The Reckoning - Jimmy Saville drama on BBC

rze99 · October 2023

The whole country taken in by a lying blonde showman with a popular touch.

Hmmmm.

theatreanchor · October 2023

Fingers657 said:

I don’t see why thee BBC waste more licence fee payers money making shite programs like this ?
I would have thought Channel 5 would have done this showing up the BBC for the shite house it really is.
ITV is gaining in its coverup of perverts.
If the Who’s Peter Townshend had been caught after Saville
Would he have gotten away with downloading child porn on his computer and paying for it with his credit card ?
saying it was research for a book ?
Got put on the sex offender’s list and had to report to his local police station.
People don’t seem to care and still buy Who records and tickets to there shows.
As Nessa said on Gavin & Stacey Where’s the book Pete?

According to this article published a couple of days ago, the book (Who I am) came out in 2012. https://www.nme.com/news/music/pete-townshend-was-challenged-by-keir-starmer-in-child-pornography-case-3511129

VimFuego · October 2023

Fingers657 said:

I don’t see why thee BBC waste more licence fee payers money making shite programs like this ?
I would have thought Channel 5 would have done this showing up the BBC for the shite house it really is.
ITV is gaining in its coverup of perverts.
If the Who’s Peter Townshend had been caught after Saville
Would he have gotten away with downloading child porn on his computer and paying for it with his credit card ?
saying it was research for a book ?
Got put on the sex offender’s list and had to report to his local police station.
People don’t seem to care and still buy Who records and tickets to there shows.
As Nessa said on Gavin & Stacey Where’s the book Pete?

you seem angry about something but, as educated as I am, I am buggered if I can work it out from your post.

roberty · October 2023

I want to see Coogan but I don't want to see this story

roberty · October 2023

Fingers657 said:

I don’t see why thee BBC waste more licence fee payers money making shite programs like this ?
I would have thought Channel 5 would have done this showing up the BBC for the shite house it really is.
ITV is gaining in its coverup of perverts.
If the Who’s Peter Townshend had been caught after Saville
Would he have gotten away with downloading child porn on his computer and paying for it with his credit card ?
saying it was research for a book ?
Got put on the sex offender’s list and had to report to his local police station.
People don’t seem to care and still buy Who records and tickets to there shows.
As Nessa said on Gavin & Stacey Where’s the book Pete?

Parklife!

VimFuego · October 2023

Just watched the 1st episode, agree with the general consensus that it's incredibly uncomfortable viewing, and makes you really angry. Coogan gives a fantastic performance, without really looking or sounding like Saville, he is utterly convincing.
IMO, a drama is a valid form to tell this story (and it's a story that needs telling), it's not a documentary but its power lies in telling the story of the victims, but also highlighting his enablers and those who even back then had doubts and concerns.
Despite what some of our more Qanon members may think, this is exactly the story the BBC should be telling.

Timcito · October 2023

I wouldn't watch it. I know pretty much what he got up to: why would I need to know more if not because of some kind of morbid fascination?

That doesn't mean I'm claiming immunity from morbid fascination for some grisly crimes - I'm not. I just don't have much, if any, of it for Jimmy Saville and his dark world.

Open_G · October 2023

I finished watching it yesterday. Apart from the scenes of pebble beaches that were blatantly not in Scarborough I found it a very well told story. The victim narratives were a well used touch and kudos to them for feeling able to tell their stories. Once again I just cannot get my head around how well known it was, yet an open secret almost. Warnings of senior staff to not be alone with him etc.

guitars4you · October 2023

Offset said:

nero1701 said:

Offset said:

nero1701 said:

guitars4you said:

master that funny hand shake and you will be protected

That's nonsense.

You sure?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/02/secret-handshake-police-freemasons

I see no reference to Jimmy there?

There wasn't @nero1701. ;;; @guitars4you simply said that you'd be protected if you were a mason - it was a general point and there's been some acknowledgement that it's an issue.

That said, it wouldn't hugely surprise me. And then look at Cyril Smith - how the fat bastard managed to get away with it for all those years beggars belief. An absolute disgrace. Coverups, the OSA, the intelligence services... all involved. It's all about power, corruption, self-preservation and arse-covering. For every nonce that's exposed, sadly many more will remain undetected or unpunished.

