In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (45 page)

Not long afterwards,
This Is Your Life
took the unprecedented step of surprising the same unsuspecting star for a second time. But time, rather than Jimmy Savile, it was the newly titled Sir James Savile OBE who was to be honoured, although there was dissent over the decision among members of the production staff.

Roy Bottomley was the chief scriptwriter on
This Is Your Life
, and a former news reporter on the
Daily Sketch
. According to Norman Giller, a fellow scriptwriter on the show, Bottomley refused point-blank to work on the Savile tribute. ‘I’m not going to write it,’ Giller remembered his colleague saying, ‘The man’s notorious.’ Bottomley then explained how former Fleet Street colleagues had been trying for years to find evidence that Savile ‘molested underage girls’.
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Jimmy Savile’s eldest sister Mary arrived from Australia to join her other five siblings, including Johnnie, with whom he was now reconciled. She was followed through the famous doorway by former Mecca chairman Eric Morley; the wrestler Big Daddy; disc jockeys Tony Blackburn and Dave Cash. Leeds General Infirmary head porter Charles Hullighan, a director of Jimmy Savile Ltd, spoke fondly of how they secured ‘plunder’ from their visits to companies in and around Leeds. Former
Top of the Pops
colleague David Jacobs reminisced about the long-haired upstart from up north. Bill Wyman, recently married to Mandy Smith, who he had started dating when she was just 13, paid tribute to how Jimmy had been one of the first to support The Rolling Stones.

And still they came: members of the Royal Marines; patients and staff from Stoke Mandeville; Janet, his secretary, who explained how Savile now planned to build a children’s hospital in Peterborough.
Jim’ll Fix It
producer Roger Ordish; the boxer Frank Bruno; Alan Franey, Jimmy Corrigan and members of his running club who jogged onto the set in their marathon gear.
Among those already seated were the magician Paul Daniels and Peter Jaconelli, former mayor of Scarborough.
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Towards the end of the show, host Michael Aspel read out a message from a special contributor: ‘Jimmy, I and millions more salute you. God bless. Margaret Thatcher.’ Off the hook indeed.

56. AND A BIT OF LEG-OVER AND CHIPS

I
t was my last full day on the
QE2
. I woke up with a hacking cough and decided to go for a wander. There was no sign of Jimmy Savile and we had made no firm plans to meet. We were both ready to get off now; last night he’d told me he was looking forward to getting home. For him, home meant a couple of days at a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire before heading the short distance to Stoke Mandeville, the second of his three-pronged circuit of hospitals. ‘You’re totally knacked by the last two days of a cruise,’ he’d confided while puffing on a cigar in the bar.

When I found him, near the scruffy golf net located midway up the terrace of decks at the rear of the ship, he was looking bedraggled. His hair was wild and he’d worn the same black shell suit every day of the cruise. He had been performing pretty much non-stop for two weeks. He was still at it though, telling a story I’d heard already on a couple of occasions to two old boys wearing trousers pulled high onto the foothills of their bellies. He was regaling them with how he’d poured two bottles of vodka into the water urn and that’s why everyone was legless. They were not legless of course, but the men still laughed. Savile asked whether they fancied a glass and they guffawed. The stories seemed to be sapping his energy.

‘Have you enjoyed your cruise, Jim?’ asked one of the men. ‘Horrible,’ deadpanned Savile. ‘Too much sunshine, too many loose women.’

I picked out a sun lounger from the rows arranged neatly on the deck, and kicked off my flip-flops. After a few minutes, Savile
spotted me. He came over, sitting on the corner of the next lounger along. The sun was starting to burn so he unzipped his black shell suit top to reveal a blue T-shirt bearing the legend ‘All I want is world peace’ and then in smaller writing underneath, ‘ … and a bit of leg-over and chips’.

He then pulled off his tracksuit trousers. Underneath he was wearing a pair of scoop-legged nylon running shorts, the type worn on
Superstars
in the 1980s. From the front the shorts were cut in a shape that reminded me of the upside down, half-moon leather sheath worn by Tarzan, only these were in a metallic blue. His legs were lean and largely hairless; he was in good shape for an 81-year-old.

We talked about his John O’Groats to Land’s End walk in 1971. ‘Thirty one days, 932 miles,’ said Jimmy, who liked to boil his achievements down to bald figures.

I then asked him about Sally, a woman we had spent some time with during the evenings on the ship. She was recovering from leukaemia, having lost two previous husbands to cancer. I’d never before seen how he behaved around women he liked – and I reckoned he liked her. I’d watched him carrying on and doing his act, pretending he was having heart palpitations or asking a giggling victim back to his cabin for a massage. But Sally was not the type to giggle and play along. She was too sophisticated for that, plus she seemed fond of him: curious, too.

