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The BBC's director general, George Entwistle,
 announces an internal inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse of children
against the late Jimmy Savile.

 A second inquiry will look at why a Newsnight investigation into the allegations in 2011 was axed.

 Entwistle also offers a 'profound and heartfelt apology' to the victims of Jimmy Savile



Jimmy Savile was a practicing Catholic but this was omitted from most of his obituaries.

A statue of Sir Jimmy Savile has been removed from a Glasgow leisure centre amid allegations that the late entertainer raped and sexually abused young girls.

New Sex Abuse Allegations Against Jimmy Savile Revealed By Police

Posted: Updated: 12/10/2012

John Peel, Jimmy Savile's Colleague,

'Got 15-Year-Old Schoolgirl Pregnant'

The Huffington Post UK  |  Posted:


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Beware the stuff "everyone knows", the canteen gossip, the slime that stops just outside the door. Gossip – plus police nods and winks – landed the press in the mire over the McCanns and Chris Jefferies. Gossip isn't proof of anything, no defence in a libel or any other court.
I don't doubt that Jimmy Savile was a sordid reprobate. Enough slime has crept under the door. But the need to beware remains. ITV's Exposurewas a television special, not silence in court. Witness victims, with one exception, stayed anonymous. People who said they burst into Savile's dressing room didn't ask how old the girls on his knee were, or take names and addresses. The most senior-sounding BBC witness, Wilfred De'Ath, is famous in later life mostly for doing two stints in prison after conning hotels out of goods and services.
You can't see the DPP launching a prosecution on evidence like this. You can see a house libel lawyer reaching for his red pencil, fast. It's sickening as paedophilia turns to necrophilia along this avenue: but it shouldn't be instant mob justice meted out while bashing BBC "cesspits" as per usual.
The corporation does have harshly difficult questions to answer, and has made a rare hash of its hapless voyage from no inquiries to three. But, failing the discovery of damning paperwork in Broadcasting House, the silt of decades will probably cover past omissions. What's more immediately relevant, though, is self-strangulation by codes of practice.
Why didn't Newsnight air its toxic 12 minutes last November? Cesspit sniffers suggest a shrinking embarrassment over Savile tribute shows; a platoon of independent investigators prepare to move in. But, given the way reporters at the BBC or elsewhere get their stories out regardless, secret edicts seem far too much of a stretch. What is more glumly convincing is the first of the reasons Peter Rippon of Newsnight gave: that his programme doesn't do celebrity exposés, so they'd had to look for a "public interest" angle – in this case, the allegation that Surrey police hadn't investigated Savile diligently enough. But when it was decided that the police had done a reasonable job, it wasn't a Newsnight"issue" any longer, just a plain old, dirty old sensation. Ugh! Take it away…
But whose story was it anyway? Only a couple of regular BBC TV programmes supposedly delve below the surface of events: Newsnight, strong on debate and eurozone policy, but not on less discursive events; and Panorama, flagship of pomp and circumstance. Should the Savile gossip have come its way from the start? Not unless it had been fully tested. Think of the fuss if the BBC had begun digging up its erstwhile hero's grave within a few days of his death. But now, please note with a sigh, Panorama is able to do a programme – because there's "public interest" in seeing what happened at Newsnight.
Here's the curse of the codes, then. You can never do a straightforwardly interesting story because straight-forward lacks proper portent. You can never find a celebrity far out of order unless his tale carries weighty lessons. You can't touch a screaming-headline saga of human beastliness unless some otherwise deplorable organ has broached it first. Our upmarket press didn't question Sir Jimmy through the decades. Our downmarket press didn't manage to turn "everyone knows" into anything they could print. And so the beastliness went on. A redtop failure, you may say (as they had the brass neck to imply onNewsnight itself last week), a failure to act in the public interest. But why, from Langham Place down, are we doomed to sit mum over stinky things unless the ghost of the News of the World gives us an excuse to dig? The most fundamental public interest is finding out what's going on, basic and unadorned.

George Carman QC

George Carman QC. Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe

How my father may have helped Jimmy Savile escape justice

The son of George Carman QC recalls the powerful effect he had on newspaper groups

 

Roy Greenslade's blog last Wednesday reported that Paul Connew, when editor of the Sunday Mirror in 1994, did have "credible and convincing" evidence from two women who claimed that Jimmy Savile had been guilty of abusing them at a children's home. Though "totally and utterly convinced" they were telling the truth, the paper's lawyers, after a careful assessment, decided it wasn't strong enough to risk publication. The risk was libel and the substantial costs and damages that the newspaper could face should they lose a subsequent high court case from the litigious Savile. To the in-house lawyers at Mirror Group, the risk seemed too great. Connew went further in talking about his guilt relating to this on Newsnight last Thursday. But there is perhaps another angle to the story.

In 1992, my father, George Carman QC, had been retained by Savile's lawyers over a different matter, which never reached court. By 1994, the name Carman, and what he could do in cross-examination, put such fear into the minds of litigants, lawyers and editors that libel cases were settled and, in some circumstances, perhaps stories were not published. Savile may have been one of those. As an indication of Carman's universal demand, and the respect he instilled, one has to look no further than the Guardian itself. In 1995, the editor, Alan Rusbridger, when faced with a libel action from Jonathan Aitken said: "We'd better get Carman – before Aitken gets him." They did and Aitken lost.

My father's relationship with Mirror Group Newspapers, publishers of theSunday Mirror, is worth examining. Up to a week before his death in December 1991, he had been advising Robert Maxwell about a libel case against the BBC relating to a Panorama exposé. Ensconced with him for many hours in his chambers, and on the top floor of the old Mirror Group building, the two men discussed revenge on the Beeb. It never happened: the case went with Maxwell to the grave. Six weeks later, Robert's son, Kevin, was hauled before Parliament's social security committee to discuss the missing millions from the Mirror Group pension fund. He said nothing, leaving my father to deliver a two-hour televised homily on his behalf, concerning his client's right to silence.

Carman went on to act successfully for Mirror Group in several libel cases, saving them a substantial sum in costs and damages. But in October 1993, he changed sides, as lawyers sometimes do, under what is called the cab rank principle: first come, first served. He was retained by Elton John in a libel case against the Sunday Mirror over false allegations that he suffered from a bizarre eating disorder that caused him to spit out the food he was eating. In court, Carman went for the jugular, demanding punitive damages from the jury for publishing an untrue story, inviting them "to wipe the smile off the faces of the board of directors of Mirror Group Newspapers".

The jury did exactly that, awarding £75,000 for the libel and £275,000 in punitive damages. It added to the £1m in damages which Elton had got from the Sun five years earlier over allegations concerning his private life. Colin Myler, then editor of the Sunday Mirror, and later the last ever editor of the News of the World, labelled the damages "excessive", adding: "When you consider that a person who loses an eye receives in the region of £20,000 compensation, it helps to put this case into perspective."

Connew was appointed as Myler's successor in 1994. The Savile story landed in his lap shortly afterwards. For the in-house lawyers at Mirror Group, the prospect of a Carman cross-examination of the two women, who would be their key witnesses, may have influenced their thinking. If he had achieved £350,000 for Elton, how astronomic might the damages have been had Savile won, when the libel was potentially much greater? Perhaps the risk of publishing the story was considered too great because of George Carman.

They also might have had another Carman performance in mind: his successful defence of the late Peter Adamson, better known as Len Fairclough in Coronation Street. In 1983, Adamson was tried for indecently assaulting two eight-year-old girls in a public swimming pool, in Haslingden. Following complaints of previous incidents, the assaults had been witnessed by two police officers watching through a porthole, which gave an underwater view of the pool. In cross-examining the officers and the girls, my father destroyed the case. Adamson walked free. The following year, he told a Sun reporter: "I am totally guilty of everything the police said." When the Sun reported the story, no further action was taken. Adamson died in 2002.

Like Savile, he never paid for his crimes.

Jimmy Savile's Broadmoor role came with a bedroom and keys

Allegations that TV presenter's role as 'voluntary assistant entertainments officer' was used to abuse inmates with impunity


Sir Jimmy Savile
Jimmy Savile's involvement with Broadmoor began in the late 1960s or early 70s. He was given an office at the hospital. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
In August 1988, shortly before the publication of a highly critical report into its operating procedures, the entire management board of Broadmoor secure psychiatric hospital was suspended by the Department of Health, which at the time had joint responsibility for its direct management.
The running of Broadmoor, the highest-profile facility of its kind in the country and the home to many of Britain's most notorious criminals, was placed in the temporary control of a "taskforce", according to reports at the time, to be headed up by a somewhat unexpected figure.
It was Jimmy Savile, the then 61-year-old TV presenter, charity fundraiser and national eccentric. "There's nothing that can't be solved," he told an approving Sunday Times reporter at the time of his appointment, stabbing the air with his trademark cigar for emphasis.
"It is the simple 'fix it' attitude he brings to all areas of his life," noted the interviewer, adding that six months later, it would fall to Savile to appoint the first general manager to be responsible for the day-to-day running of the hospital.
As the trickle of allegations against Savile, who died in October last year, has swollen in the past week to a torrent of ever more distressing accounts of rape and serious sexual assault against scores of girls and young women, one of the most disturbing and perplexing aspects has been the apparently untouchable position he held at a number institutions – places where we now know young women were particularly vulnerable to serious sexual abuse.
Savile had been involved with Broadmoor for quite some time – West London Mental Health NHS Trust, which now runs the hospital, believes his involvement as a volunteer began in the late 1960s or early 70s. He had become part of the furniture, being given, no one seems to know quite when, an office in the grounds of the hospital, a bedroom, which he called his "cell", above it, and – astonishingly – his own personal set of keys to the hospital wards.
But it now seems clear the apparently genial celebrity, while telling reporters he was the "voluntary assistant entertainments officer", had been using his position to abuse inmates with impunity.
One young female patient, the Guardian reported this week, told a psychiatric nurse that she had been repeatedly raped by Savile under the stage in the hospital during the early 1980s, before he moved on to other patients. Another former resident said that when she was 17, Savile had groped her breasts while she watched TV in a ward.
Broadmoor may be the institution where Savile was given the most senior position, but allegations of abuse have now been linked to at least five other establishments – the BBC, Stoke Mandeville hospital, Leeds general infirmary, the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey and Duncroft approved girls' school in Staines, Surrey. At Duncroft, according to some reports, he would stay in the headmistress's quarters. At Stoke Mandeville, too, he had his own room, as well as an office .
This week a disabled woman, Caroline Moore, said that in 1971, when she was 13, Savile had forcibly "shoved his tongue down [her] throat" while she was sitting in her wheelchair following an operation. Another woman, June Thornton, described witnessing a serious sexual assault on another patient she believed to be brain damaged.
Some, it seems, did take claims of abuse seriously. John Lindsay, a detective inspector at Thames Valley police during the late 1970s, told the BBC that he was told by a nurse at Stoke Mandeville that Savile was abusing patients, and reported it to his superiors more than once.
"I was not believed, no, no. I think purely because at that stage and for many, many years Savile was an icon," he said.
A senior colleague told him: "Jimmy Savile is a high-profile man. He must be OK. He could not be doing anything irregular. Don't worry about it." Lindsay said: "I wasn't satisfied but there was nothing I could do about it."
In 1988, Penny Jenkins was a 22-year-old trainee occupational therapist at Stoke Mandeville, when for a period of a few months she found herself occupying a bedroom a few doors down from Savile, on a corridor of about 10 rooms above the occupational health department. The other rooms were occupied by other trainees, the overwhelming majority of whom were young women.
Savile had been given the room at the end of the corridor, next to the shared shower and toilet facilities, she said, while his secretary would bring him breakfast every morning from the main building where his office was.
Jenkins does not consider herself a victim of Savile, but this week reported to the NSPCC children's charity an incident which at the time, she says, she found "disconcerting", but which she now fears might have been part of a pattern of behaviour.
She had taken a bath and was walking towards her room wearing only a towel when all the lights in the block suddenly went out. "I heard someone coming up the stairs, and suddenly Jimmy Savile was very, very near," she told the Guardian. "Before I realised it, he was right there in front of me."
She asked what was wrong with the lights and he replied: "Jim'll fix it." He grabbed her arm, she said, and started kissing it, before she was able to shrug him off and make her way back to her room. She reported it this week, she says, because she has always wondered if Savile tripped the switch to turn off the lights.
Despite the incident, Jenkins insists neither she nor her fellow trainees had any suspicion that Savile's behaviour could be even more sinister – "we just thought he was a leerer" – and is convinced no one in the hospital management would have knowingly overlooked abuse by Savile. "I just don't think that anybody was aware that that was going on. I just think they thought he was a funny old man, a pervy old man."
Like all the other institutions concerned, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which administers Stoke Mandeville, and West London Mental Health Trust have expressed shock at the swelling tide of allegations against Savile, and promised to co-operate fully with the police investigation.

Jimmy Savile: BBC issues 'heartfelt apology' as two inquiries launched

George Entwistle backs Newsnight editor over dropped film, while DJ John Peel's reputation is also called into question


 George Entwistle

BBC director general George Entwistle, who offered a 'profound and heartfelt apology' to the victims of Jimmy Savile Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

The BBC's director general announced two "forensic and soul searching" independent inquiries relating to allegations of child abuse by Jimmy Savile.

At a hastily arranged press conference on Friday night, George Entwistleoffered a "profound and heartfelt apology" to victims – whose number has risen to a potential 40, covered by 14 different police forces from around the country.

The first BBC inquiry will examine the catalogue of abuse by Savile over his four-decade career, covering what Entwistle described as the "culture and practices" of the BBC in the "years Jimmy Savile worked here and afterwards".