Maybe a hint of being flippant with such a statement, as above, but many reports hint at such issues - It certainly helped with Kenneth Noye - If it didn't protect him, it made further inquiries awkward to progress further

Pjon · October 2023

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know!

)

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

exocet · October 2023

Pjon said:

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know! )

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

That's how TV was back in 70's. It was dominated by old people, both on screen and behind the scenes. That only really changed in late 80s up until where we are now where younger people dominate....at a time when TV is rapidly losing it's relevance.

BillDL · October 2023

@Pjon That's exactly how I saw him. A misfit that could hardly string a sentence together despite apparently being a MENSA member, but a very creepy misfit and not simply a blundering buffoon. I believe he was given the Top Of The Pops job after he had already started charitable fundraising and had some experience at DJ'ing, so I can understand how the BBC was willing to shove him in there as a familiar face despite his bumbling stuttering and oddball persona, but I've always sensed that it was more of a "jobs for the boys" appointment by possibly like-minded people rubbing shoulders in those corridors. Now, I only started seeing him on Jim'll Fix It at the tail end of the 70s when I was 17 (having lived overseas where coincidentally we had a similarly pervy looking old lech as an incongruous childrens entertainer on TV), and I formed my impression of him the first time I saw him.

[EDIT: I suppose must have seen him on TOTP at the start of the 80s. I thought he was finished that by then and my memories of seeing him presenting it were only from having watched later videos]

There were definitely significant enough warning signs for people to have noticed and been suspicious of at the time, but we have to remember that society was a lot more patriarchal back then and victims, supporters of victims, and other people around him would most certainly have been very fearful of being castigated (or worse) for daring to make allegations about such a significantly influential celebrity figure. Peer pressure. Any cop that might have taken a statement and reported the matter to his superiors would definitely have been told to sweep it under the carpet. When we now watch a programme like "Faking It", where psychologists, criminologists and forensic behaviour and lingustic analysts are able to highlight so many significant and very glaring "clues", we have to bear in mind that these experts have had a while to scrutinise short-listed video clips, so these revelations were done "after the fact". You are left wondering why talk show audiences and other people didn't gasp in horror and raise a red flag at the time, but we are seeing the snippets without the fuller context of the entire footage where the man could fool the majority of people with his winking and general buffoonery, like an affable jester.

Timcito · October 2023

exocet said:

Pjon said:

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know! )

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

That's how TV was back in 70's. It was dominated by old people, both on screen and behind the scenes. That only really changed in late 80s up until where we are now where younger people dominate....at a time when TV is rapidly losing it's relevance.

The 70s were very different. I was a teenager through most of them, and it was a time when sexual experimentation and freedom was generally considered all good. The more you had, the better your spiritual balance and street cred were, and as long as the sex was consensual, people didn't worry too much about whether someone was legally of age or whether there was a significant age gap between partners. Even older people had relatively liberal attitudes. When I was 17, I had a girlfriend who had just turned 15. We spent hours and hours on the downstairs floor of the large 3-floor house I grew up in, a floor that was not part of my family's everyday living quarters. My parents had no idea what we were getting up to or much interest. If ever my Dad wanted to go to the downstairs area, he'd knock at the door first in case we got caught in flagrante.

So when people point accusing fingers at people within the entertainment industry for not acting on their suspicions about Saville's dressing room antics with young girls, that's not the same thing as someone not acting on such a suspicion in 2023. Of course, no one had any idea of the things he was doing with children at the hospital, but the fact of having very young groupies was not that unusual at the time. Iggy Pop had an underage girlfriend as did Jimmy Page. One of the Grateful Dead's signature songs was 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.' I do not think the imagined 'little' schoolgirl in question was an 18-year a few months before leaving school.

rze99 · October 2023

Watched the first two episodes last night.

Wife and daughter refused to watch it with me "distasteful in the extreme".. "can't bear Coogan or Saville" .. "morbid tv"... all of which I entirely agree with! But it was quite well done. Victims were well represented, just enough real life historical footage represented,Googan was excellent, unfortunately. I was hoping to turn off 20 minutes in.

