all these guys,
Speaker 1: the reality was often uglier. Let's take the Stones as
Speaker 1: an example. Savill was an early advocate of the band,
Speaker 1: even when the record company Deco wasn't sure they had
Speaker 1: what it took to outshine the Beatles. Savill had seen
Speaker 1: the way audiences went nuts for the group. He described
Speaker 1: it as rioting, and he supported them in his he
Speaker 1: gets a newspaper column, so he's writing newspaper articles about
Speaker 1: the pop industry at this dime and in his discussions
Speaker 1: with industry insiders. This does not mean that he was
Speaker 1: friendly with or liked by the band members. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, after their first number one record, the Stones
Speaker 1: were booked to play at the Top ten club. The
Speaker 1: crowd that night was, for lack of a better word, insane.
Speaker 1: Fights broke out constantly and the police even had to
Speaker 1: show up. And the Stones, to an extent, part of
Speaker 1: like what they're doing in this time is playing up
Speaker 1: how crazy their concerts get. This is what's going to
Speaker 1: kind of culminate and the like there's a like somebody
Speaker 1: gets killed at one of their concerts by a Hell's Angels,
Speaker 1: like back in the US, not crazy long after this
Speaker 1: period of time, because that's part of what makes the
Speaker 1: Stones famous, is how nuts their shows go, how crazy
Speaker 1: their fans go for them. But things get so bad
Speaker 1: this night that the Stones refused to play when their
Speaker 1: time came up, and part because like they've lost their instruments,
Speaker 1: like the instruments they were supposed to have didn't show up,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to play with like the venues,
Speaker 1: like backup set of instruments. They didn't think they were
Speaker 1: good enough. And that's just going to make the fans
Speaker 1: even crazier, which makes them less want to go on stage.
Speaker 1: So Jimmy, who's out DJing to try and calm the
Speaker 1: crowd down, gets called up by an aid and he
Speaker 1: goes backstage to see what's wrong, and he's told that,
Speaker 1: like you know, the band isn't going to play. These
Speaker 1: instruments aren't good enough, Like they're just going to leave.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from the book In Plain Sight.
Speaker 1: Saville's response was characteristically blunt. He pointed to where three
Speaker 1: of his largest minders were standing and growled, you've got
Speaker 1: the time it takes this stage to revolve to make
Speaker 1: your mind up. If you're not going to play, you're
Speaker 1: going to be unconscious because my minders are going to
Speaker 1: chin all of you. I'll accept drummer Charlie Watts, that
Speaker 1: is Saville claimed that Watts looked him up and down
Speaker 1: before speaking. You would, wouldn't you, he said? No, Danger
Speaker 1: replied Saville, and I'll throw you to the fucking audience.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you that. And the Rolling Stones agreed. They
Speaker 1: take their preferred audience instruments and they play on there
Speaker 1: and they go play their show. Right, this is a
Speaker 1: he does this with other people. This is just one
Speaker 1: example of like the way he is. He is very
Speaker 1: comfortable threatening violence even on these big pop stars. Right,
Speaker 1: that's going to be fair. That's that's wild, Like, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: That's unhinged behavior. That that level of aggression. Like I'm
Speaker 4: sorry to make to make Jagger.
Speaker 1: To Mick Jagger. Yeah, and again Mick Jagger. They're young, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kids at this point too. They're not that much
Speaker 1: older than their teenage fans, whereas Jimmy Saville is now
Speaker 1: pushing like thirty something, like he's a mature adult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you can't think of the Stones as like these
Speaker 1: massive figures that they are today. At this point, they're
Speaker 1: a lot less sure of themselves.
Speaker 4: That's great context. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the Stones agree, they play the show,
Speaker 1: and Saville later told an interviewer that had they refused,
Speaker 1: I would have had the bastards chinned and slugged to
Speaker 1: the crowd. If they lived or died, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: mattered to me. He's very open about all this stuff.
Speaker 1: What a maniac. What a fucking maniac. By this point
Speaker 1: in the late sixties, he's a well known MC and
Speaker 1: public figure. Saville got hired to host shows all over
Speaker 1: the country. In nineteen sixty seven, the town of Otley
Speaker 1: hosted their annual civic Ball and named it the Pop
Speaker 1: Civic Ball to attract youngsters. Of course, Jimmy Savill was
Speaker 1: asked to attend as chief guest, and he responded with
Speaker 1: a list of conditions for his appearance. The first was
Speaker 1: that his normal two hundred pound fee had to go
Speaker 1: to a local charity. Right, So that's what you start.