The second will investigate whether any BBC executives – including Entwistle – improperly interfered with an axed Newsnight investigation into Savile last year. The point is to deal with "the cloud of suspicion that cannot be allowed to continue", he said. But the BBC will not review the editorial decision by Newsnight editor Peter Rippon to drop the film.

Entwistle's press conference was convened with an hour's notice, but the BBC said it had been working on the terms of reference of the inquiries for 48 hours. Such was the haste of the BBC announcement, the corporation could not confirm the identity of the individuals leading the reviews, although the BBC has found people it believes are prepared to take on the work.

With Savile allegations likely to dominate the news over the weekend, the BBC thought it had little choice but to put Entwistle in front of the cameras, sitting on his own in front of journalists at the corporation's New Broadcasting House.

The BBC efforts to get a grip on the scandal came as the Metropolitan police revealed that the catalogue of abuse claims had spiralled in 72 hours. Scotland Yard said it was pursuing 340 potential lines of inquiry into sex abuse claims.

Scotland Yard said it had officially recorded 12 formal criminal allegations of sexual offences and it expected that figure to grow. "Officers from the serious case team of the child abuse investigation command will continue to contact those who have come forward, to ensure they are given the advice and support they need."

Entwistle spent part of the day earlier contacting several victims of Savile to apologise on behalf of the BBC. "I have made clear my revulsion at the thought that these criminal assaults were carried out by someone who worked at the BBC," Entwistle said. "I have one thing to repeat – that is a profound and heartfelt apology on behalf of the BBC to every victim. It is the victims, these women who were subject to criminal actions, who must be central in our thoughts."

Entwistle insisted that he was not told the contents of the Newsnight investigation at a time when the BBC planned to air tributes to Savile. He also gave Rippon his backing after being asked whether he should be suspended over the saga. The BBC has insisted the Newsnight film was dropped for "editorial reasons" and not because of interference from executives.

The reviews will be overseen by Dame Fiona Reynolds, the former director general of the National Trust, and be published once they are complete.

The repercussions from the Savile scandal were threatening to engulf the reputation of another deceased BBC star – DJ John Peel who reportedly got a 15-year-old girl pregnant in 1969. Peel met Jane Nevin backstage at a Black Sabbath concert and embarked on a three-month affair.

She told the Daily Mail she got pregnant and had an abortion, corroborating her story with a postcard he had sent 30 years later in reply to a letter she had sent. In it, Peel expressed his relief that she was not writing to tell him he had a secret child. The BBC said it would reconsider the naming of part of its new London headquarters after Peel, if the claim was proved.

Nevin said she had come forward after reading the stories about alleged sexual abuse of underage girls by Jimmy Savile.Earlier on Friday, the BBC moved to quell any potential political storm, writing to every MP to reassure them it was taking the scandal seriously.

The BBC's director of public affairs, Julia Ockenden, said it was committed to a "proper independent review" of the issues once the Met has concluded its scoping exercise.

The letter added: "The decision to broadcast three Jimmy Savile tribute programmes in November and December 2011 was taken by a separate department in complete and proper isolation from any details of the news investigation. BBC news has a long track record of independent reporting on the BBC."

However the letter and press conference failed to satisfy some MPs. Tory Rob Wilson said the conference had "raised more questions than it answered" and queried how independent the inquiry would be.

He said: "The BBC's credibility in this scandal is now tarnished." He said all the Newsnight evidence should be released immediately and said the government should take the investigation out of the BBC's hands and launch a full independent public inquiry.

 



The Jimmy Savile affair has exposed the sorry chaos at the heart of the BBC

The corporation's shambolic response to the saga demonstrates the unfit state of its management structure

 Various

Chris Patten needs to call an inquiry. Photograph: Steve Back / Rex Features

The last time the BBC found itself trapped in a swirl of events – over the death of David Kelly – its entire system of governance appeared to implode. First, the director general had to go; then a loyally supportive chairman of the governors went as well; finally, the governors themselves were swept away, replaced from on Downing Street high by a trust designed to monitor from a distance rather than get down and dirty in the corporation's defence. But now, for the first time really, that new structure is under severe test. And it doesn't seem fit for purpose.

The depressing saga of Jimmy Savile tests structures beyond Broadcasting House, to be sure, not least at the NHS. Nor is it easy to make rational decisions amid a chorus of scorn from commercial rivals and the BBC's own incensed journalists. Yet, even so, the corporation's response has been shambolic. Was a proper inquiry into the alleged events of decades past necessary?

At first it wasn't. Well, perhaps it was, once the police had finished their investigations. But now it seems that at least two BBC independent inquiries – plus a slightly less independent inquiry and perhaps an umbrella inquiry pulling all strands together – may be required. To which, in true BBC form, should probably be added an inquiry into why so few inquiries suddenly became so many.

There are particular problems here. One's a brand new director general unversed in bureaucratic intricacies. Another is his very theoretical bit part as supremely underinvolved ringmaster of both last Christmas'sJimmy Savile tribute show and the Newsnight investigation that might have exposed a serial child molester. But the biggest problem of all appears far simpler: who's in charge? Director general Entwistle? His executive board? Lord Patten at the Trust? Or nobody, in any sure-footed way?

Structures are one thing, but human relationships can be quite another. Chris Patten did not appoint Mark Thompson, the just-departed DG. He did personally appoint George Entwistle, amid speculation that he'd now take a tighter grip on the organisation itself (while leaving young Entwistle to worry about the programmes). But his interventions through last week, via a running commentary of public speeches, radio interviews or letters to George, didn't seem to manifest anything you could quite call grip.

He might, in the curious fashion of our times, have apologised for tawdry encounters in the green rooms of long ago. But not having been there at the time or responsible for anything, he left such apologies to George, who wasn't there or responsible either. He could have set up his own inquiry or inquiries. But that didn't happen.

He could have questioned Newsnight's decision to scrap its 12 minutes of Savile reportage last December, but he said that was editorial, so not his job. But it was, apparently, his job to laud Panorama's work on abuse in care homes or inbreeding of pedigree dogs as luminous instances of the corporation's dedication to investigative reporting. And, naturally, no director general's in-tray was complete, by the week's end, without a letter from Lord P seeking Entwistle's assurances "that our current child-protection policy, processes, guidance and training" are in tip-top shape.

Now, Chris Patten is one of the most experienced and intelligent ex-politicians around. Though his old Tory allegiances may have been no great handicap when David Cameron chose him, he was respected enough to leave many BBC insiders sighing with relief. He'll fight all the necessary corners as the nightmare of charter renewal and survival comes nearer. But, in a way, the perception that he's probably the right man at the right time only makes the current desuetude worse.

There are reasons for not clambering on to the soap boxes of sanctimony too swiftly. The surge of Savile instant moralising needs to subside a little. But when something as damnable for the BBC seems to go wrong, then clear problems of leadership follow.

The most urgent questions for the BBC today are not, in fact, about the ethos of the 70s, the groping hands of dead DJs, the silence of the molested damned. Hospitals and prisons as well as broadcasting establishments will have to address those. No; the first, most insistent media question asks whether Newsnight's 12 minutes got junked because of sticky bureaucratic fingers higher up the decision-making chain? It's a demand that, in a commonsense way, almost answers itself. No bureaucratic blanket could stifle this story in the end. It was beyond suppression and therefore beyond any sentient move to wish it away.

But it wasn't – and isn't – no-go territory for the Trust. These allegations of double-dealing are just as damaging as allegations of poll faking onBlue Peter. Why should anyone but Lord Patten call an inquiry here? Why should George Entwistle be left to blink alone in a spotlight he doesn't deserve? Where are the six outside members of the executive board when they're needed to speak out (as well as superintend proliferating inquiries)? How do they interlock with Patten's trusties?

"The BBC exists above all on trust and the relationship between the wider public and the BBC itself," according to one of Chris Patten's panegyrics last week. "And when the BBC is at its best, it's not only because it's providing terrific, creative, challenging TV and radio, but because the public think they own it and can identify with it."

Well, if the public truly thinks that, it may wonder why the BBC couldn't even put up a spokesman to debate the Newsnight shambles onNewsnight itself last Thursday. People may wonder why the Trust that supposedly exists at arm's length to call the corporation to account appears to have one arm tied behind its back. And they must worry deeply about a self-made crisis that, yet again, lands the public service broadcaster we need in a mire of its own making.

Call for Lord Justice Leveson? No, anything but that. But do, long before charter renewal starts in earnest, begin to create the leaner, fitter management structure that, to be fair, both Entwistle and Patten say they want. One that knows what's happening in the department next door, let alone down the corridor. And one that, as time unpicks so many costly convolutions of the Blair and Brown managerial era, asks what was really so wrong with the old board of governors before Andrew Gilligan had his four minutes of fame (apart from raging politicians who should have been kept at bay)? What has this Trust contrivance got to offer, apart from confusion?

Jimmy Savile scandal: government could face civil claims

Department of Health could be sued directly over claims that star abused patients when volunteering at Broadmoor hospital

Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital

Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital. A psychiatric nurse has claimed that a former patient told her Savile repeatedly raped her there. Photograph: ROBIN ANDERSON/Rex Features

Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital. A psychiatric nurse has claimed that a former patient told her Savile repeatedly raped her there. Photograph: ROBIN ANDERSON/Rex Features

The government has been dragged into the Jimmy Savile scandal after it emerged that the Department of Health could be sued directly over claims the star abused patients when he was a volunteer at Broadmoor hospital in the 1970s and 1980s.

A lawyer acting for victims preparing legal action against Stoke Mandeville hospital and the BBC said it was possible the government could face civil claims as it was directly responsible for the running of the Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital in that time.

Savile was a volunteer for more than four decades at the hospital, had keys to its secure unit and at one point in 1988 was appointed to lead a "taskforce" overseeing the management of the hospital after its management board was dismissed by the then health secretary, Kenneth Clarke.

The Department of Health confirmed that it had launched an internal inquiry into its management of the secure hospital before it was transferred to the control of West London mental health trust in 2001. A number of allegations of abuse at the hospital have emerged, including one claim by a psychiatric nurse that a former patient told her Savile had repeatedly raped her at Broadmoor.

The scale of the crisis at the BBC became apparent on Friday night with the director general, George Entwistle, calling a last-minute press conference to announce two independent inquiries into the Savile scandal and the BBC's reporting of it. He offered "profound and heartfelt apology" to Savile's victims.

The actor Julie Fernandez, who has appeared in The Office and Eldorado, said on Friday the presenter groped her when she appeared on Jim'll Fix It aged 14. She said she was sitting next to him in her wheelchair and his hands "lingered in places they shouldn't".

She told Radio 5 live that: "It was in a busy room full of people in a studio so it was quite discreetly done … I do remember feeling uncomfortable." She said she joked about it later with classmates but never told an adult about it.

Metropolitan police revealed that their investigations were spiralling and now involved 340 lines of inquiry and 40 potential victims.

Liz Dux, a partner at Russell Jones & Walker in London and an expert in personal injury and child abuse cases, revealed on Friday that she was acting for a number of women who want to sue the BBC and Stoke Mandeville hospital on the grounds of vicarious liability. With 340 lines of inquiry, the threat of legal action is expected to spread to other institutions where Savile made official charity visits.

Dux said it could also reach the government: "The government is not immune in civil litigation. It would absolutely be no different to sue the government."

Health ministers and civil servants are hastily trying to establish the management structures at the hospital between 1959, when the one-time Victorian prison became part of the NHS under the Mental Health Act of that year, and 2001, when the government no longer had direct responsibility for its running.

"Although the framework for child protection and safeguarding for Broadmoor and other special hospital patients changed radically in 1999, we of course want to establish the circumstances and see if any lessons can be learned," a Department of Health spokesman said. In hindsight it was clearly not appropriate that Savile had been given a supervisory role at the hospital, said the spokesman, adding "it is far from clear why any such role would have required possession of … a set of keys, we need to establish how he came to have them and on what basis".

Clarke was appointed health secretary on 25 July 1988. The management board was dismissed the following month. He said: "I have no recollection of ever having met Jimmy Savile and no recollection of these events. The Department of Health are now investigating to establish the facts."

Dux, a personal injury lawyer who has acted for people with severe spinal injuries and amputees, has been contacted by several women who want to sue over the Savile allegations. She said she is preparing cases against the BBC and the hospital on the grounds that they both have a duty of care to anyone who comes into contact with their staff or agents.

"The case would be against the BBC or the hospital because they would be held vicariously liable in law on behalf of someone like Savile who was acting as their agent," Dux told BBC Radio 4's World at One on Friday.

"So in the case of the BBC where he abused people through his connection with programmes, for example the case about the girl who alleges she was abused in his changing room, then because of the close connection with the BBC, the BBC would be what we call vicariously liable in those circumstances," she added.

"Likewise in the hospitals. He may not have been paid by the hospital but he's there as their agent, then they owe a duty of care to those he abused."

Dux said the duty of care towards patients or guests of Top of the Pops, Jim'll Fix It and other programmes would be "heightened" if any managers had suspicions at the time about Savile.

The threat of legal action will now increase the pressure on the BBC and the police to establish who knew what, when and why rumours of his interest in young women were not acted upon.

The fact that some alleged incidents happened decades ago was not an issue, she said. "By their nature, abuse cases are often historic. They are often very old by the time cases are brought. People feel great shame and psychologically don't feel able to talk about it for some time," she told World at One. "Quite often the courts will apply their discretion to allow these cases. For example, sex abuse cases against the Catholic church or against schools or the children's homes cases in Jersey."

