Today I did something I don’t usually do; I clicked the link on Netflix’s featured show. As I’m sure many of my generation did, the revelations about about Jimmy Savile tore a hole in our national consciousness, here in the UK. Not a massive hole, but it was there, it was sobering, and it was sad.
It’s one thing to find out that a politician or an actor is a serial child abuser, it’s another thing entirely when it’s someone who entertained you through childhood. There’s very few people my age who hadn’t sat down to watch Jim’ll Fix It and Top of the Pops. When you’re a kid, you don’t always have a clear sense of what’s strange or not. But then, on reflection, Jimmy Savile was an extremely odd man. It wasn’t just those around him that knew this; my mother took a dislike to him as well. She didn’t stop us watching the shows, but she would let us know her misgivings. “There’s something not right about him” she would say “I wouldn’t be happy if you children went on that show”. It’s not fashionable these days to talk of women’s intuition, but it seems undeniable in this case…
If my mum felt this unease through a TV screen, what was it like for those around this monstrous man? This documentary has found startling footage of Savile all but admitting to his crimes, on camera. In one clip he is sitting on some steps, washing his feet after a run. As he talks another man comes from off screen carrying a young woman. She is then put on her feet next to Savile, as he says “put it down, let me me have look. Turn it around. Yes. Later, later. Take it away”…. It’s sickening.
Through this documentary, and other content about him, it becomes clear that he had become an expert at hiding in plain sight. By turning the truth into a joke, he implied it was untrue. The joke is outrageous, too outrageous to be true, surely? There is a montage where he produces the line “my case is next Thursday”, meaning a court case. He reeled this off multiple times, as a response to questions about his “love life”. And everyone laughed…
Another shocking thing is Savile’s association with the most famous and powerful people in the land. He was a friend and regular house guest of Margaret Thatcher, he frequently exchanged private letters with Prince Charles. I find it almost inconceivable that the government’s intelligence agencies and protection teams didn’t find something awry with him. Surely they could’ve seen the smoke, even if they couldn’t see the flames?
In some ways, Jimmy Savile’s story maps the moral arc of sexuality since the Second World War. In the immediate post-war period, traditional heterosexual nuclear families were assumed. Any other expression of sexuality was taboo. The first inkling of the sexual revolution came at the end of the fifties, and then gathered pace through the sixties. This was accompanied by a strong cultural push to break those old taboos. I remember this personally; it was still going on in the eighties. In media there was an almost ideological drive to extinguish all taboos, including ones which have now been firmly reinstated. The film Lolita came out in 1962, and it depicted a sexual relationship between a older man and a 12 year-old girl. There was no attempt to “cancel” this movie, in fact it was nominated for an Oscar, it was big hit.
So this was the environment in which Savile, who became a DJ in 1958, developed his stardom. Which is not to excuse his utterly vile behaviour. Rather, it’s to point out the complicity of the culture that surrounded him. In their rush to undo the taboos of the past, perhaps the British media elites should have considered why some of those taboos were in place. Or all of them, for that matter. Supposedly these proudly intellectual people could understand Chesterton’s Fence. If they had, perhaps they would have had a closer look at Savile’s behaviour. And at Rolf Harris, and Stuart Hall, and all of the others. And by closer look, I mean report them to the police. But the taboos! Those taboos had to be smashed! Sexual license needed to be granted, even when children were the collateral damage. Even when Savile boasted of his exploits in his 1976 autobiography, they never lifted a finger. They must have known, some very powerful and influential people must have known, and many of those people are still around.
Anyway, sorry. In the last couple of paragraphs I rather went off on one. The Netflix documentary is good, I know more from watching it than I did before. I also know that I want to think no more about the grotesque and evil person of Jimmy Savile.