Speaker 1: Your first demand is, don't pay me, send the money
Speaker 1: to a local charity, right, because that deflex suspicion, particularly
Speaker 1: it to flex suspicion. Before his second and third condition,
Speaker 1: I wish to sleep the night on the Chevin, which
Speaker 1: is like a park or something nearby, in a tent
Speaker 1: which you will organize plus sleeping bag and a large torch.
Speaker 1: And this is the answer that the venue gives. I
Speaker 1: will personally organize a tent plus sleeping bags in a
Speaker 1: large torch for you to sleep overnight and moreover, will
Speaker 1: hold you to it. And his third demand is a
Speaker 1: guard of honor of six young ladies in another tent,
Speaker 1: of course, to keep me safe. And the venue answers,
Speaker 1: I'll organize a guard of honor of six young ladies,
Speaker 1: but I won't be held to their comple alliance or
Speaker 1: your safety. Get it. The town, you know, whatever representative
Speaker 1: of the town is like, I'll make sure there's the
Speaker 1: six young ladies for you, but I won't make sure
Speaker 1: you don't bless him. Haa.
Speaker 4: This is called sex trafficking.
Speaker 1: This is in writing that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's horrific. That's deeply horrible.
Speaker 1: That's repub Oh, it gets so much worse. This happens
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 4: And again I've been angry with the entire episode, but
Speaker 4: that is absolutely just I'm disgusted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is public at the time. He talks
Speaker 1: about it to the media, that he made the town
Speaker 1: provide him with sixteen aged girls, and they did. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows this, it's not hidden. His fourth condition is that
Speaker 1: he'd be given a tour of the local hospital, because
Speaker 1: he likes volunteering at hospitals. We'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: lot more. But he loves going on, you know, doing
Speaker 1: his good charitable work at these hospitals. Right, And so
Speaker 1: you see, you Sandwich, I want teenage girls and privacy
Speaker 1: so that I can molest them in between money to charity,
Speaker 1: volunteer at a local hospital.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: You see what he's doing here. You know, now all
Speaker 1: of these becomes standard demands for him in the years
Speaker 1: to come. Whenever he's asked to do something like this.
Speaker 1: He is constantly hosting events and he will always say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need you to provide me with this number of
Speaker 1: girls as an honor guard or whatever, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: to camp with, sometimes to hang out with, sometimes to
Speaker 1: like wake him up in the morning. Right. And I'll
Speaker 1: always open with a charitable donation and then in the
Speaker 1: middle is the girls, and then at the end is
Speaker 1: some other like good cause, volunteering at a hospital or something.
Speaker 1: All of these demands, particularly for the honor guard, were
Speaker 1: publicized at the time. Local press wrote about this. Jimmy
Speaker 1: wrote about this in his autobiography. In his autobiography, which
Speaker 1: is published after he has awarded the o or Order
Speaker 1: of the British Empire, which is a step below knighthood.
Speaker 1: In his autobiography, he describes the teenage girls that this
Speaker 1: town provided with him him with as looking good enough
Speaker 1: to eat. Now, I don't know precisely what this is
Speaker 1: not a hidden.
Speaker 2: What year are we in Robert here?
Speaker 1: Sixty seven? Sixty seven?
Speaker 2: And how old would he be?
Speaker 1: Roughly, he's like he's got to be he's like twenty
Speaker 1: nine pushing.
Speaker 4: Thirty and has the face of that is it looks.
Speaker 1: Like Jimmy Saville. Yeah, I don't know precisely how old
Speaker 1: the girls were, but they all seem to have been
Speaker 1: under eighteen. In the book in Plain Sight Davy's Rights,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about a woman who told it, who
Speaker 1: was one of these girls and talked to him years
Speaker 1: later about it. Right. The woman recalled that it was
Speaker 1: bitterly cold when the girls got into their sleeping bags
Speaker 1: and the separate tenth that had been set up for
Speaker 1: them in that clearing. It was at this point, in
Speaker 1: the early hours of the morning, that Jimmy Saville, who
Speaker 1: had been playing them with vodka all night but not
Speaker 1: drinking himself, came in and tried it on with each
Speaker 1: of the girls. Although the woman refused to elaborate on
Speaker 1: what had happened on the grounds that she didn't think
Speaker 1: it fair on the others in the tent that night.