Would he see Sally again? ‘Doubt it,’ he said without a flicker. ‘I’ve done her a favour because she’s had a tough time. And she’s done me a favour because she’s with me.’ He explained what he meant, referencing the rather tipsy young woman who had stumbled up to him in the bar a couple of evenings back and asked whether she could sit on his lap.

‘When that Scotch girl, who is done up to the nines every evening, comes over and starts carrying on with me, I’ve got Sally with me so her old man doesn’t get the hump. Otherwise, it would be all meetings are off, including Uttoxeter.’ I nodded but said nothing. ‘They’re all brain damage,’ muttered Savile.

Looking back, he was acknowledging that Sally was being used as a cover. How many times had he used women like this? At the time, I seriously doubted whether the man in the bar feared his wife, who was probably in her mid-thirties, was in any imminent danger of being whisked off her feet by an octogenarian with bleached white hair and a penchant for polyester.

Savile got up and moved off to stand in a shaded corner by the top of the stairs. The shorts, which were shorter than I first feared, were becoming alarmingly translucent thanks to the sun pouring through a porthole behind him. I really did not want to see an outline of what lay beneath.

This ensemble was completed by white towelling sports socks pulled up to the lower calf and a green knotted handkerchief on his head. It was like a Chapman brothers’ reimagining of a postcard caricature from the golden days of the British seaside.

‘Morning,’ bleeped Savile as two women pulled themselves up the stairs. One of the women checked her watch: ‘But it’s the afternoon now Jimmy,’ she said. He looked straight ahead: ‘Why tell the truth when you can get away with a lie.’

57. ULTIMATE FREEDOM

J
immy Savile kept on running: the London Marathon and eight fun runs and half marathons in 1988; the London Marathon and a further nine shorter distance races in 1989; the London Marathon and no fewer than thirteen half marathons or fun runs in 1990.

But the fanatical pursuit of endorphins produced by exercise was not enough, not even allied to his commitments at Broadmoor, which became less pressing after the appointment of Franey and the new hospital board, and his ongoing radio and TV work. The report published in 2013 by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC recorded allegations against Jimmy Savile of 19 sexual assaults in the years between 1986 and 1990: six at the BBC, three at Stoke Mandeville and ten in other locations.
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He needed a focus; something that would enable him to do deals, raise money and shore up his reputation. The next multi-million pound project, he decided, was to be a new children’s hospital in Peterborough, where the locally based travel company Thomas Cook had given him a flat after hiring him as a highly paid business consultant. Like other big businesses, it saw Jimmy Savile as a man who could open many doors along the corridors of power.

‘It will be much more than just a hospital,’ Savile explained of the 60-bed facility he planned to create on a green field site next to the existing Edith Cavell Hospital. ‘It will be somewhere that children will enjoy going to … When I built Stoke Mandeville, I told the architects I wanted a stately home with a hospital inside. This time I want a magic castle with a hospital inside.’
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He’d sketched out his plans on a scrap of paper during the wedding reception for his long-suffering secretary Janet Rowe (now Janet Cope), before giving them to the Fitzroy Robinson Partnership, the firm of architects that designed the National Spinal Injuries Centre. Savile said that he was putting in £50,000 of his own money and hoped Thomas Cook would contribute to the tune of a further £1 million. Chief executive Peter Middleton certainly sounded enthusiastic: ‘[I] told him that Thomas Cook would support it if he got if off the ground.’
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Jimmy Savile was confident that he could make it happen. After all, he had just persuaded Hitachi and the Japanese government to sell him a £2 million magnetic resonance imaging system for considerably less than half price, and talked Princess Diana into dropping into Stoke Mandeville for the machine’s unveiling.

His role as a trusted confidant and adviser to the royals was reaffirmed in early June 1991 when Prince William was rushed to hospital with a depressed fracture of the skull after a schoolmate caught him with a glancing blow while swinging a golf club. Diana travelled with her oldest son in the ambulance while Prince Charles followed behind in his Aston Martin. Later that evening, as the second in line to the throne underwent surgery, Charles took the decision to honour an existing engagement by going to the opera.

Dave Eager remembers the day of the accident clearly. He was in London on business and had phoned Jimmy, as per usual. On this occasion, though, Savile sounded different. Eager was told to get to the flat on Park Crescent as soon as he possibly could. ‘So I got round there and he opened the door … in the full morning suit, the royal insignia, the royal crest, everything,’ said Eager. ‘He was dressed in the full Monty as a knight.’

