Jimmy Savile

Author
Discussion

Eric Mc

121,775 posts

264 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
And indication of changed times.

In this case - definitely change for the better.

Justin Cyder

12,624 posts

148 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Not really comparing apples with apples there. Jeremy Forrest is a nobody who ran off with his squeeze in 2012 in the full glare of the media, internet, cctv & all the rest of it.

Jimmy Savile allegedly did his thing in the era of morning newspapers & two news broadcasts a day. Plus as people have queued up to point out it was a different time & Savile was famous, powerful and connected as well as seemingly manipulative & devious.

Lost_BMW

12,955 posts

175 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
maxfan said:
Straight up guv
It was like the triangle out of me school geometry set sprayed black
Set in Aus wasn't it - yet to see the Brazilian version...

eccles

13,720 posts

221 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Lost_BMW said:
maxfan said:
Straight up guv
It was like the triangle out of me school geometry set sprayed black
Set in Aus wasn't it - yet to see the Brazilian version...
If you go back a few years....

Elderly

3,486 posts

237 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
.... Many of these girls would have been underage - although determining which ones were or weren't would have been almost impossible. .......

...... I am less concerned about his activities with the Top of the Pops groupies (which was still illegal it seems)........
IIRC you had to be 16 in order get a TOTP ticket and be allowed into the TOTP studio as a member of the audience, so it could be argued that JS could safely assumme that any of the girls that he came into 'contact' with, were over the age of consent.

Eric Mc

121,775 posts

264 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Is that true?

Was that the case in the 1964-80 era?

Some of the girls weren't "audience", they were partcipators in the programme (dancers, singers etc).

And, in Savile's case, TOTP was only one element of the problem.

Mark34bn

826 posts

176 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
I haven't read all of this so apologies if this has been covered before. I saw Esther Rantzen on TV a few nights back, close up footage of her crying and saying how everybody knew what was going on at the time but nobody did anything.
The more I think about her, the angrier I'm getting. This was a blatant attempt to clear her own name and garner public sympathy. She was a main figure in Childline and did a lot of good, but all the time she knew what (whatever) was going on and stayed silent.
bh

Shaolin

2,955 posts

188 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
Savile's behaviour falls into a very different category. He seemed to be a serial offender - who arranged his entire life around the setting up of scenarios that put him in the company of young (and very often underage) girls. I am less concerned about his activities with the Top of the Pops groupies (which was still illegal it seems), but more his use of charity work to get him access to vulnerable children in care homes and schools of various sorts.
Agreed, his whole life almost seems to have revolved around it. The fact he never married or even had a partner for long implies that it was an obsession that didn't wane like it seems to have with others as they grew up a bit more, got married etc. It also seems that the girls didn't actually fancy him, they were just around and he was an opportunist, so making his advances more like rape or actual rape than with any degree of consensuality (I'm aware that sex with a minor is automatically treated as rape, but you know what I mean).

JS was to my mind at one extreme of a grubby spectrum.

chris watton

22,477 posts

259 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Mark34bn said:
I haven't read all of this so apologies if this has been covered before. I saw Esther Rantzen on TV a few nights back, close up footage of her crying and saying how everybody knew what was going on at the time but nobody did anything.
The more I think about her, the angrier I'm getting. This was a blatant attempt to clear her own name and garner public sympathy. She was a main figure in Childline and did a lot of good, but all the time she knew what (whatever) was going on and stayed silent.
bh
yes

This article sums it up quite well:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/95874...

Part of article said:
.....
Esther's replies left my jaw on the floor. She started by saying that until now it had 'only been one single child's word against the word of a television icon', implying that this meant it was impossible to verify. She went on to say that now it was 'five adult women' who had come forward it was easier, and here was the part that started to make my blood boil, that they were 'cool, credible, sensible women', who through their lack of emotion were 'convincing' to Esther, and so she had started to believe there was some truth to it all. Really? Really, Esther? So, for you to believe allegations of child abuse, it can't only be 'one single child' saying it? And the victims have to be 'cool, credible and sensible' in order to be 'convincing'? And there has to be more than one, and they must never have met one another? Really? Isn't that kind of attitude exactly what you have been campaigning against all your professional life?