Speaker 1: She did describe Jimmy Saville as a disgusting old man
Speaker 1: and a pervert. Her version of events was that they
Speaker 1: were saved when youths from the rugby club shot out
Speaker 1: the paraffin lamps with air rifles. They had followed us
Speaker 1: up there, she said. She described the girls huddling in
Speaker 1: the tent while a fight broke out between Savel and
Speaker 1: the youths. Saville was violent, really nasty. Once he turned,
Speaker 1: she added, thank god the salute to those teenagers shooting
Speaker 1: in tent with an air rifle. Thank God for you.
Speaker 2: The honor guard term is like so ironic and disgusting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and also.
Speaker 1: One of the grossest things I've ever heard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was gonna ask you. You said the vodka thing.
Speaker 5: But like, is he is this a common thing that
Speaker 5: he's like applying them.
Speaker 1: He does not seem to have been very much of
Speaker 1: a drinker or much of a I'm sure he did some,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't seem to be much of a drinker
Speaker 1: or march into drugs. But he lies girls with them.
Speaker 1: He does a lot of that in this period of
Speaker 1: time and later, so we'll talk more about that. But
Speaker 1: this is as good a time as any to go
Speaker 1: to ads.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 1: We're back. So the same year that Jimmy Saville helped
Speaker 1: host the oughtly pop civic Ball, a magazine called People.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is the People magazine we have today.
Speaker 1: I think it was a different magazine called People launched
Speaker 1: an investigation into Savill's predilection for young girls, based on
Speaker 1: numerous complaints by underaged girls that he had raped or
Speaker 1: otherwise abused them. This is happening as early as nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. The investigation was never published, though, because the
Speaker 1: editor of the magazine, Sam Campbell, had hired Jimmy Saville
Speaker 1: as a columnist because he's going to draw on young readers,
Speaker 1: and so basically he's like, we're not going to publish
Speaker 1: an investigation over the whether or not this guy molesting girls.
Speaker 1: He's one of our most popular columnists, you know. In
Speaker 1: January of nineteen seventy two, after receiving the Obe People,
Speaker 1: this magazine published a four part series with Jimmy titled
Speaker 1: Me and My three Thousand Birds At Last, Jimmy Savill's
Speaker 1: own story, give you a guess as to what that's about.
Speaker 2: Disgusting, Oh my god, yep.
Speaker 1: Now, when you're in three thousands of very realistic I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe not at this point in time, but
Speaker 1: his victim's number in the thousands.
Speaker 2: And when you're amusing a pedophile of distinction with his ob.
Speaker 1: With his ob yes, yes, pedophile ob. Now, when you're
Speaker 1: abusing women and girls at the rate Jimmy was during
Speaker 1: this period, you're going to need a close circle of
Speaker 1: cop friends if you want to avoid trouble. And from
Speaker 1: the start of his period of major fame in the
Speaker 1: late sixties through the early seventies up to the end
Speaker 1: of his life, the adult men that Jimmy Savills primarily
Speaker 1: social with appear to have been police officers. When he's
Speaker 1: hanging out with other adult men, they are often, if
Speaker 1: not mainly, cops. Those are his best friends.
Speaker 2: Is because they would all the cops. Yeah, they would
Speaker 2: be bastards.
Speaker 1: During the height of his dance hall days, Manchester police
Speaker 1: officer Lewis the Lion Harper was Per Davies Jimmy Savile's
Speaker 1: eyes and ears. He's watching to hear if there are
Speaker 1: any complaints he needs to take care of Harper was
Speaker 1: the chief superintendent of the City Center and a prominent
Speaker 1: member of the Vice squad. As a note, when Harper died,
Speaker 1: he left more in his will than he had earned
Speaker 1: in total during his time on the police force. Not
Speaker 1: cricket at all, not getting bribed by Jimmy. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gave him that nickname.
Speaker 4: Fucking yeah, like the lion Taiwan land Master asked, shit.