Youngsters might not get this, but I was a teenager in the '70s and I'd say, from albeit a junior memory, they were really sex-obsessed and licentious times with zero governance going on over any environments.Teachers shagged pupils at my school and only one was reported and sacked, scoutmaster were known to be "well dodgy", The Sun spent a lot of it's print on sex and pictures of semi naked pretty teenage girls, Priests and Vicars were kid fiddlers hiding behind God, Carry On films celebrate old lechy men culture, wife swapping parties in the suburbs, Top of the Pops had Peodo's People to keep the Dad's interest up. Only Mary Whitehouse thought it was a problem.

It's hardly surprising he got away with it if his bosses had a lot to hide (they no doubt did)having it off with "dolly birds" in the office.

It was a really pervy old time.

Pjon · October 2023

exocet said:

Pjon said:

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know! )

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

That's how TV was back in 70's. It was dominated by old people, both on screen and behind the scenes. That only really changed in late 80s up until where we are now where younger people dominate....at a time when TV is rapidly losing it's relevance.

Maybe in the 70s - and of course, he started on TV before that - but Jim'll Fix It ran from 75 to 94. 1994! Swap Shop had finished and been replaced by other programmes, Byker Grove had been going for a while. 'Youth' TV had been around for years - he was a fossil at 68 years old.

He was presenting TotP from 64 until 1984. Most of the presenters in the 70s, never mind later, were around 20 years younger than him.

guitars4you · October 2023

Pjon said:

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know! )

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

My dad always said that - He couldn't stand him and that was based on presentation and appearance - So well before any 'bad news' came out, dad just thought he was a 'useless celebrity'

suspiciousminds · October 2023

rze99 said:

Youngsters might not get this, but I was a teenager in the '70s and I'd say, from albeit a junior memory, they were really sex-obsessed and licentious times with zero governance going on over any environments.Teachers shagged pupils at my school and only one was reported and sacked, scoutmaster were known to be "well dodgy", The Sun spent a lot of it's print on sex and pictures of semi naked pretty teenage girls, Carry On films celebrate old lechy men culture, wife swapping parties in the suburbs, Top of the Pops had Peodo's People to keep the Dad's interest up. Only Mary Whitehouse thought it was a problem.

It's hardly surprising he got away with it if his bosses had a lot to hide (they no doubt did)having it off with "dolly birds" in the office.

It was a really pervy old time.

Exactly my sentiments, every school had its lecherous nasty old bastards back then who got away with behaviour like that and much more.
I do think though that Coogan played the part very well, and whilst it was difficult to watch - i watched them consecutive on iplayer - i got the impression the BBC skirted around a few individuals who had an idea he was up to no good when in reality it was common knowledge and many more at the corporation must have known.
But, back in those days ratings were a priority and big stars were usually contracted to individual channels.
it was always big news if tv stars swapped channels and for the bbc ratings was paramount.
Losing a big ratings draw like him would have been an issue.
They could have dealt with him but they didnt, probably because there were lots more shenanigans going on at the corporation with others.
I feel very odd about the whole Savile situation now tbh.
As a child in the ‘70’s saturday night for me was Jim’ll fix it, DrWho and the Two Ronnies, Match of the Day - programs i grew up on and loved.
So looking back now knowing someone at the time i liked, (and it was because he was weird,quirky,odd or whatever you want to call it) was a paedo feels really odd and really bad tbh.
As a kid then i spent a lot of time living with my gran in the ‘70’s and living right next door was my aunty and when Top of the pops was on i always watched it at hers.
Savile was presenting one episode and as soon as he came on she said “He’s a Paedophile”
I asked her what that was and the reply was something along the lines of “someone who isnt very nice to children”
She Worked in a care home for years looking after mentally handicapped children.
He never visited that home, but i never forgot what she said.The people that should have been protected were let down, especially by the bbc and the authorities.

elstoof · October 2023

Pjon said:

exocet said:

Pjon said:

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know! )

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

That's how TV was back in 70's. It was dominated by old people, both on screen and behind the scenes. That only really changed in late 80s up until where we are now where younger people dominate....at a time when TV is rapidly losing it's relevance.

Maybe in the 70s - and of course, he started on TV before that - but Jim'll Fix It ran from 75 to 94. 1994! Swap Shop had finished and been replaced by other programmes, Byker Grove had been going for a while. 'Youth' TV had been around for years - he was a fossil at 68 years old.