The reporter then asked her why she hadn't raised the rumours with anyone at the BBC. Esther's response was that it 'wasn't relevant to anything I was working on at the time'. What, like ChildLine? She then said she was 'only a guest' on Savile's show, effectively suggesting that child abuse was somebody else's department. Exactly whose department we'll never know, as the department of the person who was setting up ChildLine seemed to consider it 'irrelevant'.





Edited by chris watton on Saturday 6th October 10:08

Elderly

3,486 posts

237 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
Is that true?

Was that the case in the 1964-80 era?

Some of the girls weren't "audience", they were partcipators in the programme (dancers, singers etc).

And, in Savile's case, TOTP was only one element of the problem.
Yes IIRC that was true and it was probably the ultimate responsibility of the
'Studio Supervisor' to police it, but back in the day we were not so rigid about these kinds of things things, nobody thought twice about being sold cigarettes, alcohol, getting into see X rated films etc. whilst under age.
In the mid 60's I was a regular member of the 'audience' at Klooks Kleek (go Google who played there thumbup ) but I was certainly under age.

I'm talking about 1970 - 1979 and I'm only talking about TOTP.

I didn't know that there have been allegations involving TOTP "dancers, singers etc.".
With the exception of Pan's People, the girls you saw dancing on the show were audience
members. When you say 'singers' do you mean The Ladybirds, the regular TOTP backing singers?
Or do you mean members of bands and singers appearing on the show each week?

GavinPearson

5,715 posts

250 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Mark34bn said:
I saw Esther Rantzen on TV a few nights back, close up footage of her crying and saying how everybody knew what was going on at the time but nobody did anything..... This was a blatant attempt to clear her own name and garner public sympathy. She was a main figure in Childline and did a lot of good, but all the time she knew what (whatever) was going on and stayed silent.
Exactly. After she had got Childline established she could have easily spoken to the Police and let them put the pieces of the puzzle together. But she didn't, and that makes her a hypocrite of the very worst kind.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
There are some strange posts on here from people who seem to want to justify or explain away the alleged crimes. I can understand arguing that it may not be true but to accept it happened and then stand up for it is plain weird. I guess that's the cult of personality at work, or at worst people trying to protect one of their kind.

wildcat45

8,056 posts

188 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
I think it more wanting to see the shades rather than just blacl and white. There are degrees of bad.

ofcorsa

3,527 posts

242 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Vipers said:
Tiltle should be changed to "Jimmy Saville, rest in hell"

They cant all be lying.....



smile
Like in Dave Jones's case?

Oakey

27,523 posts

215 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
wildcat45 said:
I think it more wanting to see the shades rather than just blacl and white. There are degrees of bad.
And where does abusing underage girls fit in on your scale of evil?

don'tbesilly

13,900 posts

162 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
chris watton said:
Mark34bn said:
I haven't read all of this so apologies if this has been covered before. I saw Esther Rantzen on TV a few nights back, close up footage of her crying and saying how everybody knew what was going on at the time but nobody did anything.
The more I think about her, the angrier I'm getting. This was a blatant attempt to clear her own name and garner public sympathy. She was a main figure in Childline and did a lot of good, but all the time she knew what (whatever) was going on and stayed silent.
bh
yes

This article sums it up quite well:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/95874...