"They want some form of recognition as to what's happened to them in the past. They want to be taken seriously, they are not interested in the financial compensation at all, they just want the cathartic process of telling someone what they have been through and someone believing them for a change."She said compensation could range from a few thousand pounds for someone who suffered a minor assault and got on with their lives to hundreds of thousands if their lives had been wrecked, for instance if they had been unable to have a career or form relationships.

"To win the case against the BBC you do not have to show they knew about it, provided you can prove Savile was acting as an agent of the BBC," said Dux.

Richard Scorer, a Manchester lawyer acting for the Rochdale child abuse victims and co-author of Child Abuse Compensation Claims, said victims could also sue Savile's estate "even if the assets have been distributed to others".

He said there would be difficulty in getting a case to court because Savile was dead, but the "evidence stacking up" meant courts were likely to be sympathetic to a trial.

Scorer won £580,000 for a man who had suffered abuse as a child, one of the highest payouts in an English court. He suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 45 when the police started investigating case, and the payout reflected his inability to work after that. Most payouts are less than £100,000.

"The difficulty normally is the injury is inflicted when you are a child so you don't have an earnings capacity built up; this man did," said Scorer

John Peel tribute could be ditched by BBC

Corporation says it will reconsider renaming section of BBC Broadcasting House if sex abuse claim is proved

  • Tara Conlan
  • guardian.co.uk,  Friday 12 October 2012


John Peel

The former Radio 1 presenter John Peel who died in 2004. Photograph: Photoshot/Hulton Archive

The BBC has said it will reconsider naming part of its new London headquarters after the late DJ John Peel, if a claim he made a 15-year-old pregnant is proved.

Friday's Daily Mail claimed that Peel had unprotected sex with Jane Nevin when she was 15.

Nevin became pregnant after a brief affair with the DJ but did not tell him and had an abortion, according to the Mail. About 30 years later she wrote to Peel about their encounters and he wrote back expressing his relief that she was not writing to tell him he had a secret child.

Nevin told the Daily Mail she had come forward after reading the stories about alleged sexual abuse of underage girls by Jimmy Savile in the past few days.

A BBC spokesman said: "Clearly, in the event of proven allegations of sexual abuse the BBC would re-consider its decision on the naming of part of our new building."

Earlier this year the corporation announced that a section of the newly refurbished BBC Broadcasting House in central London would be called the John Peel Wing in tribute to the former Radio 1 presenter, who died in 2004.

At the time then director general Mark Thompson described Peel as a "great ambassador" for the corporation.

However, since the ITV1 Exposure documentary last week aired claims of sexual abuse of underage girls by Jimmy Savile in the 1970s and 1980s, the conduct of other Radio 1 DJs has come under scrutiny.

Peel, who was the victim of sexual abuse at school, openly joked he "didn't ask for ID" when young women wanted to sleep with him.

The part of the newly redeveloped Broadcasting House that the BBC is set to name after Peel was known as the Egton Wing and it houses the entrance to Radio 1.

BBC staff are still being moved into the new building. Some are understood to be concerned that naming part of Broadcasting House after Peel might now prove awkward and embarrassing for the corporation.

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Jimmy Savile: Met pursues 340 lines of inquiry involving up to 40 victims

Scotland Yard says it has officially recorded 12 formal criminal allegations of sexual offences

Jimmy Savile

Jimmy Savile: the number of potential lines of inquiry being pursued by police has almost tripled since Tuesday. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA

The Metropolitan police has revealed that the number of sex abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile has increased significantly in the past three days, with Scotland Yard now pursuing 340 lines of inquiry involving 40 potential victims.

Scotland Yard said on Friday that it had officially recorded 12 formal criminal allegations of sexual offences and that it expects that figure to grow.

The number of potential lines of inquiry being pursued has almost tripled since Tuesday, when police first revealed the scale of the criminal allegations being made about the late Jim'll Fix It presenter. The estimated number of potential victims of Savile has doubled, from 20 to 40.

Scotland Yard said it was liaising with 14 police forces from around the UK as it examines the allegations.

The Met said in a statement: "Officers from the Serious Case Team of the MPS Child Abuse Investigation Command will continue to contact those who have come forward, to ensure that they are given the advice and support they need.

"We would once again praise the courage of, and thank everyone who has come forward to provide us with information to assist in understanding the scale of abuse perpetrated by Savile."

Scotland Yard did not provide any more detail on the 12 officially recorded allegations of sexual offences, but earlier this week said there had been two accusations of rape and six of indecent assault spanning four decades.

The update on the Met's work on the Savile allegation came shortly before the BBC director general, George Entwistle, was due to hold a press conference on the Savile allegations late on Friday.

The BBC also highlighted what it was doing to deal with the Savile affair in a letter sent to all MPs on Friday, as it faced growing calls for an independent inquiry into the saga.

The letter, from the BBC's director of public affairs Julia Ockenden, said the corporation was committed to a "proper independent review" of the issues once the Met has concluded its scoping exercise.

Ockenden reiterated that neither Entwistle or the former BBC director general, Mark Thompson, had any involvement in the decision to axe the Newsnight investigation into Savile in December 2011.

The letter added: "The decision to broadcast three Jimmy Savile tribute programmes in November and December 2011 was taken by a separate department in complete and proper isolation from any details of the news investigation. BBC news has a long track record of independent reporting on the BBC, for example the Ross/Brand affair and the issues surrounding the running of TV competitions."

Detective superintendent David Grey is leading the Scotland Yard assessment of the Savile allegations.

The Met's child abuse inquiry, dubbed Operation Yewtree, is examine whether any other public figures could be subject to criminal investigations.

Earlier on Friday, the criminologist Mark Williams-Thomas, who led a 12-month ITV investigation into Savile, told the Guardian that a "significant number" of victims had witnesses had approached him this week.

He added: "Since the police press conference it is now clearly in the public domain that Jimmy Savile is a predatory sex offender. As a result of the press conference and the media publicity before and after the ITV programme I have received a significant amount of new information both from witnesses and victims. They give accounts of abuse that spans back to the 1950s. It is compelling in so much as it is very consistent with what we know about Savile's offending behaviour.

"We are in daily contact with new victims and receiving information that is allowing the police investigation to go further. What's important now is to establish where and who Jimmy Savile had access to up until the day he died.

"I have received information about other people, both in the public eye and away from the public eye. That information has now been passed to police. In times like this other people are always going to be named, but we have got to be careful this does not turn into a witchhunt."

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Is sexual harassment still rife in the TV industry?

As the 'groping culture' of the 1970s TV industry is revealed, Anne Robinson and her daughter Emma Wilson discuss misogyny in the media, then and now

o    The Guardian,  Friday 12 October 2012

Anne Robinson and her daugther Emma Wilson

Anne Robinson and her daugther Emma Wilson discuss misogyny and sexual harassment in the television industry. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Alongside the shocking revelations of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal, a disturbing picture of misogyny and sexual harassment in the media during the 1970s and 80s has emerged. Anne Robinson was cutting her teeth as a reporter at the time, before moving to the BBC. Her daughter Emma Wilson joined the industry decades later. Oliver Laughland listens in as they discuss how far the media has changed.

Anne Robinson: The Jimmy Savile saga has taken on a much darker and uglier tone. The allegations about children at Stoke Mandeville hospital being abused by him while those with a duty of care apparently failed to act are truly shocking. We need to distinguish between that and how life was generally for women in the workplace in the late 60s and early 70s, when the term sexual harassment didn't exist. My first job in Fleet Street was at the Daily Mail. There was an idiot chief sub who would yell for you to bring your copy over to the back bench. He would take it, drop it on the floor, so that you would bend over and pick it up, so that all the guys could have a look at your knickers – we weren't allowed to wear trousers in those days.

Emma Wilson: When I started in TV [Jimmy Savile] was definitely someone you thought was an odd character, and it doesn't surprise me. One of the things that has changed since I entered the industry, aged 19, is that now there are women bosses in the hierarchy. The beauty of women is that we talk, and in a heartbeat someone's inappropriate behaviour is going to be in a text, in a tweet, a phone call. Usually it's expressed in humour – but when you go on to the next job, everyone knows which are the dressing rooms to give a wide berth to.

AR: Looking back, we used to keep lists of men who weren't safe in taxis, "NST", and those who were "NSL", not safe in lifts, they were a bit quicker with their hands than NSTs. I think my best experience was with Charlie Haughey, who was then Ireland's Minister of Justice. I like to imagine he went to his grave with my bruises on his hands after he tried to grope me during the 1969 Irish elections.

EW: What year was it when Tom Jones chased you around during an interview? That's the other side of it, as it's rather flattering sometimes.

AR: It was the late 1960s, I think. I saw him at the airport recently, he looked rather good. Not-very-well-dyed hair, but otherwise OK. He said [after the interview]: "I'm going on to have a drink at Hugh Hefner's house, do you want to come?" and I said, "You bet I do." He was charming. He wasn't predatory at all. But if anything had happened and he'd been less of a gentleman, I assure you, I would have thought it was my own fault. Power and fame are very seductive – they were then and they are now.

Oliver Laughland: But Liz Kershaw and Sandi Toksvig were women at the top of their profession, and have made allegations about being molested live on air. It happened at roughly the same time you were at the BBC. Are you shocked?

AR: It's not something I came into contact with. And if I had, I just wouldn't have put up with it. But that's me. The conspiracy of silence at Stoke Mandeville is far more distressing than the fact that Liz Kershaw didn't have the sense to say "Stop" when someone groped her in a BBC studio. What disappoints me now is that girls leave school and university with decent brains and qualifications, but at no point along the line has anyone taught them a few tricks of the trade, whether it's negotiating a salary or how to deal with a predatory male.

OL: Were you taught these things by your mum, Emma?

EW: Mum didn't need to because she very cleverly married a Glaswegian man. We used to have his old boxing gloves, and I was taught from a very young age to have a good right hook.

AR: But Emma, that's your father's dramatic instructions. In fact, what women need to learn is to give over a message of: "Don't mess with me." I still think it's difficult, particularly in this job market, if you've got a boss who's behaving inappropriately, and your job depends upon it. It doesn't matter how much legislation there is, if they've got the power over you and your career depends on it, you are in a very difficult situation. I remember having just had an interview for a news reporter's job on the Sunday Times. It was 1969. I then went off on a foreign trip, and another senior Sunday Times journalist who was also on the trip, and had a stake in my future, made a pass at me. And I thought: "Oh golly what am I going to do?" I want that job, I don't want to upset this person. It was difficult to deal with.

EW: That hasn't changed. The bottom line is women are far more concerned about offending someone because that will bring more problems. I like your advice about having a sticky note on the phone, saying: "Lunches are better for me." There are those people you don't have dinner with – the same sort who are not safe in taxis – not safe for dinners. I remember working in LA as a runner, I was 20 maybe. The assistant director was a big shot – it's always the alphas who are trying it on. He asked me out. My roommates all giggled because he turned up in a Porsche, and maybe alarm bell number one was the car. But alarm bell number two was when I sat down he put his hand on the seat, so that I sat on it. That was a while ago, and I think it could still happen today.

AR: I remember David Bailey took my photo a few years ago, and I asked him what the difference was between taking a photo now and in the 1960s, and he said: "Well in the 60s I would have had you first!"

OL: What would your advice be to young women trying to get into this industry?

AR: Be smart. Be clever and learn. It's the same advice I would have given 20 or 30 years ago. I had the advantage of being brought up by a mother who rightly or wrongly guided me that most men were pretty stupid. I think it probably gave me a sense of self and self-protection that has been very useful, and I possibly have had less nasty moments than a lot of other women. I just wish women had more inbuilt confidence, I wish that more mentors of my age would persuade them to handle themselves better.

EW: Don't do anything you wouldn't want to tell your mum about later.

OL: What are your expectations of how this will affect the BBC and the results of the inquiry they've pledged?

AR: The BBC will put out another 10 yards of guidelines and lots of producers who should be busy making television programmes will have to go to meetings to learn about them. In fact, by the time I walk into the BBC next Wednesday there'll probably be 25 new ones. The gorgeous runner I've got at the moment probably won't be able to step over the door of my dressing room. I know that's a very pragmatic view, but a BBC inquiry ain't going to solve the problem. I would much rather we cut to the chase and empowered women not to put up with this sort of behaviour.

The evil of Jimmy Savile was not his alone

It is a mistake to regard the presenter's horrific case as a one-off. It is a numbingly familiar tale of power and disbelief

 Jimmy Savile
'If Savile benefited from the blind eye still turned to child abuse, he enjoyed too the curious protection granted to so many rapists.' Photograph: PA Wire/PA

'If Savile benefited from the blind eye still turned to child abuse, he enjoyed too the curious protection granted to so many rapists.' Photograph: PA Wire/PA

Once again reality outstrips the imagination. Now we see that even the most gifted weavers of children's nightmares, from JK Rowling to Roald Dahl, made the same basic error. Their creations, whether Voldemort,Miss Trunchbull or the blood-curdling Child Catcher, advertised their evil, signalling it from a thousand paces. They were villains who never posed as anything else. Now we know those authors missed a trick. For how much more terrifying is the evildoer who pretends to be good – the devil who tries, and succeeds, in passing himself off as a saint?

Half a century has passed since Philip Roth complained on behalf of his fellow novelists that "the actuality is continually outdoing our talents", and so it has proved once more. Neither Rowling nor Dahl would have dared conjure up a story like the one that has unspooled these last two weeks, the tale of a man venerated as a national treasure who did not just force himself on underage girls but who preyed on the most vulnerable victims one could imagine – the disabled and the brain-damaged – stalking children's homes and hospitals to find them. And imagine the cruelty of this twist: that the charity and good works he performed did not just insulate this predator from challenge; those deeds may well have been undertaken for the express purpose of gaining unfettered access to children.