He was presenting TotP from 64 until 1984. Most of the presenters in the 70s, never mind later, were around 20 years younger than him.

Makes you wonder what sort of dirt he had on the people making programming decisions

exocet · October 2023

Pjon said:

exocet said:

Pjon said:

On the 'how did he get away with it' question, how many people were investigated at the time for child abuse and paedophilia? (Genuine question - at 55 I'm too young to know! )

My parents also couldn't stand him, and may even have described him as creepy, but, very simply, he WAS creepy - he was an old man presenting young people's TV, dressed up in gold suits and covered in jewellery, smoking cigars on screen. There didn't need to be any awareness of his illegal activities to think that he was completely out of place. It was literally the equivalent of my grandfather appearing on screen with his Woodbines.

That's how TV was back in 70's. It was dominated by old people, both on screen and behind the scenes. That only really changed in late 80s up until where we are now where younger people dominate....at a time when TV is rapidly losing it's relevance.

Maybe in the 70s - and of course, he started on TV before that - but Jim'll Fix It ran from 75 to 94. 1994! Swap Shop had finished and been replaced by other programmes, Byker Grove had been going for a while. 'Youth' TV had been around for years - he was a fossil at 68 years old.

He was presenting TotP from 64 until 1984. Most of the presenters in the 70s, never mind later, were around 20 years younger than him.

I don't disagree with your observations. My point was that "youth TV" started out being fronted by old farts from Radio because it was thought that they were suitable because they were experienced / had some kind of connection with the audience because of the music that they had presented elsewhere....very misguided I know! By the later years (which I agree, truely shocking to think that he was still on TV in the 90's - Savile was considered to be a member of the "establishment" - he was in the the government of the day, received a Knighthood in 1990 and was still very popular. Times have moved on in that respect, media outlets are far more likely to drop people once they hit a certain age. Thankfully women are more likely to report such abuse nowadays although I realise that there is still a long way to go.

Sassafras · October 2023

I always found him absolutely sickening and that was before all his sickening exploits became known.
A ridiculous old man trying to pass himself off as a zany teenager. Classic paedo tactic.

JEM · October 2023

rze99 said:

Carry On films celebrate old lechy men culture.

Very much this. Watching Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw leching over Barbara Windsor dressed up as a schoolgirl is horrifying with hindsight. It was hugely popular main stream entertainment at the time.

I often watch films with my 20-something daughter and she's commented many times how weird she finds the relationships between middle aged men and women her age that are so often depicted in that era.

As for The Reckoning, I watched the first episode and agree with others that it's very well done and Coogan is excellent. I'm really not sure I can stomach watching any more though.

Philly_Q · October 2023

Timcito said:
The 70s were very different. I was a teenager through most of them, and it was a time when sexual experimentation and freedom was generally considered all good. The more you had, the better your spiritual balance and street cred were, and as long as the sex was consensual, people didn't worry too much about whether someone was legally of age or whether there was a significant age gap between partners. Even older people had relatively liberal attitudes. When I was 17, I had a girlfriend who had just turned 15. We spent hours and hours on the downstairs floor of the large 3-floor house I grew up in, a floor that was not part of my family's everyday living quarters. My parents had no idea what we were getting up to or much interest. If ever my Dad wanted to go to the downstairs area, he'd knock at the door first in case we got caught in flagrante.

I might be a few years younger than you, but I was a teenager in the latter part of the '70s and it was nothing like that in my house! My parents would never have allowed a girlfriend or boyfriend to stay overnight, even in a separate room. I think some of my friends were allowed to have their girlfriends over, but I don't think any of the parents actively condoned "hanky panky", although some may have turned a blind eye. I think my "peer group" was, broadly speaking, more conservative than yours.

But that's just a personal remembrance, to show that liberal attitudes weren't universal. I do agree that they were very different times. Like @rze99 mentioned, there were teachers in our school who were known to be "handsy" but no-one did anything about it. Crucially, the "dirty old man" was seen as an almost harmless figure, to be laughed at in TV comedies, to be avoided - but still laughed at - in real life, certainly not someone to be reported to the authorities. Of course they were anything but figures of fun for the victims, but that was a story we almost never heard.