Speaker 1: What the One of my sources for these episodes was
Speaker 1: an article in the UK Tribune by Ferrell Kenney. He
Speaker 1: notes that in Sable's out of print nineteen seventy four autobiography,
Speaker 1: As It Happens, Jimmy referenced a female Manchester police officer
Speaker 1: who attempted to bring charges against him for harboring a
Speaker 1: teenage runaway. That means a girl ran away from home
Speaker 1: and Jimmy was keeping her in one of his houses, right, Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: this officer was, in Saval's words, dissuaded from going through
Speaker 1: with this by her colleagues. Quote because it was well
Speaker 1: known that where I to go, I would probably take
Speaker 1: half the station with me. Now does that mean that
Speaker 1: if Saval were charged, half the station would quit because
Speaker 1: they were his friends, or does that mean that if
Speaker 1: Savile were charged, he would tell stories about half the
Speaker 1: station because he was providing half the Manchester Police force
Speaker 1: with teenaged girls to molest. What do you think is
Speaker 1: more likely?
Speaker 2: That's so shape.
Speaker 1: I know what I think is more likely the finest
Speaker 1: Manchester's finest. Yeah, good guys. Now we know that during
Speaker 1: this period where Jimmy was managing his dance halls, doing
Speaker 1: Top of the Pops and starting with the TV show
Speaker 1: he's going to start, we'll talk about in part three
Speaker 1: jim Will Fix It, he impregnated at least two teenaged girls. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to give you one of these accounts,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there were more. I'm going to only
Speaker 1: give one of these accounts in the interest of just
Speaker 1: not breaking everybody's spirit. But you should know this is
Speaker 1: happening more than the one time we're talking about.
Speaker 4: My spirit's pretty broken before you even got to this part.
Speaker 4: This is just like yeah, yeah, christ.
Speaker 1: Now, this particular allegation that I'm going to relate came
Speaker 1: out in October of twenty twelve, which is after Saville's death,
Speaker 1: But the alleged crime occurred in nineteen sixty four, when
Speaker 1: the woman in question was sixteen years old and a virgin.
Speaker 1: She had started an Elvis Presley fan club, and Savill
Speaker 1: invited her on his Radio Luxembourg show to talk about
Speaker 1: the fan club she had, and he tells her afterwards, well,
Speaker 1: I'm flying to America soon and I'm going to visit Elvis.
Speaker 1: I'll be hanging out with him, So why don't you
Speaker 1: send me a picture of you that I can give
Speaker 1: to the King. Right, So she does, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from Endplaine Sight as to what happened next.
Speaker 1: According to the woman, who did not want to reveal
Speaker 1: her identity, on returning from the States, Savile phoned her
Speaker 1: house and told her he had a present for her
Speaker 1: from Elvis. She was understandably thrilled and recalled walking to
Speaker 1: the London hotel where Savill was staying. She said he
Speaker 1: met her in his pajamas. He then took her into
Speaker 1: his room, pinned her to the wall, and started kissing her.
Speaker 1: The man said she pleaded for him to stop. He whispered,
Speaker 1: You're an angel, before pushing her onto the bed and
Speaker 1: raping her. Afterwards, when he's done, he tosses her some
Speaker 1: badges from the new Elvis Presley movie kissing cousins and
Speaker 1: leaves that's the present from Elvis, So she goes home.
Speaker 1: After this, she misses her next two periods, and she
Speaker 1: realizes that she's pregnant. She attempts to induce a miscarriage. Eventually,
Speaker 1: her father takes her to receive an illegal abortion, which
Speaker 1: she endures without painkillers. This was physically damaging enough that
Speaker 1: she endures multiple miscarriages as a young woman in her twenties. Again,
Speaker 1: not the only story like this, And again to a
Speaker 1: point of even when someone's technically legally of the age,
Speaker 1: he is still often raping the people who are legally
Speaker 1: of age. It's just that who's gonna charge him with rape?
Speaker 1: The cops he's friends with.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, Robert, Yeah yeah, I wasn't quite ready for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we're We're only going to relate one
Speaker 1: of the that the stories of girls that pregnant. But
Speaker 1: there's more than one. There's more than one. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many there were. Could have been hundreds, to
Speaker 1: be honest, Yeah, it could have been hundreds.
Speaker 4: It's hard to hear, but it happened, and like we
Speaker 4: can't ignore, yeah, that these types of things had to happen.
Speaker 4: To so many people.