The story is so extreme, the details so lurid – the staff at several hospitals granting Jimmy Savile a private room as well as keys to secure wards, giving him the run of those institutions day and night; the Met now following a staggering 340 potential lines of inquiry – that it is easy to regard the episode as too exceptional to have any wider implications. On this reading, Savile was in a unique position which, to be sure, he abused but which renders his case a one-off. Yes, the BBC must investigate whether its staff acted as enablers or, better word, accomplices to Savile's crimes but, beyond that, this story belongs in a horrible, freakish category of one.

That would be a mistake. In fact, the Savile case merely draws – in admittedly wild, vivid colours – a wider picture that is all too common. Take each of the constituent parts – a powerful man, vulnerable victims and authorities that fail – and you see that this tale is numbingly familiar.

Start with the victims. There has been much Life on Mars-style amazement at 1970s attitudes that apparently regarded young girls as legitimate recreational interest for older men and which were clearly not held by Savile alone. Witness John Peel bragging in 1989 about his past American conquests: "Oral sex they were particularly keen on. I remember one of my regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older." Pause at the use of "customers" and recall that Peel eventually married one of these underage girls: he was 25, she was 15.

We like to think all that's in the past now, that these days we understand and therefore exhibit zero tolerance for child abuse. But the facts suggest otherwise. There are the high-profile cases – the ring ofRochdale abusers finally jailed this summer, the paedophile priests of the Catholic church – but those are merely the most visible instances of a stubbornly permanent fixture in the national landscape.

"What I am uncovering is that sexual exploitation of children is happening all over the country," Sue Berelowitz, deputy children's commissioner for England, told MPs in June. She quoted a police officer from a "very lovely, leafy, rural part of the country" who had told her: "There isn't a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited." She told of girls as young as 11 "summoned" via BlackBerry Messenger, and forced to perform oral sex on a line-up of gang members, one after another. Berelowitz called on MPs and everyone else to "lay aside their denial" and wake up to what's going on.

If Savile benefited from the blind eye still turned to child abuse, he enjoyed too the curious protection granted to so many rapists: the refusal to believe the victims. When a patient at Broadmoor high-security hospital, whom Savile had repeatedly abused, threatened to report him, the DJ "laughed in her face, and said that nobody would believe her and he could do what he liked", according to Naomi Stanley, a former nurse at the institution. In that, the late TV "personality" was simply expressing out loud and explicitly what many rapists both think to themselves and quietly rely on.

Jimmy Savile case: At work it's called banter, but there's still a culture of sex harassment in TV

In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, a TV producer, who wishes to remain anonymous, gives her account of an industry
 in which women must still tolerate innuendo and groping – and explains why they are afraid to challenge it

Businesswoman Looking at Hand on Her Shoulder

The often informal nature of TV production and the intense competition for jobs have allowed harassment to flourish. Photograph: Images.com/Corbis

 

Ten years ago, as an eager-to-please young television researcher, I was asked to find some replacement equipment part of the way through a big drama-documentary shoot. Terrified of getting the wrong thing, I asked one of the crew to write down exactly what he wanted. Smirking at me, he took my pen and without breaking eye contact, scrawled SEX in huge letters on my notepad. A wave of embarrassment rushed through me as the men nearby fell about laughing. Mortified, I scuttled away.

After seeing the director, my boss, laughing as well, I didn't feel I had anyone to turn to; so feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable, I did what appears to be standard practice – nothing. It was just friendly banter, right?

The extent of Jimmy Savile's allegedly vile behaviour has left people shocked as to how he could have got away with so much for so long. There is a suggestion that those who are partly to blame are the bosses who turned a blind eye to senior men with wandering hands, creating a workplace where women felt powerless to speak up.

Laugh it off, deal with it. From my experience, and a quick straw poll of my female colleagues, this still seems to be the standard response to inappropriate behaviour towards women in TV. In part, this seems to be down to some uncertainty about what constitutes sexual harassment. The same word kept coming up in all my discussions of it: banter.

Apparently, banter can mean many things. A friend, working on a much-loved factual series, went to the producer to request that the full-frontal porn posters be removed from the location production office wall. She's no prude, but found them disrespectful and out of place, but the male producer claimed they were just a joke, part of the "friendly banter". The conversation left her disinclined to bother complaining when the crew started using the prominence of her nipples through her jumper to guess the temperature outside, assuming that would be deemed "banter" too.

Other acceptable banter, according to the sets I've been on, includes in-depth discussion of the relative merits of every woman's breasts and continual debate about whether the production co-ordinator or runner has the better bum. I will hold my hands up and admit I've been involved in conversations about colleagues' attractiveness, but I can't say I've ever rated anyone on penis size. I guess I don't quite get location banter.

Any time I inadvertently wander into a conversation about my colleagues, I tend to wander out again, rolling my eyes and shaking my head. Apparently I'm only getting the censored versions – a gay director I know says she is often taken to be "one of the lads" and exposed to gruesome, uncut epics of sexual conquests both real and imagined, starring any number of the female crew. I find them puerile and mildly offensive, but I'm not precious and accept that in predominantly male work environments, they are going to go on.

With the current discussion about what some see as an endemic culture of casual sexism and harassment in TV, I wonder if my own line as to what is acceptable and what isn't is in the right place. Perhaps I shouldn't see this kind of conversation as inevitable and tolerable. So where does the "friendly banter" end and sexual harassment start? In many professions, the line is clear, but in an industry like television, it's much harder to see.

I can understand why this blurring of boundaries has happened: TV is a very informal, sociable industry. It's not unusual for job interviews and meetings to be held in pubs and the strict hierarchy of roles is relaxed to promote creativity. At the beginning of any production, you are thrown together with a group of people with whom you have to collaborate closely for the next few months. Working relationships have to be formed instantly and, more often than not, the schedule means you end up socialising with your team more than your real friends for the duration of the contract.

Location shoots are notorious for a "what goes on tour, stays on tour" mentality and production romances frequently blossom. Add alcohol and long hours to a hazily defined co-worker/friend dynamic and it's understandable that unprofessional and inappropriate conduct start creeping in. When a friend told me she'd had a producer comment on how beautiful she was at the end of a job interview, we agreed it was weird, but not a reason not to take the job.

The same goes for on-screen contributors. My job as a producer/director of documentaries requires me to form fast, close bonds with subjects so they trust me to tell their stories and feel comfortable on screen. Once again, the boundaries between colleague and friend can become less clear and what is still a working relationship can be seen as some to be less formal. Balancing these relationships is all the harder because ultimately you are asking these people for favours, so you have to keep them onside. And if that means staying silent as your subject salivates his way through a truly disgusting account of a threesome, as the male crew laugh along, then you try to hide your desire to retch.

Listening to sexually explicit stories and putting up with innuendo is one thing, and being sexually harassed or physically assaulted another, but perhaps the banter culture has gone a little too far, to the point where unacceptable behaviour isn't being reported.

The sleazeball from the drama-doc shoot, apparently seeing me as easy prey, and bolstered by the fact that his "joke" sex request had entertained the others, started sidling up to me on set. As soon as action was called, he would slip an arm around me and grope as much side boob as he could. Terrified of committing TV's cardinal sin – making noise during a take – I stood frozen to the spot until someone cried "cut" and I could push his grabby hands away and scarper. He would couch every attempt at touching me in up in being friendly – all just banter. At the time, the overall atmosphere of sexual innuendo and the director's reaction to the note incident made me terrified to speak up – and even wonder if I was just being oversensitive.

My friend was at a work function when the male presenter stuck his hand up the back of her shirt, asking her to come back to his room. Being a junior member of the team at the time, she was too scared to tell anyone, and why would she? In the hugely rewarding, exciting television industry, most people are freelancers and competition for jobs is fierce. Personality and reputation are as important as your skills in securing the next contract, so getting known as a troublemaker is career suicide. An executive producer I spoke to said she had heard of women being discounted for jobs because they had made sexual harassment complaints. Meanwhile the aforementioned male presenter – who apparently became known for his lascivious behaviour – went on to be given more shows.

Even if you are brave enough to speak up, there's no guarantee that anyone will listen. The same executive told me about a certain, very senior producer – let's call him Bob – who got very handsy at the work Christmas party, upsetting several of the younger women. The executive went to the head of the company, to ask him to speak to Bob about his behaviour, but he shrugged and said it was just "Bob being Bob". Worse still, another friend went to her female production manager to complain about an executive who had touched her breast and made a crack about them sharing body fluids in front of the crew. She was told it was just "men being men".

Perhaps most shockingly, I've heard rumours that a few very well-known presenters became known to have what are affectionately dubbed "party hands". The channel, allegedly aware of the rumours, continued to employ them – but stopped using female production staff on their shows. A few weeks ago, I would have thought such tales apocryphal, but after the recent revelations, I'm not so sure.

In an industry with virtually no job security, with even the channels themselves apparently turning a blind eye to sexual harassment, it's little wonder that women are resigned to putting up and shutting up. It's why you won't find my name on this piece – and perhaps why the likes of Jimmy Savile got away with it for so long.

 

And with good reason. This week the Metropolitan police's sex crime unit, Sapphire, announced a restructuring after a detective admitted 13 counts of misconduct, for failing to investigate 10 rapes and three sexual assault cases. Another Sapphire detective is under investigation for similar offences. Sapphire has already been restructured before, in 2009, after police had failed to stop multiple rapists John Worboys and Kirk Reid. The key error in both cases? Failing to believe the victims.

Women Against Rape reckon just 7% of rapes end in a conviction. Little wonder that the latest London figures show a 15% drop in reported rapes: too many women refuse to go to the police because they have little confidence they will be heard. That is especially true when their rapist is powerful and enjoys a position of public trust, as Savile did on a national scale.

There are big questions here for the police. Some wonder if the Met is overdue another "Macpherson moment", in which it is forced to confront its own institutional sexism the way the Stephen Lawrence case laid bare its racism. It is at least clear that it has enormous work to do to win the trust of women, so that it becomes a first instinct of those who are attacked to report the fact.

But just as racism can never be an issue solely for its victims, so rape cannot be a concern for women alone. Scotland has just launched a campaign, We Can Stop It, targeted at young men, urging them to become the "kind of guy" who doesn't have sex with women who are drunk, asleep or otherwise cannot consent. It is a good start.

And a necessary one because, while the Jimmy Savile story is darker than even the bleakest, most pessimistic minds could have imagined, its worst aspects did not die with him. They haunt us still.

Twitter: @j_freedland

Rewind Radio: The Moral Maze, The Media Show, Radio 1's Stories – review

The Jimmy Savile scandal gave the BBC an opportunity to do what it does best – kick itself

Jimmy Savile

Jimmy Savile: subject of laudatory BBC Christmas programmes. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features

Jimmy Savile: subject of laudatory BBC Christmas programmes. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features

 

The Moral Maze (Radio 4) | iPlayer
The Media Show (Radio 4) | iPlayer
Radio 1's Stories (Radio 1) | iPlayer

Sometimes you wonder if the BBC was born a Catholic. Despite its Protestant work ethic, as an institution it loves nothing more than rolling around in guilt, picking apart its past misdemeanours, promising to do better. Actually, maybe not a Catholic: more a dramatic teenager. The BBC has its game face – stoic, slightly sullen, ain't-done-nuffink-wrong-honest – but it collapses into histrionic remorse as soon as anyone takes it to task, points out that, actually, mistakes were made and it was the BBC that made them.

Another teenage quality: the BBC loves talking about itself. On Wednesday night, to mark our national broadcaster's 90th birthday (actually on 18 October), The Moral Maze discussed "Auntie" (urgh) and, especially, the licence fee. The licence fee, as a topic, is not exactly enthralling – it's like the euro, it's a constant subject matter for discussion, yet nobody finds it interesting – and despite the efforts of the panel (Michael Portillo, Clare Short, Anne McElvoy and Matthew Taylor) it remained determinedly dull. Even when Portillo tried to suggest that a constant stream of public money over 90 years might lead to exciting "moral danger", the programme failed to come alight.

The most salient point was a small one, from Robin Aitken, who pointed out that there is a BBC view of the world which comes from it being staffed by people who are all alike. "Decent, well-educated, humane and intelligent people", he characterised them, which is about right. They are lovely, but they are cloistered; protected from the vulgar, angry, ruthless world of the private sector.

Which might go some way to explain why the BBC had no idea about the revolting activities of Jimmy Savile. It just couldn't imagine that anyone would behave in so cruel a way. Especially not a powerful entertainer, one that drew so many people to his programmes. In hindsight, Jim'll Fix It seems like his horrible "seduction" technique writ large: all-powerful Savile fixing it for kids to do something they'd never been able to do – dance with the Royal Ballet, meet a pop star, have a ride in a Rolls-Royce – and, afterwards, exacting his price. They owed him, didn't they?

On The Media Show, the excellent Steve Hewlett tackled Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust. He wanted to know whether the BBC stopped its Newsnight investigation into Savile's abuse of young girls because of the programme's timing, rather than its supposed inability to back up its claims. The Newsnight revelations would have come out around the same time as two BBC Christmas programmes which were due to praise Savile to high heaven. "The licence payers had to wait for ITV to broadcast information that the BBC had but chose not to broadcast," growled Hewlett. He was amazing, a terrier with a dirt-covered stick, and Patten flailed.