BillDL said:

You are left wondering why talk show audiences and other people didn't gasp in horror and raise a red flag at the time, but we are seeing the snippets without the fuller context of the entire footage where the man could fool the majority of people with his winking and general buffoonery, like an affable jester.

One point in the Savile drama which really hit hard, I think it was in the last episode, where he appeared on TV and a young audience were asking him about the hypocrisy of portraying himself as a Christian, a near-saint, but bragging (in his roundabout way) of his sexual exploits. I'm not sure if that was based on a real 1980s/90s programme, I Googled it but couldn't find it (I did come up with an Andrew Neil interview in which Neil gave Savile quite a grilling). Whatever it was, it reminded me that I watched something along those lines many years ago and I was quite shocked how close he came to acknowledging his real sexual activities.

Just finally, on the "everyone knew at the time" point - we all seem to have different anecdotes about friends or family members saying how creepy or even dangerous Savile was. I definitely heard, at school, that kids were kept away from him on Jim'll Fix It - but because he was mad and scary and hated kids, not because he was a paedophile. I actually heard rumours of necrophilia (sorry!) long before I heard anything about him being a paedophile or rapist. For a long time I thought all his stories of taking young women for a ride in his Roller - which he talked about quite openly - were actually bullshit and that he had no interest in real, living people. How wrong that turned out to be.

BillDL · October 2023

Andrew Neil definitely tried his best to encourage Savile to talk and trip himself up and, after trying to deflect questions about his relationships with females and stuffing a banana into his face, he eventually came out with a comment about "Women know too much, but girls don't know so much" (or similar) and, either during that interview or another separate one, he came out with a wisecrack about "being feared in every girl's school in Britain" (or similar). The audience laughed. He was definitely hiding in plain sight and it was all a cat & mouse game and a challenge to him as it is with many people with psychopathic personalities.

crosstownvamp · October 2023

I grew up in the 60s so he was on TOTP all the time, but by the time 'Fix It' started I'd outgrown kid's TV.

All I remember is that he was annoying, but like lots of kids I learnt to do a good imitation of his catch phrases along with that weird yodel. I disagree that he "could hardly string a sentence together" - he seemed very fluent in his gibberish.

DJs were rock stars back then, to kids at least.

That photo of him with Sutcliffe that someone linked to is disturbing.

I won't be watching the program.

guitars4you · October 2023

There was that time he was on 'have I got news for you' - Host Angus Deayton asks him: “You used to be a wrestler didn’t you?” to which Savile responds: “I still am,” adding, “I’m feared in every girls’ school in the country.”

Offset · October 2023

guitars4you said:

There was that time he was on 'have I got news for you' - Host Angus Deayton asks him: “You used to be a wrestler didn’t you?” to which Savile responds: “I still am,” adding, “I’m feared in every girls’ school in the country.”

"In plain sight" indeed...

stonevibe · October 2023

In the mid '80s my father was doing some work at a hospital in London for about a week or so.

He told me about his day at work, back then when I was about 13 maybe 14, and said Saville was a nonce.

The nurses in the children's ward were all trying to get the kids out before Saville arrived for some charity photo shoot with him.

As they all knew he was a menace to children and they were attempting to make sure he was not left alone with any kids by himself.

guitars4you · October 2023

Offset said:

guitars4you said:

There was that time he was on 'have I got news for you' - Host Angus Deayton asks him: “You used to be a wrestler didn’t you?” to which Savile responds: “I still am,” adding, “I’m feared in every girls’ school in the country.”

"In plain sight" indeed...

I can't find an actual clip of the show, but I'm sure Ian Hislop said something after along the lines that 'you don't even deny it do you' in his usual manner

mikeyrob73 · October 2023

guitars4you said:

Offset said:

guitars4you said:

There was that time he was on 'have I got news for you' - Host Angus Deayton asks him: “You used to be a wrestler didn’t you?” to which Savile responds: “I still am,” adding, “I’m feared in every girls’ school in the country.”

"In plain sight" indeed...

I can't find an actual clip of the show, but I'm sure Ian Hislop said something after along the lines that 'you don't even deny it do you' in his usual manner

This one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUuOIXLawg

rze99 · October 2023

Nothing surprises Angus........

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The Reckoning - Jimmy Saville drama on BBC

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