Part of article said:
.....
Esther's replies left my jaw on the floor. She started by saying that until now it had 'only been one single child's word against the word of a television icon', implying that this meant it was impossible to verify. She went on to say that now it was 'five adult women' who had come forward it was easier, and here was the part that started to make my blood boil, that they were 'cool, credible, sensible women', who through their lack of emotion were 'convincing' to Esther, and so she had started to believe there was some truth to it all. Really? Really, Esther? So, for you to believe allegations of child abuse, it can't only be 'one single child' saying it? And the victims have to be 'cool, credible and sensible' in order to be 'convincing'? And there has to be more than one, and they must never have met one another? Really? Isn't that kind of attitude exactly what you have been campaigning against all your professional life?

The reporter then asked her why she hadn't raised the rumours with anyone at the BBC. Esther's response was that it 'wasn't relevant to anything I was working on at the time'. What, like ChildLine? She then said she was 'only a guest' on Savile's show, effectively suggesting that child abuse was somebody else's department. Exactly whose department we'll never know, as the department of the person who was setting up ChildLine seemed to consider it 'irrelevant'.





Edited by chris watton on Saturday 6th October 10:08
I also saw the 'Exposure' programme,which in honesty,I didn't think was very good in terms of producing any evidence that would stand up in a court,and produce a conviction.

Esther Rantzen's contribution came across as self protecting and cleverly acted,crying, and shedding no tears,Rantzen did herself no favours whatsoever.

Reading the Telegraph article,and the piece on the Sky interview,Rantzen clearly doesn't believe the very ethos that Childline is all about,strange,given that she founded the organisation!

Gazzab

21,061 posts

281 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Somewhere I have (had) a signed note from jimmy saville addressed to me and a friend suggesting we should fill our house with beaver! He was narrating a radio ad and my friend was producing it (an instant tea ad back in 1990). They did ask him to state a number of test words which they then cut into a sentence which I am sure was to do with fiddling with children. So I certainly have memories of jimmy saville being considered a danger to children 20 plus yrs ago.

Eric Mc

121,775 posts

264 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
Elderly said:
Yes IIRC that was true and it was probably the ultimate responsibility of the
'Studio Supervisor' to police it, but back in the day we were not so rigid about these kinds of things things, nobody thought twice about being sold cigarettes, alcohol, getting into see X rated films etc. whilst under age.
In the mid 60's I was a regular member of the 'audience' at Klooks Kleek (go Google who played there thumbup ) but I was certainly under age.

I'm talking about 1970 - 1979 and I'm only talking about TOTP.

I didn't know that there have been allegations involving TOTP "dancers, singers etc.".
With the exception of Pan's People, the girls you saw dancing on the show were audience
members. When you say 'singers' do you mean The Ladybirds, the regular TOTP backing singers?
Or do you mean members of bands and singers appearing on the show each week?
At various times over its history, TOTP has used teenage "plants" in the main audience to get the kids dancing, excited etc. They weren't formal dancers in the sense that they didn't perform as part of a troupe (Pan's People, Legs & Co, Zoo etc) but they were hired in and were regular attendees - so were not normal audience.

And, despite the fact that there may have been a lower age limit for the audience, there wasn't for performers. If a child had a hit in the charts (I can think of many under 16s who had chart hits in the 60s and 70s).

We already have one tale of an underage performer (Colleen Nolan - aged 14 at the time) having a run-in with Mr S.

Ozzie Osmond

21,189 posts

245 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
I bet Little Jimmy Osmond could tell some TOTP stories....

OzOs

Oakey

27,523 posts

215 months

Saturday 6th October 2012
quotequote all
don'tbesilly said:
I also saw the 'Exposure' programme,which in honesty,I didn't think was very good in terms of producing any evidence that would stand up in a court,and produce a conviction.
Go on, what sort of evidence are you expecting? Tell us, how do you prove a dirty old man fingered you or fondled your tits? What sort of evidence would be produced from such acts? You keep harping on about evidence so enlighten us all as to what this evidence would be. I've asked this a few times yet not one person has actually said what this damning piece of evidence would consist of.

ETA: This is completely ignoring the fact that the witness statements are evidence themselves as the barrister at the end stated.