Radio 1's regular Monday night documentary, Radio 1's Stories, is always worth checking out, and this week's, Keeping Mum, centred on young adult carers: 16- to 24-year-olds who are looking after one or more members of their families. As Pippa, a young carer herself, said: "If we all downed tools and said, 'No, we're not doing it any more', the council and the government would be in a hell of a mess." And yet, often, the miminal state support such carers are allowed is often instantly taken away when they turn 18.

Pippa hosted the show, aided by Radio 1's Greg James, who kept things bubbling along nicely. There were some sweet moments, such as when Oritsé from JLS arrived and one or two of the carers present went a bit funny. Oritsé looked after his mother and siblings when his mum developed multiple sclerosis. He was 11. Now, he feels like he can overcome anything: coming second in The X Factor was a blip.

Touching stories and strong opinions. Teenagers may be dramatic, but they have a tendency to tell the truth when they're allowed. As Newsnightvery nearly discovered.

Jimmy Savile scandal prompts flood of calls to abuse victims' groups

Allegations against presenter, which police confirm go back to 1959, 'have made people realise how damaging child abuse is'

Allegations against Jimmy Savile are mounting

The claims against Jimmy Savile have intensified the focus on the institutions that worked with him. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

 

Widespread allegations of sexual abuse against Sir Jimmy Savile, which Scotland Yard has confirmed stretch back six decades, have seen victims' groups swamped with pleas for help.

The case has dredged up painful memories for other victims of child abuse, who are now also coming forward in their hundreds to seek counselling.

Pete Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said its hotline had received 1,400 calls in the last 10 days – seven times its normal amount.

"If there is anything beneficial from this, it's that it's allowing victims and survivors of abuse to come forward and speak out," Saunders said, adding that the Savile affair marked a shift in how abuse was perceived. "We are beginning to see a change in the consciousness of the country. People are starting to realise how damaging child abuse is and are seeking help."

Six of the calls related to Savile, including one from a 15-year-old girl who alleged she had been abused on the set of Top of The Pops and in the BBC presenter's van, according to Saunders. The information has been shared with the Metropolitan police, which confirmed it was investigating allegations from 1959 to 2006.

"Having now had the opportunity to review progress one week on I have revised my estimate of the number of likely victims to be about 60," said Commander Peter Spindler, head of the Met's specialist crime investigations.

Napac said a further three allegations it had received were made by women who claimed to have been abused by a former doctor at Stoke Mandeville hospital, where Savile was a regular visitor. The doctor is believed to have known Savile. In 1990, a doctor at the hospital was jailed for three years after admitting three charges of indecent assault.

"This is not just about what happened at the BBC but what happened in hospitals," Saunders said. "Multiple people seem to have known what was going on." The scandal has raised questions about whether survivors' groups have sufficient resources to help victims. Napac said that so far it has responded only to 400 of the 1,400 calls it had received.

The NSPCC said it had referred 95 Savile-related calls to police. It said another 19 calls, which were not Savile-related, had been passed to Scotland Yard. "While the Savile case may be unusual it is certainly not unique," said Peter Watt, head of the charity's helpline. "There are many children at constant risk from sex offenders, as well as adults who are trying to recover many years after being abused."

The claims against Savile have intensified the focus on institutions that worked with him. Met officers will travel to Broadmoor on Monday to study claims Savile abused patients at the top security psychiatric hospital. The Department of Health is investigating a decision to appoint Savile head of a taskforce overseeing Broadmoor in 1988. Law firm Pannone confirmed that it had received instructions regarding an alleged assault by Savile on a 10-year-old boy while he was in care at the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey.

"I would urge other victims and anyone who has information regarding alleged abuse by Jimmy Savile to come forward," said Alan Collins, a partner at the firm.

Jane Root, controller of BBC2 from 1999-2004, told the Observer there needed to be a "kind of truth and reconciliation commission" into not just Savile but the casual sexism that was rife in the organisation in the 1980s and early 1990s.

"There was a generalised level of sexist behaviour towards adult women throughout television, not just at the BBC, that was seen as acceptable then and which is, I hope, unimaginable now," Root said. "And it was this sexist atmosphere, although a totally different thing, that assisted a very dedicated paedophile such as Savile to operate in the middle of it all. The two things overlapped and the first helped the second to function unchecked."

Claims the BBC could be held "vicariously liable" for crimes committed by Savile are problematic, say legal experts. "There are two issues with vicarious liability," said Matthew Nicklin of 5RB legal chambers. "Savile would have to have been employed by the BBC, but most talent has been engaged on contract for some time now.

"The second way the BBC could be held liable is if a member of staff had knowledge something was going on that they could have stopped and they didn't. At this distance of time, though, it would be extremely difficult to prove."John Whittingdale, chair of parliament's culture, media and sport committee, said he was consulting colleagues on whether to summon the director general of the BBC, George Entwhistle, for urgent questioning.

Jimmy Savile: BBC director George Entwistle announces inquiries – video

Jimmy Savile: BBC director George Entwistle announces inquiries – video

The BBC's director general, George Entwistle, announces an internal inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse of children against the late Jimmy Savile. A second inquiry will look at why a Newsnight investigation into the allegations in 2011 was axed. Entwistle also offers a 'profound and heartfelt apology' to the victims of Jimmy Savile

 

Jimmy Savile scandal prompts flood of calls to abuse victims' groups

Allegations against presenter, which police confirm go back to 1959, 'have made people realise how damaging child abuse is'

 

For those who seek much younger sexual partners, it's about power, not sex

Relationships of great generational inequality – even those that are legal – are often exploitative

  • Deborah Orr
    • The Guardian,  Saturday 13 October 2012
    • The BBC's director general, George Entwistle, announces an internal inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse of children against the late Jimmy Savile
            • .

            • A second inquiry will look at why a Newsnight investigation into the allegations in 2011 was axed. 

            • Entwistle also offers a 'profound and heartfelt apology' to the victims of Jimmy Savile
Allegations against Jimmy Savile are mounting
The claims against Jimmy Savile have intensified the focus on the institutions that worked with him. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

Jimmy Savile: BBC director George Entwistle announces inquiries – video





Jimmy Savile died in October last year, aged 84 (Sky N

Jimmy Savile Police Probe Show 'As Many As 340 Lines Of Inquiry And 40 Victims Of Sexual Abuse'

Huffington Post UK  |  By Posted: Updated: 12/10/2012



Police are pursuing 340 lines of inquiry and speaking with as many as 40 victims in the probe into sexual abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile.

"We have officially recorded 12 allegations of sexual offences but expect this number to grow," the Metropolitan police said on Friday.

"We continue to liaise with 14 forces."

jimmy savile

One allegation claimed Jimmy Savile molested a brain-damaged girl in hospital

The latest development came after disabled actress Julie Fernandez best known for her role in 'The Office' was the latest to claimed Jimmy Savile groped her.

Julie Fernandez told Radio 5 Live she remembered feeling the "huge rings on his fingers" and that his hands were "everywhere... lingering too long in places they shouldn't."

She claimed she was 14-years-old when the abuse happened, after appearing as a teenager on Jim'll Fix It.

jimmy savile

Jimmy Savile's headstone has been removed and carted away to be used as landfill amidst the claims

Fernandez's claims come in the midst of a raft of sexual abuse allegations against the late TV personality. His tireless fundraising, spearheading a number of charity campaigns, was well documented.

A statement from the Metropolitan Police on Friday said:

"Officers from the Serious Case Team of the MPS Child Abuse Investigation Command will continue to contact those who have come forward, to ensure that they are given the advice and support they need.

"We would once again praise the courage of, and thank everyone who has come forward to provide us with information to assist in understanding the scale of abuse perpetrated by Savile.

"Any one with information or concerns should call NSPCC on 0808 800 5000.

'Jimmy Savile Groped Me' Claims Julie Fernandez,

Disabled Actress From 'The Office'

Huffington Post UK  |  By Posted: Updated: 12/10/2012

A disabled actress best known for her role in 'The Office' claimed Jimmy Savile groped her when she appeared as a teenager on 'Jim'll Fix It'.

Julie Fernandez told Radio 5 Live she remembered feeling the "huge rings on his fingers" and that his hands were "everywhere... lingering too long in places they shouldn't."

She claimed she was 14-years-old when the abuse happened in 1988, much later than previous allegations made against the TV presenter.

julie fernandez

Fernandez says she feels lucky she was only groped

"I was in my wheelchair, but I just remember his hands being everywhere and just lingering those two, three, four seconds slightly too long in places they shouldn't. It wasn't particularly obvious either.

"It was in a busy room full of people in a studio so it was quite discreetly done and you don't kind of realise what's happening at the time, especially when you're 14 and it's the first time you've ever been in a studio and you're very excited.

"But I do remember feeling uncomfortable and he had these huge rings on his fingers."

julie fernandez

Ms Fernandez played Brenda in 'The Office' and has also appeared in BBC1's 'Eldorado'

Fernandez, who appeared in BBC1's 'Eldorado' and is a prominent campaigner for disabled rights, said she made a joke out of the incident with her friends.

"My classmates, we all made a joke of it afterwards for years, but we didn't really bring it up to any adult and I don't know why, actually."

"He was a great fundraiser and all of these things, so possibly people didn't want to say negative things about him. Maybe they didn't think they would be believed," she added.

Fernandez's claims come in the midst of a raft of sexual abuse allegations against the late TV personality. His tireless fundraising, spearheading a number of charity campaigns, was well documented.

jimmy savile

Jimmy Savile has been accused of molesting a brain-damaged girl in hospital

However his charity work and in particular his role as patron of National Spinal Injuries Centre has been sorely tainted after allegations that he volunteered at hospitals to find victims to abuse.

Caroline Moore has claimed she was assaulted by Savile at the age of 13 while being treated for spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Buckinghamshire hospital in 1971, the Press Association reported.

Mrs Moore, from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, told BBC Radio Scotland: "I was outside a ward or a gym and he came out and just rammed his tongue down my throat.

"I told my family at the time. They didn't take it seriously because he was such a high profile character."

jimmy savile

Allegations of abuse against the former DJ date back to the 1960s

Greater Manchester, Lancashire, North Yorkshire and Tayside are the latest forces to say allegations have been made.

June Thornton, a patient at Leeds General Infirmary in 1972, said she saw Savile abuse someone she thought was a brain-damaged girl.

Ms Thornton said that when she told a nurse about the abuse, she was ignored.

"I thought he was a visitor coming to see her. He started rubbing his hands down her arms and then, I don't know of a nice way to put it, but he molested her. He helped himself. She just sat there and couldn't do anything about it," she told ITV News.

jimmy savile

Savile raised millions for charity, especially for Stoke Mandeville Hospital

Police believe Savile could have abused as many as 25 victims over a period of 40 years, and have so far formally recorded a number of criminal allegations against him including rape and indecent assault.

The number of allegations have been branded a "cesspit" by BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten who pledged to hold an independent inquiry as swiftly as possible after the police investigation.

The BBC's reputation is increasingly under fire after an avalanche of allegations that the corporation was aware of claims about Savile's actions, but did nothing about them.

Ms Fernandez told breakfast presenter Nicky Campbell she felt she was "lucky" that she wasn't abused further. However she said: "It's a predatory behaviour and it's a bad, bad behaviour. And what's really annoying is, he's now dead and what can we do?"

SEE ALSO:

Pictures of fans queuing in the rain to catch a glimpse of Savile's coffin


Auction of Sir Jimmy Savile's memorabilia

Jimmy Saville Auction
1 of 10

Jimmy Savile 'molested brain-damaged patient'

Jimmy Savile died in October last year, aged 84 (Sky N

Sky News 
Sir Jimmy Savile molested a brain-damaged hospital patient, according to fresh claims against the star....

Sir Jimmy Savile molested a brain-damaged hospital patient, according to fresh claims against the presenter.
Former nurse June Thornton was recovering from an operation at Leeds General Infirmary when she says she saw Savile abuse the young girl.
"She had brain damage, and Jimmy Savile came in and kissed her," she said.
"He started kissing her neck, running his hands up and down her arms, and then started to molest her. Because I was laid flat on my back, there was nothing I could do."
It comes as Greater Manchester Police revealed they had received two separate complaints of sexual abuse relating to the late TV presenter dating back to the 1960s.
They have been passed on to the Metropolitan Police, who have so far recorded two criminal allegations of rape and six allegations of indecent assault against the former Top of the Pops presenter.
The BBC has given further details of its inquiry into the allegations, some of which relate to the period when Savile was employed by the BBC and are alleged to have taken place on the corporation's premises.
BBC chairman Lord Patten said the independent review, which will take place after the police investigation, would be chaired by "someone who holds the trust of the nation".
There will also be a review of sexual harassment, bullying and whistle-blowing guidelines at the BBC.
Five police forces are involved in the investigation, while charities say they continue to receive dozens of phone calls relating to the Jim'll Fix It star, who died aged 84 last year.
In total, police are pursuing 120 lines of inquiry. They believe there were up to 25 victims, the youngest of whom was just 13, and that the abuse spanned four decades.
A 2007 radio interview with Newstalk 106-108FM has also emerged, in which Savile denies rumours he was a child abuser.
He strongly refuted the allegations - which had earlier been broadcast in the documentary When Louis Met: Jimmy Savile with Louis Theroux - saying there had been no need to respond.
"What is the point of responding to something if it's not true," he told the radio station.
As police continue their investigation, the former DJ's gravestone has been removed from a cemetery in Scarborough at the request of his family. The headstone will be broken up and dumped in a landfill site.
Outlining details of the BBC's probe into the sexual abuse claims, Lord Patten said the broadcaster would consider making another, formal apology - possibly during prime air time - when they publish their findings.
The BBC chair said he did not know Savile but always thought he was "an odd customer".
He backed the handling of events by his new director general George Entwistle, reiterating that at no point had BBC management put pressure on Newsnight not to run an investigation into child abuse claims against Savile.