When Eager asked what was going on, Savile replied that he had received a call from Prince Charles, who had been due to present the Duke of Edinburgh Awards as his father was away. According to Eager, when Prince William sustained his injuries, ‘Prince Charles said to Jim, “I am sure the people receiving [the] awards,
providing it’s all done at Buckingham Palace, will be just as thrilled to have them presented by Sir James Savile, so please will you represent me and Prince Philip?”’

He said Savile was desperate for someone to witness him being picked up in the royal car, dressed in the full regalia. ‘You are one of the few people who can look at me and say, this guy from 22 Consort Terrace has finally achieved something,’ he told Eager. ‘You know what it means to me to be dressed up like this. Stay and watch me.’ Eager did as he was told: ‘The car came up and we waved each other goodbye,’ he said. ‘I felt so proud of him.’

Although there were to be no further Christmas lunches at Chequers now that his friend Margaret Thatcher had gone, Jimmy Savile’s name still carried weight within the Department of Health. Having cajoled Bovis into offering to build the buildings of the new children’s hospital at cost price, and secured commitments of £2 million from the European Community, as well as the promise of a further £1 million from Thomas Cook, Savile was invited to Downing Street to brief ministers on the plans. He claimed to have raised a further £1 million himself but was still some £5 million short of his target.

‘The only problem I have at the moment is with my conscience,’ he explained. ‘In the middle of a recession I don’t feel I can go as strong getting money from the public as I did with Stoke Mandeville. I’ve got £3–4,000,000 worth of promises but you can’t ask companies to pay up when they’ve got their backs to the wall.’
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Three days after his talks with government ministers, Jimmy Savile’s influence within the royal family was laid bare in a story published in the
Sunday Times
. Under the headline ‘Truce’, royal author and journalist Andrew Morton, a man trusted by Princess Diana and her inner circle, described the ‘DJ, television personality, indefatigable charity worker and obsessive marathon runner’ as ‘an unlikely royal peacemaker’.
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Morton revealed how Princess Diana had sought Jimmy Savile out for a ‘little homespun advice’ after being angered and upset by a story in a rival newspaper highlighting the parlous state of
her marriage. Princess Diana had celebrated her 30th birthday alone, and anonymous sources close to the Prince of Wales briefed the press in defence of his decision to stay at Highgrove rather than join his wife in London.

In the
Daily Mail
story that had so offended Diana, royal correspondent Nigel Dempster wrote, ‘Charles’s friends believe that [she] is much more adept at projecting her image and as a result has generally had a more sympathetic press. Perhaps this is why Charles’s friends are trying to redress matters. They were determined that the other side of the story should come out.’

According to Morton, ‘It was the fiercest of the thunderstorms to break over a royal relationship entrapped in a summer of discontent.’

On the day after Diana’s birthday, Jimmy Savile spoke to both Charles and Diana in an attempt to pour oil on troubled waters. ‘[His] opinions carry weight in both camps,’ wrote Morton, whose sources are acknowledged as having been impeccable. ‘As the unofficial court jester, he articulates opinions that courtiers can only think.’ By the end of the week, an uneasy truce had been declared.

Janet Cope told me her boss was ‘in and out of Kensington Palace’ in this period: ‘Diana was on the phone to him quite a lot.’ Dave Eager recalled what Savile told him about his approach with the royals. ‘Jim would say, quite clearly, that Charles was born into an era when the media expanded so fast there wasn’t time for somebody who was focused on something else to realise how the media was developing and affecting their lives. He had a lot of sympathy for the way Charles was not treated very well by the media. They didn’t understand the life that Charles was brought up in. Jim empathised with Charles and highly respected him. He said to me, “There are certain people in life where you believe what they are saying, and they believe what you are saying. And Charles, when he says something, you believe that you are getting it straight from the heart.” That’s why he respected him.’

Ken Wharfe, Diana’s former protection officer, has his own take on the ministrations of this unlikeliest of advisers. ‘[He] used to just turn up at Kensington Palace and at functions. When Diana was carrying out an engagement around the country he would just turn up out of the blue like it was the Jimmy Savile visit rather than the Princess Diana visit. I don’t think Diana was a great fan of his in the way that the Prince of Wales was.’
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That said, Savile was able to convince Diana to visit Peterborough in 1991 to take part in the 150th anniversary celebrations for Thomas Cook. He also got her interested in the work done at Broadmoor, and offered her sanctuary there on days when she needed time out of the spotlight.

A week or so after representing Prince Charles and his father, Jimmy Savile was back on royal duty. By day, he entertained Norma Major, Barbara Bush and other wives of G7 summit leaders during a visit to Stoke Mandeville, taking the opportunity to kiss up the arm of America’s first lady. By night, he swapped his shell suit for something more formal for the gala reception at Buckingham Palace.