Speaker 5: But wow, I'm the euphemism of honor guard or whatever,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of real bleak stuff behind these euphemistic terms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just to say I'm so fucking glad that guy's dead.
Speaker 1: I really, he's for sure dead.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, but he had to pay for it a
Speaker 5: little didn't ever pay for it.
Speaker 4: And so many such cases where this has happened, which
Speaker 4: is why it's important that we talk about horrific things
Speaker 4: that have happened in history and today so that like
Speaker 4: people know.
Speaker 2: What to look for.
Speaker 4: But this is, like, there were so many people where
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 1: That's only gonna be more of it as this goes on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's part of what's really hard to
Speaker 4: stomach for me, because so many people are aware and like,
Speaker 4: honestly hearing that you know, not that you know, any
Speaker 4: cop isn't a bastard, but hearing that a woman knew
Speaker 4: about this.
Speaker 1: And a woman and tried to do something, try to.
Speaker 4: Do something, but honestly, girl didn't try that hard, and
Speaker 4: like that's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Well this, I mean, you know, she may have been
Speaker 1: threatened with murder, Like, yeah, a bunch of her fellow
Speaker 1: cops may have said, well, fucking kill Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you know, I'm like not to not to
Speaker 1: hold water for a cop, and I literally don't know,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine it pretty brutal.
Speaker 4: All these people are responsible for his crimes, Like you knew,
Speaker 4: you fucking knew what he was, and like he one
Speaker 4: of the most vile people to ever live.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well and one of the At this point
Speaker 1: in the story, you do you can still say the
Speaker 1: thing that, like this is all happening within this subculture
Speaker 1: pop music and the people who are like presenting it
Speaker 1: to the nation where this kind of behavior is extremely
Speaker 1: common and normalized. That's true up to this point in
Speaker 1: the story. It is not going to be true for
Speaker 1: most of Jimmy Savile's life as a sex offender. When
Speaker 1: I tell you at this point that people implicated in
Speaker 1: his behavior are some cops and other DJs and like
Speaker 1: BBC people working at the time. By the end of
Speaker 1: this story, the entire royal family, including Princess die are
Speaker 1: implicated in degrees of his crimes. In addition to the
Speaker 1: In addition to Margaret Thatcher, the whole ruling class of
Speaker 1: England is implicated in what Jimmy Savile did. So that's cool.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in part three and four next week.
Speaker 2: God, I love Princess Die. That ruined him?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean maybe she didn't know anything. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Prince Prince Charles shere did, King Charles sure did. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we'll in the subsequent episodes. I don't know. I know
Speaker 1: that Die was a good friend of Savile's for the
Speaker 1: for a chunk of her life. I don't know what
Speaker 1: she knew, but we know what Charles knew and Prince Andrew.
Speaker 5: Is so funny is when I saw your Epstein episode,
Speaker 5: I was like jealous of the guest and I manifested
Speaker 5: too hard because look what episode I wound up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because he's very much in some ways is
Speaker 1: kind of like the English equivalent, right, you know, in
Speaker 1: some very different ways. And we'll talk about all that
Speaker 1: in part three and four. But yeah, you want to
Speaker 1: up plug your book before we roll out here.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: You guys, Girls Gone Girl Gone Wild. Girl's Gone Wild
Speaker 5: is similar to this but different. But Girl Gone Wild
Speaker 5: is a feminist manifesto.
Speaker 2: So if you need something to just.
Speaker 5: Wash out that gross taste in your mouth after that
Speaker 5: brutal rape scene we just heard.
Speaker 2: Order yourself a copy. That's the best plug I have.
Speaker 1: Cool Well, sorry for these episodes being so bleak, folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not going to get better, but hey, we'll get
Speaker 1: to you know, we will get to talk about Jimmy
Speaker 1: Savile experiencing some degree have come upance, not unfortunately if
Speaker 1: the legal variety. But I am saving a good story
Speaker 1: for the end of this just as a palette cleanser.
Speaker 1: So I'll promise you all.
Speaker 2: That can't wait.
Speaker 4: Well, shit, thanks.
Speaker 1: Until next week. Everybody you know touch grass I had
Speaker 1: a dog. If if you know a BBC executive, sock
Speaker 1: them right in the teeth, you know, I mean it.
Speaker 1: Probably at this point all those guys are gone, but
Speaker 1: probably still deserve it.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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