Jimmy Savile was a practicing Catholic but this was omitted from most of his obituaries.
Jimmy Savile was a practicing Catholic but this was omitted
 from most of his obituaries.




Jimmy Savile was a devout Catholic who attended Mass regularly, it has emerged.

In the wake of Savile's death last year, a Catholic newspaper even questioned a "conspiracy of silence" surrounding the TV presenter's religion at the time of his death.

The Catholic Herald noted that few newspapers mentioned that he was a practising Catholic, who attended mass on a regular basis, when writing their obituaries of the DJ.

The Herald asked: "Why not mention that an important part of his life was attending daily Mass? There's a deep dedication in the life of a man who gives away 90 per cent of everything he earns and so tirelessly does all the other things he did.

"You'd think that an obituarist would want to ask a simple question: where did all that come from? It's almost as though they couldn't bear to accept that the answer was his Catholicism: even that Catholicism itself could ever be the source of actual human goodness."

An ITV documentary, which drew in 1.9 million viewers, has alleged that Jimmy Savile sexually abused underage girls.

During Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, a number of women alleged the DJ sexually assaulted them in his BBC dressing room. One woman, Kim Ward, said she had seen convicted sex offender Gary Glitter having sex with a girl in Savile's dressing room.

A BBC spokesperson said they will be investigating the allegations surrounding Savile. Scotland Yard is yet to open a formal investigation into the claims against the presenter.

A statue of the entertainer has been removed from a leisure centre as police begin child abuse investigation.
Jimmy Savile was a practicing Catholic but this was omitted from most of his obituaries.

A statue of Sir Jimmy Savile has been removed from a Glasgow leisure centre amid allegations that the late entertainer raped and sexually abused young girls.

The wooden sculpture outside Scotstoun Leisure Centre was pulled down by operators who said they "felt it necessary" to remove the statue which overlooked the children's swimming pool. It had stood on the site since 1993, in honour of Savile's charity work.

A spokesman for Glasgow Life, which operates the centre, said: "Given the current controversy and the seriousness of the allegations, we thought it appropriate to move the statue at this time."

The decision comes just days after an historic rape allegation made against the Yorkshire-born DJ and presenter was referred to Scotland Yard by officers in Surrey.

In the explosive ITV documentary, The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, a number of women came forward to accuse the former Top of the Pops presenter of sexual abuse.

It was also revealed that previous accusations made about alleged abuse in two children's homes were dropped because of a lack of evidence.

The BBC, who Savile worked closely with throughout this career, has now offered its full support to officers, after it's surfaced that some of the abuse may have taken place on its premises.

The broadcaster had initially reacted angrily to its rival channel's allegations.

A BBC spokesman said: "A number of serious and disturbing allegations have been made over the past few days about the sexual abuse of teenage girls by Jimmy Savile.

"Some of these allegations relate to activity on BBC premises in the 1960s and 70s.

"We are horrified by allegations that anything of this sort could have happened at the BBC - or have been carried out by anyone working for the BBC.

"We have today asked the BBC investigations unit to make direct contact with all the police forces in receipt of allegations and offer to help them investigate these matters and provide full support to any lines of inquiry they wish to pursue."

A memorial plaque at Savile's former Scarborough home has also been removed after it was defaced with the words "paedophile" and "rapist".

To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail:t.owoseje@ibtimes.co.uk 
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk

Jimmy Savile Sex Scandal: Glasgow Statue Overlooking Children's Swimming Pool Torn Down

To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail:h.osborne@ibtimes.co.uk 
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk



29 October 2011
DJ and TV presenter
Jimmy Savile dies, aged 84


DJ and TV presenter Jimmy Savile dies, aged 84
Former DJ, TV presenter and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile has died, aged 84.
Savile, who was one of the most famous names on British TV and radio in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, died on Saturday. Police said they were called to his home in Leeds, but that there was nothing suspicious about his death. His family programme, Jim'll Fix It, drew in huge audiences and the programme received 20,000 letters a week at the height of its popularity. A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said officers were called to the house in Roundhay at 12:10 BST.
Details of how he died were not yet known, but he was recently in hospital with pneumonia. His nephew, Roger Foster, said he "passed away quietly in his sleep during the night". "Jimmy was a wonderful man. His public face is well-known but we knew him much more as an uncle. He was a very good friend. Jimmy will be sadly missed by very many people." Broadcaster Tony Blackburn said Sir Jimmy was embraced by everybody, and was "always just Jimmy Savile". "He was just a complete one-off. I think he was a bit of a lonely character as well. In the privacy of his own life I don't think he had very many friends."
He added: "I've never known anyone quite like him. He was a blunt speaking northerner, but also kind and very respectful." Presenter Dave Lee Travis told Sky News: "We are all going to be worse off without him around."
Prince Charles has also praised Sir Jimmy in a statement released by Clarence House: "The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are saddened to hear of Jimmy Savile's death and their thoughts are with his family at this time," it said.
Savile started out as a dance hall DJ in the 1950s, before making his name as a broadcaster on Radio Luxembourg. He was one of the first DJs on BBC Radio 1 and launched Top of the Pops in 1964. He also appeared on the music show's final edition in 2006.
Charity fundraiser
His TV persona included chunky gold jewellery, a huge cigar, his trademark snowy white hair and a number of catch-phrases which were frequently parodied by impressionists such as Mike Yarwood.
Born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, Savile was conscripted as a Bevin Boy, working in the coal mines during the war. Away from broadcasting, he was noted for his charity work, running 200 marathons and raising £40m over the years. He was a volunteer at the hospital and ran more than 200 marathons for various charitable organisations. Sir Jimmy raised £20m for the creation of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in 1983 after a storm damaged wooden huts which had housed spinal cord injury patients.
A spokeswoman for Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said Sir Jimmy would be missed by staff and patients, adding: "He was tireless in his attempts to fundraise for the hospital and was integral in the creation of the National Spinal Injuries Centre that we have today." Savile was knighted by the Queen in 1990 for his charity work.
Jimmy Savile: 'I invented the disco'
Sir Jimmy Savile has died, in this interview from May 2011 he talks about Top of the Pops and how he came up with the idea of running a disco. Savile started out as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 and was the first host of Top of the Pops in 1964. He also appeared on the music show's final edition in 2006. In this interview he says he was "the very first in the whole world to run a dance to records".
Interview from May 16 2011, 'BBC Inside Out'
Jimmy Savile: Your memories
Former DJ, TV presenter and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile has died, aged 84. Savile was one of the most famous names on British TV and radio in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Here, BBC News readers share their memories.
Paul  Bruce, Glasgow
Jim fixed it for Paul Bruce
I wrote to him when I was 13 years old asking to be allowed to drive an HGV. I lived in Blackpool at the time with my parents. My father was an HGV driver and I wanted to grow up and be just like my Dad. I got a letter back from one of the producers of the programme telling me I was going to be on the show. I went to a training place in Preston, they had me driving a brand new HGV. I was doing manoeuvres, three point turns and I even drove it up to 30mph. Then I was invited down to London for the filming. I remember Jimmy then as a frail old man, but a real nice guy. I met Pan's People and Lenny Henry in Television Centre. It was fantastic experience. He was a fantastic man. It has helped me get jobs in the past too. When people find out that Jim fixed it for you, it opens doors!
Graham Smith, Harrogate
Graham Smith on the bridge of the QE2
I lived in the apartment directly below Sir Jimmy for a few years and worked as a documentary cameraman on Jim'll Fix it. We did one Fix It on the QE2 when a boy had written in asking to be a waiter on the cruise ship. That was great fun. There was a lady in her 70s who wanted to be part of the White Helmets motorcycle display team. I ended up filming on the pillion seats of one of the bikes - an amazing experience. I also worked with Sir Jim on a video for Leeds General Infirmary. I got to know him quite well as a neighbour as well as professionally. I was always impressed with the way he was around the hospital. He would chat with everyone and spend time with everyone. He was never too busy, he really liked people and he was happy to spend time with them. He would factor extra time into his journeys around the hospital because everyone wanted to talk to him.
Margaret Thatcher asked him to look after the wives of the G7 leaders during a conference. He took them to Stoke Mandeville. They were confronted by a man in tracksuit and jewellery but by the end of the day, they were eating out of his hand.
Marie Jackson, Wolverhampton
Marie Jackson and her prized badge
 "People always think I am making it up"
As a kid, I wrote in everywhere: Blue Peter, Jim'll Fix it and all the local radio stations. I was also quite unusual as I played the bagpipes as a child. I had quite bad asthma and my doctor recommended that I should play a wind instrument. My Dad said there was no better wind instrument than the bagpipes. My Dad and I used to watch the Edinburgh Tattoo together. I always wanted to be the lone piper at the end.
I wrote to Jim to ask him to fix it for me. I didn't tell my parents that I had written. One day we got a phone call. The producers came down and listened to me play the pipes. Shortly afterwards my Dad and I went to Edinburgh. As a surprise they had arranged for Massed Pipes and Drums of the local regiments to play with me. While we were in Scotland we bought Jimmy a small cigar as a present. When we got to the studio in London, he was smoking one of his trademark cigars. I was thrilled when he binned his great big cigar for the little one I had bought. I do tell people that Jim fixed it for me. They always think I am making it up but it is a great starting point for a conversation.
Keith Walters. Norich
"Jimmy made a huge difference to patients' lives”
I had the privilege of meeting Jimmy when I was a young doctor working in the Spinal Injury Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. It was during the time he was raising money for the unit. Out of sight of the cameras it was clear to me how intelligent and thoughtful he was. He told me that when it came to choosing architects for the new unit he did not want someone who had designed hospitals before because they may have pre-conceived ideas.
He deliberately chose someone who had never designed a hospital. In his words he got, "A grand hotel with a hospital inside it." I went back and visit the unit after it was built, there is no doubt it was a better place. The new purpose-built building was much better for patients. He knew how to boost the morale of the spinal patients. He would come in with the TV cameras and film one of them. He maintained that doing that would cheer everyone up especially as the other patients would think it may be their turn next time. I also met him at Leeds General Infirmary. He made a huge difference to patients' lives. He knew how to help patients and how to talk them.
30 October 2011

Jimmy Savile: Tributes flood in
Tributes are being paid to DJ, TV presenter and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile, who has died aged 84.
Sir Jimmy, one of the most famous names on British TV and radio in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, died on Saturday. Tributes have come from such figures as the Prince of Wales, who said he was "saddened" to hear of Sir Jimmy death. Details of how the broadcaster died are not yet known, but he was recently in hospital with pneumonia. His nephews said he died quietly in his sleep.
Alan Franey, former Cheif Executive of Bradmoor Hospital
"I spent a lot of time with him and would say I knew him probably as well as anybody else knew him," Mr Franey told BBC 5 live.

"I spoke to him last Wednesday and asked him how he was, and he said he was feeling very tired and short of breath. Mentally, he was very alert. But he said to me: 'I'm coming to the end of the tunnel.'"
Mr Franey ran marathons with Sir Jimmy to raise money for causes including Broadmoor, Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire and Leeds General Infirmary.
"Jimmy would spend time going round the hospital [at Broadmoor] talking to staff and talking to patients, and if he could do any fundraising he would do so," he said.
"He spent a lot of his life involved in raising [money for] charity and was passionate about helping people. Jimmy had a very normal upbringing but it was a tough upbringing and he never forgot his roots. He felt that he was in a situation where he could raise funds for people using his position in showbiz and he successfully did that."
David Hamilton, DJ
"We were together at Radio 1 in the '70s and the station was full of eccentric personalities, but he was certainly the most flamboyant of all," Hamilton told BBC 5 live.
"One of the essential things about Jimmy was that he was a man of the people. He knew his audience, he was very much in touch with his audience. I think the public were his family. "Probably of all the DJs I worked with, I knew him less than any of the others. He kept himself very much to himself. He didn't drink so he wasn't the sort of man who would go down to the pub and have a bevvy with you."
Paul Bruce, who appeared on Jim'll Fix It
Sir Jimmy fixed it for Paul to drive an HGV lorry in 1979. "It was every child's dream to get on that programme," he said.
"It was fantastic to meet the guy and go on the programme, and I had 15-17 million people watching me on a Saturday evening. He was a great guy."

Graham Smith from Harrogate, Yorkshire, neighbour and colleague
"..They were confronted by a man in tracksuit and a jewellery but by the end of the day, they were eating out of his hand.."
"I lived in the apartment directly below Sir Jimmy for a few years and worked as a documentary cameraman on Jim'll Fix It," Mr Smith said.

"I got to know him quite well as neighbours as well as professionally. I also worked with Sir Jim on a video for Leeds General Infirmary. I was always impressed with the way he was around the hospital. "He would chat with everyone and spend time with everyone. He was never too busy, he really liked people and he was happy to spend time with them. He added: "Margaret Thatcher asked him to look after the wives of the G7 leaders during a conference. He took them to Stoke Mandeville. They were confronted by a man in tracksuit and a jewellery but by the end of the day, they were eating out of his hand."
Mark Thompson, BBC director general
"I am very sad to hear of Sir Jimmy Savile's death," said Mr Thompson.
"From Top of the Pops to Jim'll Fix It, Jimmy's unique style entertained generations of BBC audiences. Like millions of viewers and listeners we shall miss him greatly."
Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary
"Sir Jimmy Savile was one of broadcasting's most unique and colourful characters," said Mr Hunt.