A few years later, Bunny Lewis, the showbusiness manager and record producer who interviewed Savile for national newspapers in his early days and became a close friend, offered his own opinion on why he was so valued by royalty: ‘I don’t think it’s what he sees himself but they see him as. In the past they have considered and accepted his advice very seriously, and indeed benefitted from it … I think he has tried very hard to make them more human.’
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*

Jimmy Savile tried to do the same with some of the more infamous patients at Broadmoor Hospital. In 1991, Frank Bruno, the British heavyweight boxer, was at a crossroads in his life and career. He had lost successive world title fights when he first encountered the TV star and charity worker.

‘I had just finished my third pantomime season when Sir Jimmy took me to one side. He said: “Francis, young man,” – he always
calls me Francis – “I want to ask you a very serious question and your answer could change your life. Do you want to be remembered as a pantomime fairy or as a champion boxer.” It was then I decided to give my all to becoming world champion.’
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It was during the period Savile was mentoring Bruno – encouraging him to join him on charity runs and hospital visits – that he took the heavyweight boxer to Broadmoor for the opening of a new gymnasium. On a tour of the secure ward, he turned to his guest and said, ‘I want you to meet this gentleman.’ He introduced Bruno to a bearded man dressed in a garish shell suit who was leaning against a window ledge. The two chatted for a few minutes.

Bruno asked the man whether he would be using the new fitness equipment and joked that he could do with losing a few pounds. The man replied that fitness wasn’t his thing and asked the fighter, who had recently lost to Mike Tyson, when he was going to be making a comeback. At this point, Jimmy Savile jumped in: ‘He’s fighting me next week,’ he said. The patient replied in that case Frank Bruno had ‘no chance’.
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‘I didn’t know he who was,’ says Bruno of the man. ‘Afterwards Savile asked, “Do you know who you met?”’

Speaking after the exposure of a man he liked and respected enough to have appeared as a friend on
This Is Your Life
and attended his funeral, Bruno told one newspaper: ‘I was in Broadmoor to open a gym, not to meet a man who killed 13 women. Savile planned it. It was not a nice thing to do to me. If I had known it was the Ripper, I’d have tried to get out of it. It was a scary feeling.’

A photographer was on hand to capture the moment Frank Bruno shook hands with Peter Sutcliffe. And there, standing a couple of paces back, was Jimmy Savile clutching a cigar. ‘I didn’t know a photographer was taking pictures,’ insisted Bruno. ‘When the photo came out I rang Savile and said, “What was that all about?” He apologised but by then it was too late. That picture has hounded me. I want to say sorry to every victim’s family and anyone that was upset.’
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Even now he had the trappings of a man who had been accepted into the establishment, Jimmy Savile could not escape the insidious whispers that continued to swarm around him. In truth, he did not help himself, as his radio interview with the consultant psychiatrist Anthony Clare demonstrated.

The exchange, recorded for the Radio 4 series
In the Psychiatrist’s Chair
, was a heated one, and Clare emerged from it bloodied and bruised, reporting he found some of the things Savile had said to be ‘disturbing’.
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Clare was surprised to find his subject had ‘a certain dislike for people’ and held some interesting opinions on the subjects of sharing and sacrifice. ‘He seemed to show no interest in them at all,’ he said. ‘Considering the work he has done and his public persona he appears to be at odds with himself.’

The interview is enthralling, and appears to exemplify what Jimmy Savile had previously said about psychiatrists, namely ‘We should burn shrinks. Burn the bastards.’
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It was a startling comment given his long association with Broadmoor Hospital and his promotion of work done in the field of mental health. ‘If a psychiatrist would think that I was strange,’ Savile said, ‘it would take me absolutely no effort at all to completely unsettle him and maybe show that he himself needed some treatment.’

Savile certainly tried to unsettle Anthony Clare, and as a result the interview was a study in defensiveness and obfuscation. It opened with Clare asking why he agreed to the interview given his opinion on psychiatrists. Savile said he found it hard to say no.

Clare then asked him whether he ever got depressed before quizzing him on his childhood. It did not take long for the dominant and recurring themes to materialise: the supremacy of money in his list of priorities, his total absence of feelings, a complete unwillingness to open up.

In explaining why he had bought seventeen brand new Rolls-Royce motor cars over the course of his life, Savile said, ‘If a
scandal comes up … or the people go off you, you’re finished.’ With a brand new Rolls-Royce in the garage, and everything in his life paid for, he could then ‘go and be very unhappy in the south of France, covered in shame and sunshine and mad birds with bikinis on for a long time because there was a new Rolls-Royce there and a new this and new that.’
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