"From Top of the Pops to making children's dreams come true on Jim'll Fix It, a generation of people will remember his catchphrases and sense of fun.
"But his lasting legacy will be the millions he raised for charity, tirelessly giving up his time and energy to help those causes he was passionate about."
Dave Lee Travis, radio presenter
"He likes to keep his distance from everybody, even friends”
Dave Lee Travis said Sir Jimmy could talk to anybody and "genuinely enjoyed" seeing the joy on the faces of the children on Jim'll Fix It.

But he was also a private man, he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. "Deep down inside him there was a guy which was very hard to get to. "I've known Jimmy Savile for over 50 years, that's a hell of a long period to know somebody, and I've never had an absolutely in-depth straight conversation with him because he's constantly got a sort of invisible shield up. "He likes to keep his distance from everybody, even friends. He'll joke his way out of something if he doesn't want to answer you... I think probably enigma is a good word for it."
Charles Kennedy MP
The former Liberal Democrat leader and MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said Sir Jimmy was "a true and long-standing friend to the West Highlands over decades of diligence and decency".
"When not resident at his home in Glencoe, he made it available for mountain rescue use," he said. "It was typical of the man that he never drew attention to such characteristic generosity. A sad loss indeed."
Councillor Keith Wakefield, leader of Leeds Council
"Sir Jimmy Savile was Leeds born and bred and he remained a Leeds lad throughout his life," Cllr Wakefield said.
"He was a much-loved and well-known figure - a larger-than-life character and an inspiration to many, particularly the children of the city.
"His enormous contribution to charity will never be forgotten. We are proud to have someone like him, who did so much for so many, come from Leeds."
John Myers, chief executive of industry body the Radio Academy
Mr Myers said: "The sad death of Sir Jimmy Savile represents a great loss to the UK radio industry. "He was one of the pioneers of modern pop-music radio. He made the smooth transfer from Radio Luxembourg to the BBC in the late 1960s and from 1997 moved his broadcasts to commercial radio where he continued to be successful and well respected by radio audiences around the UK. "The UK radio industry meets for its annual festival in Salford next week. He will be fondly remembered and his death will be marked at a special session on Tuesday morning." He grasped the opportunity to become a broadcaster, working at Radio Luxembourg before moving to Radio One.
Hospital help
He was the first host of Top of the Pops in 1964, and helped front the programme for more than 20 years. Sir Jimmy also had a role on the music show's final edition in 2006. Even among his fellow medallion men Savile revelled in his eccentricity, hanging upside down, appearing in a banana costume and generally refusing to follow fashion.
He was on BBC television for nearly two decades from 1974 in his guise as a perennial Santa Claus, granting viewers' wishes from his magic chair on Jim'll Fix It. The programme received 20,000 letters a week. A handful of correspondents went on to see their dream come true, and with it they received a hallowed Jim'll Fix It badge. Savile maintained this benevolent persona beyond the screen, raising more than £40 million for charity over the decades. He personally helped the nursing staff at Leeds Infirmary and ran the entertainments section of Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital. He ran more than 200 fundraising marathons, and as a devout Roman Catholic was given a Papal knighthood for his efforts. He was similarly rewarded by the Queen in 1990, and acted as an unofficial advisor to the Prince of Wales for a number of years. For more than three decades, Savile was most actively involved with the spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. He stayed there so often he had his own suite.
Mother love
The hospital is close to prime ministerial residence Chequers, leading Savile to spend time there. In an interview he said he had been entertained by Margaret Thatcher there during her premiership. "We used to have marvellous arguments," he recalled. Savile was relentlessly gregarious in his professional duties. But his appearance - that of a platinum-haired, cigar-smoking, entertainment stalwart - hid a complex personality.
Obituary: Sir Jimmy Savile
Sir Jimmy Savile: "I'm just unusual"


Sir Jimmy Savile was Britain's first pop disc jockey
 
A look back at the life of Sir Jimmy Savile

 
On and off screen, Savile was determined to Fix It



 
In his distinctive Yorkshire tones, the words "Now then, now then" meant Sir Jimmy Savile was getting down to business.
For more than six decades, Sir Jimmy, who has died at the age of 84, was one of Britain's most established showbusiness figures and a leading charity worker.
The country's first pop disc jockey, Sir Jimmy was also a seasoned television presenter, marathon runner, Mensa member, wrestler and fundraiser.
With his trademark tracksuit and chunky jewellery, he pre-dated hip-hop fashion by about 40 years.
But for both his on-screen recipients and the beneficiaries of his charity campaigns, he was the iconic Mr Fixit.
Eccentric exhibitionist
Jimmy Savile was born on 31 October 1926 in Leeds, the youngest of seven children.
During World War II he was conscripted as a Bevin Boy, working in the coal mines as an alternative to active service in the armed forces.
In an era dominated by live music, he started playing records in local dance halls.
In 1947, according to his autobiography, he started using twin turntables and a microphone, effectively becoming the first disc jockey.
As the manager of local dance halls, Savile cultivated a tough image, which he carried into professional wrestling clubs.
He lost match after match, but claimed later: "I've broken every bone in my body. I loved it."
A born exhibitionist, Savile was spotted by television cameras spinning discs at his own Plaza dance hall in Manchester.
He grasped the opportunity to become a broadcaster, working at Radio Luxembourg before moving to Radio One.
Hospital help
He was the first host of Top of the Pops in 1964, and helped front the programme for more than 20 years.
Sir Jimmy also had a role on the music show's final edition in 2006.
Even among his fellow medallion men Savile revelled in his eccentricity, hanging upside down, appearing in a banana costume and generally refusing to follow fashion.
He was on BBC television for nearly two decades from 1974 in his guise as a perennial Santa Claus, granting viewers' wishes from his magic chair on Jim'll Fix It.
The programme received 20,000 letters a week. A handful of correspondents went on to see their dream come true, and with it they received a hallowed Jim'll Fix It badge.
Savile maintained this benevolent persona beyond the screen, raising more than £40 million for charity over the decades.
He personally helped the nursing staff at Leeds Infirmary and ran the entertainments section of Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital.
He ran more than 200 fundraising marathons, and as a devout Roman Catholic was given a Papal knighthood for his efforts.
He was similarly rewarded by the Queen in 1990, and acted as an unofficial advisor to the Prince of Wales for a number of years.
For more than three decades, Savile was most actively involved with the spinal unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. He stayed there so often he had his own suite.
Mother love
The hospital is close to prime ministerial residence Chequers, leading Savile to spend time there.
In an interview he said he had been entertained by Margaret Thatcher there during her premiership.
"We used to have marvellous arguments," he recalled.
Savile was relentlessly gregarious in his professional duties. But his appearance - that of a platinum-haired, cigar-smoking, entertainment stalwart - hid a complex personality.
He eschewed the services of a manager or secretary, and shrank from the intimacy of personal relationships.
He claimed to have always slept alone, and saved his greatest affection and reverence for his late mother.
He called her the Duchess, and lived with her until her death in 1973. For the rest of his life, Savile continued to own the house they shared.
He kept her possessions as she had left them, even having her clothes annually dry-cleaned. "There's no reason for death to spoil a good friendship," he explained.
Savile was a millionaire but always lived frugally. He owned a score of Rolls Royces, but seldom changed his clothes and bought his first bottle of alcohol on the day his pension came through.
His eccentric personality, unconventional lifestyle and irrepressible self-belief all defied convention, invited personal speculation, and bemused many an interviewer over the years.
Some questioned the motivation of the man behind such a singular public persona, but his energy and ability were beyond doubt.
A self-professed loner, he nevertheless made an indelible impression on his audiences and, by virtue of his charity work, touched many lives.
"The reason I can do things that other people can't is because I'm a single guy and have plenty of time," he said.
"I don't want anything from anybody. I'm just unusual."
Sir Jimmy Savile: 'I've always been a bit odd'
Former DJ, TV presenter and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile has died.
In 2006 he spoke to the BBC's Stephen Nolan about his life.
Savile started out as a dance hall DJ in the 1950s, before making his name as a broadcaster on Radio Luxembourg. In this interview he talks about running 52 different dance halls.
He was one of the first DJs on BBC Radio 1 and launched Top of the Pops in 1964.
This interview was first broadcast on the Stephen Nolan Show on BBC Radio 5 Live
 
Jimmy Savile 'no loner', says friend Howard Silverman
Mr Silverman said Sir Jimmy used to host the Friday Morning Club at his flat
 Sir Jimmy Savile was "no loner", according to a close friend of the veteran broadcaster. Sir Jimmy, who died at his home in Leeds on Saturday, was Howard Silverman's best man in 2009. Mr Silverman, 59, said those who claimed the 84-year-old did not mix with people when the cameras were off "didn't know him".
A book of condolence to Sir Jimmy has been set up in Saviles Hall, opposite the Royal Armouries Museum in the city. Mr Silverman, a Leeds hairdresser, said he became a close friend of Sir Jimmy's after they met jogging on the streets of the city.
"All his pals, every one of them, were just like me - an ordinary geezer," he said.
Cakes and whisky
 
He and Sir Jimmy used to "laugh at the stories people came out with" in the media. Talking to BBC Radio Leeds, Mr Silverman said that every Friday morning Sir Jimmy held what was known as the FMC, or Friday Morning Club, at his flat. Friends of Sir Jimmy would be invited to sit around a big table laden with tea, cakes and whisky. Enveloped in the host's cigar smoke, the old friends would reminisce and chat the morning away.
Mr Silverman said: "If you saw that, no-one would say he didn't have pals."
'Hilarious' speech
According to Mr Silverman, Sir Jimmy had seven homes across the UK including in Glencoe, Bournemouth and Scarborough and he had friends in all those places.
When Mr Silverman got married two years ago, he asked Sir Jimmy to be his best man - but told him not to turn up in one of the tracksuits that had become his trademark. Sir Jimmy took him at his word and duly arrived in a suit, before giving a "wonderful" and "hilarious" speech. Mr Silverman saw Sir Jimmy last Wednesday, when they went for a meal at a pub near the entertainer's flat in Roundhay, Leeds. The veteran broadcaster did not even touch the soup he ordered and Mr Silverman had to ask if he was really all right.
Sir Jimmy said: "Of course, I'm fine."

A look back at the life of Sir Jimmy Savile



Boris Johnson quotes Apocalypse Now in New Year message

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has evoked the cult film Apocalypse Now in a New Year's message aimed at giving heart to the capital's residents in the face of the economic downturn.

Boris Johnson quotes Apocalypse Now in New Year message  
Boris Johnson: 'Someday captain, this war is going to end'
Photo: CATHAL MCNAUGHTON

Referring to the recession, Mr Johnson quoted Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, the eccentric commander in the 1979 epic Vietnam war film.

Lt Col Kilgore, who is played by Robert Duvall, says: "Some day captain, this war is going to end."

In a pre-recorded message to be projected on to the wall of the Shell Building on the South Bank in London tonight, he said: "There are those who say we should look ahead to 2009 with foreboding.

"I want to quote Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now when he says 'Some day captain, this war is going to end', and some day, this recession is going to end.

"We can speed the demise of this recession if we all help the poorest in our community and if we make the vital investment that we need in our mass transit system and in fighting crime, so that London emerges at the end better placed to compete and entrenched in its position as the greatest city on earth.

"We are going to be working flat out at City Hall to achieve that.

"Let's go forward into 2009 with enthusiasm and purpose. I wish you a very happy New Year."

Other memorable quotes from the film:

Colonel Walter Kurtz: "The horror... the horror."

Captain Benjamin Willard: "Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500."

Willard: "He was close, real close. I couldn't see him yet, but I could feel him, as if the boat were being sucked upriver and the water was flowing back into the jungle. Whatever was going to happen, it wasn't gonna be the way they call it back in Nha Trang."

Kilgore: "Charlie don't surf!"

Kilgore: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."



Discover the real Spain this winter


Boris Johnson

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British journalist and Politician, who serves as the current Mayor of London. He began his career as a trainee reporter on The Times but was sacked for making up a quote. From 1987 he worked at the Daily Telegraph where he became a leader-writer and assistant editor. He was editor of The Spectator from 1999, remaining in the job after his election in 2001 as MP for Henley until 2005. He was elected as London Mayor on 2 May 2008. Johnson is known for his unkempt appearance and eccentric approach to public life; he has attracted press interest over his private life.

Boris Johnson in quotes

17 Jul 2007
  • Boris Johnson to run for mayor
  • In 2004, Boris Johnson was ordered by the then Tory leader Michael Howard to go to Liverpool and apologise for an article in The Spectator which accused the city of "wallowing" in its "victim status".

    He said Liverpudlians made a scapegoat of police in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, refusing to acknowledge the part played "by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground".

    The article, on 16 October, said people in Liverpool "cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance about the rest of society".

    A later spat was caused by remarks made in Mr Johnson’s Daily Telegraph column about the Labour leadership crisis, which linked Papua New Guinea to "cannibalism and chief-killing".

    Mr Johnson wrote: "For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing, and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party."

    After apologising for any offence, the MP said he would be happy to "add Papua New Guinea to my global itinerary of apology".

    Other quotes by Boris Johnson

    On his hopes of leading the country: "My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

    On Tony Blair: "It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."

    On his rivals in the Liberal Democrats: "The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

    In his Telegraph column December 2, 2004 on being sacked from the Tory front bench: "My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters."

    During the campaign trail of the 2005 general election: "What’s my view on drugs? I’ve forgotten my view on drugs."

    On George Bush: "The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy."

    On The 2005 Conservative Leadership Contest: "I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest."

    "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."

    On Big Brother: "I didn’t see it, but it sounds barbaric. It’s become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers."



    Jimmy Savile was a practicing Catholic but this was omitted from most of his obituaries.

    A statue of Sir Jimmy Savile has been removed from a Glasgow leisure centre amid allegations that the late entertainer raped and sexually abused young girls.

    Jimmy Savile Sex Scandal: Alleged Victims of Child Rape and Sex Abuse Speak Out 

    By EWAN PALMER: Subscribe to Ewan's 

    September 30, 2012

    Five women who accuse the late Sir Jimmy Savile of molesting them when they were in their teens have gone public  over their allegations for the first time.

    The women claim Savile that sexually assaulted them when they were as young as 14 at the BBC studios. Their claims have led to accusations the broadcasting company had turned a blind eye to the alleged incidents.

    The women spoke out about their ordeals at the hands of the former Jim'll Fix It star on the eve of ITV broadcasting a documentary titled In Exposure: The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile. It is set to be screened on Wednesday 3 October.

    One victim told the Sunday Mirror that Savile first molested her in his dressing room at the BBC studios in 1969 when she was 15 and raped her when she was 16.

    "The first time something happened he actually got me into an alcove in the dressing room and pushed me back against the wall and then it was a hand up the skirt and touching me.

    "He did it on various occasions in various places and it was always very quick, a quick fumble and he was very strong and he would pin you up against somewhere, quick fumble, hand up the skirt and that was it.

    "When I was 16 one of these fumbles then turned into sex

    "There was no foreplay, no romance, no taking off clothes. I'm sure it's why he always wore a shellsuit so he could just whip his elastic shellsuit bottoms down very quickly." A second woman claimed the former DJ abused girls behind a curtain in his dressing room. A third claimed she lost her virginity to Savile in a London hotel at the age of 15.

    The documentary has led to accusations that the BBC knew or at least suspected Savile was abusing girls as young as 12 but did not act on it because of his huge reputation at the time.

    Esther Rantzen: We somehow colluded with Savile

    Former That's Life presenter and consumer champion Esther Rantzen said many people in TV "blocked our ears" to the accusations surrounding Savile.

    She told the Mail on Sunday after watching the ITV documentary: "I feel that we in television, in his world, in some way colluded with him as a child abuser - because I now believe that's what he was. We all blocked our ears. There was gossip, there were rumours.

    "It's very distressing. We made him into the Jimmy Savile who was untouchable, who nobody could criticise. He was a sort of God-like figure.

    A BBC spokesman said it had found no record of "misconduct or allegations of misconduct" by Savile during his time at the corporation.

    In a statement, the BBC said: "Whilst the BBC condemns any behaviour of the type alleged in the strongest terms, in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates the allegations that have been made it is simply not possible for the corporation to take any further action." 

    A spokesman at the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust, a charity set up by the late TV presenter, told IB Times UK: "It is well known that Surrey police investigated an allegation of underage sexual abuse against Sir Jimmy during his lifetime and determined no action should be taken against him. 

    "We cannot help but wonder why a programme containing these allegations has been made after his death, at a time when he cannot defend the claims nor can any such allegations be fully verified." The BBC has previously been accused of shelving a TV investigation into allegations that Savile molested teenage girls at its studios. Newsnight was due to screen a programme in December - two months after the presenter died - which claimed Savile molested a teenage girl in his dressing rooms at a recording of 1970s show Clunk Click. The BBC said the piece was dropped for editorial reasons as it clashed with programmes which paid tribute to the presenter's long career. Newsnight editor Peter Rippon said: "It is untrue that our investigation was dropped for anything other than editorial reasons.

    "The piece was not broadcast because the story could not be substantiated. To allege that we are withholding evidence from the police is also damaging and false."

    Sir Jimmy Savile Documentary: Paedophile Gary Glitter 'Did Nothing Wrong'

    To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail:e.palmer@ibtimes.co.uk 
    To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk





    Jimmy Savile accused of sexual abuse

    Sir Jimmy Savile has been accused of sexual abuse
    against under-age teenage girls in an ITV1 documentary
    to be shown on Wednesday.

    Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile will include several
    interviews with alleged victims of the DJ and TV presenter,
    who died last year.

    Sir Jimmy was never charged with any abuse
    offences during his lifetime.

    One complaint was made to Surrey Police in 2007 but following an investigation
    no further action was taken.

    Esther Rantzen, who worked as a television presenter at the
    BBC at the same time Savile was at the height of his fame
    in the 1970s,
    said there were rumours about the star.

    After watching the alleged victims' evidence as part of the
    documentary, Rantzen said she believed the testimonies and
    now thinks the rumours were true.

    "We all blocked our ears to the gossip," she said.
    "We made him into the Jimmy Savile who was untouchable,
    who nobody could criticise.

    Sir Jimmy, who presented shows including Top of the Pops and
    Jim'll Fix It, died in 2011 at the age of 84.

    The abuse is alleged to have taken place in
    a number of places including hospitals, schools
    and BBC buildings.

    In a statement, the BBC said no evidence of allegations on its
    premises had been found.

    'Expected to pay'

    "The BBC has conducted extensive searches of its files
    to establish whether there is any record of misconduct or
    allegations of misconduct by Sir Jimmy Savile during his time
    at the BBC. No such evidence has been found.

    "Whilst the BBC condemns any behaviour of the type alleged in the strongest terms,
    in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates
    the allegations that have been made it is simply not possible for the corporation
    to take any further action."

    In the ITV1 programme, to be broadcast on Wednesday at 2310 BST,
    former detective Mark Williams-Thomas conducts his own investigation into
    the allegations.

    ITV said it had taken into full account the fact Sir Jimmy was not alive to defend
    the claims.

    One woman named Fiona, who was 14 at the time, said she was one of
    several girls from her school who were invited to ride in the presenter's Rolls-Royce.

    "I knew the moment he asked me to stay in the car with him, I knew what was
    expected of me. Because I was having this wonderful day out and I was expected
    to pay for it. And that's what I did.

    "I now know it was wrong and I can still get very angry about it,
    but nobody believed me then, so I don't expect anybody to believe
    me now if I'm honest."

    Another woman, who remains anonymous, said she met Sir Jimmy
    at the BBC in 1969, when she was 15.
    She claims he indecently assaulted her "probably dozens of times".

    "I think when he was alive I would have been too frightened to have spoken out...
    there was always that air that he had power and that he had contacts and
    you wouldn't want to mess with him. So I would never have come out
    openly about it before."

    Concern over 'legacy'

    Sue Thompson was a newsroom assistant at BBC Leeds at the time Jimmy Savile
    was presenting the regional Speakeasy programme in 1978.

    When asked to help out on the show, she walked into the star's dressing room after
    a recording and says she was shocked when she saw Sir Jimmy
    with a young teenager.

    "I would have said something before if I'd had the courage or conviction that perhaps
    something would have been done about it. But it has been difficult to speak about it, j
    ust because of who Jimmy Savile was," she told the documentary.

    But Sir Jimmy's niece Amanda McKenna, of Kirkstall, Leeds, told the Yorkshire Evening
    Post: "The documentary-makers should be ashamed of themselves cashing in on a
    man who is dead and cannot defend himself."

    And his nephew, Roger Foster, from Goole in East Yorkshire, said he was
    concerned the allegations could damage the reputation of charities
    Sir Jimmy raised funds for.

    "The guy hasn't been dead for a year yet and they're bringing these stories out,"
    he said.

    'Care and consideration'

    "It could affect his legacy, his charity work, everything. I'm very sad and disgusted."

    An ITV spokesman said: "This documentary is the result of an in-depth investigation
    into long-standing allegations of serious and widespread sexual misconduct by
    Sir Jimmy Savile.

    "Because of the very serious nature of the claims made by several interviewees
    in relation to this, particular care and consideration was of course given to the
    decision to produce and broadcast this programme."

    For more than six decades, Sir Jimmy was one of Britain's most established
    showbusiness figures and a leading charity worker.

    The country's first pop disc jockey, Sir Jimmy was also a seasoned television
    presenter, marathon runner, Mensa member, wrestler and fund-raiser.

    He was instantly recognisable in his trademark tracksuit and chunky jewellery.

    More on This Story

    Related Stories




    Jimmy Savile Sex Scandal: Broadcaster Claimed Paedophile Gary Glitter ‘Did Nothing Wrong’ 

    By EWAN PALMER: Subscribe to Ewan's 

    October 1, 2012


     Sir Jimmy Savile claiming (L) and convicted paedophile Gary Glitter (BBC/Reuters)

    Sir Jimmy Savile claiming (L) and convicted paedophile Gary Glitter (BBC/Reuters)

    Sir Jimmy Savile once claimed former 70s pop star and convicted paedophile Garry Glitter did nothing wrong and was only arrested because he was a celebrity.

    The opinions have come into light on a new documentary which accuses the former Jim'll Fix It Presenter of molesting and raping girls as young as 14 at the height of his fame.Former glam rock singer Glitter was jailed in 1999 for four months for downloading 4,000 pornographic images of children and then deported from Vietnam for assaulting two girls aged 10 and 11 in 2008.

    Five woman, now in their 50s, have come forward to accuse the late DJ of sexual abuse and will feature on the ITV documentary Exposure: The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile, due to air on Wednesday 3 October.


    During the programme, Savile can be heard saying in 2000: "Now Gary, all he did was to take his computer into PC World to get it repaired. They went into the hard drive, saw all these dodgy pictures and told the police and the police then 'Oh we've got a famous person ... Oh my goodness, yeah we'll have them'.

    "But Gary has not sold them, has not tried to sell them, not tried to show them in public or anything like that. It were for his own gratification. Whether it was right or wrong is, of course, it's up to him as a person. But they didn't do anything wrong but they are then demonised."

    "If you said to that copper, what's Gary Glitter done wrong? Well nothing really. He's just sat at home watching dodgy films." 

    ITV has defended the programme, which is due to air nearly a year after the former Top of the Pops presenter's death.

    An ITV spokesman said: "This documentary is the result of an in-depth investigation into long-standing allegations of serious and widespread sexual misconduct by Sir Jimmy Savile. Because of the very serious nature of the claims made by several interviewees in relation to this, particular care and consideration was of course given to the decision to produce and broadcast this programme.

    "The programme takes full account of the fact that Sir Jimmy is not here to defend himself against these claims."

    The documentary has led to accusations that the BBC knew or at least suspected Savile was abusing girls but did not act on it because of his huge reputation at the time.

    Former That's Life presenter and consumer champion Esther Rantzen said many people in TV "blocked our ears" to the accusations surrounding Savile as he was seen as a "sort of God-like figure".

    A BBC spokesman said it had found no record of "misconduct or allegations of misconduct" by Savile during his time at the corporation.

    In a statement, the BBC said: "Whilst the BBC condemns any behaviour of the type alleged in the strongest terms, in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates the allegations that have been made it is simply not possible for the corporation to take any further action." 

    A spokesman at the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust, a charity set up by the late TV presenter, told IB Times UK: "It is well known that Surrey police investigated an allegation of underage sexual abuse against Sir Jimmy during his lifetime and determined no action should be taken against him. 

    "We cannot help but wonder why a programme containing these allegations has been made after his death, at a time when he cannot defend the claims nor can any such allegations be fully verified."

    Sir Jimmy Savile Documentary: Alleged Victims of Child Rape and Sex Abuse Speak Out

    To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail:e.palmer@ibtimes.co.uk 
    To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk





     





    "A lot of people knew":
    Janet Street-Porter says she was aware of the Jimmy Savile abuse rumours

    The journalist said there was a culture of inappropriate behaviour behind the scenes of the "male dominated" entertainment industry
    Rumours: Jimmy SavileRumours: Jimmy Savile
    Broadcaster Janet Street-Porter has revealed she was aware of rumours about Sir Jimmy Savile's alleged abuse of underage girls when she worked at the BBC during the late 1980s.
    The journalist also said there was a culture of inappropriate behaviour behind the scenes of the "male dominated" entertainment industry, adding that nothing would have been done even if the allegations about the late Top of the Pops host were raised.
    Street-Porter, who joined the BBC as an executive in 1987, said: "I was aware of the rumours about Jimmy Savile, I was also aware of rumours about other people.
    "There was a culture, and it was a generational thing, in areas of light entertainment behaviour was tolerated."
    The former Fleet Street editor added: "I feel that the reason these women never came forward before was nobody would have believed them because Jimmy Savile raised so much money for charity and he used the money that he raised for charity as a bargaining power to buy silence from national newspapers.
    "If ever there was a time when someone might have blown the whistle on him, he would threaten those newspapers and those reporters that that charity money would not go to those hospitals."
    Street-Porter also said that even if she had raised the rumours with senior BBC executives nobody would have taken any notice.
    Janet Street-Porter'Culture of inappropriate behaviour': Janet Street-Porter
    Rex
    Speaking on BBC's Question Time she added: "A lot of people in the BBC knew what was going on.
    "I heard the rumours but I was working in an environment that was totally male.
    "Do you really think that if I said to someone at the BBC higher up than me this was going on - they wouldn't gave taken any notice of me whatsoever?"
    Street-Porter, who started working in commercial television as a presenter in 1975, said she had been aware of "things going on in dressing rooms" across the industry.
    "There was definitely a culture where there was inappropriate sexual behaviour, not necessarily with underage boys and girls, but there was a culture in light entertainment that made me feel uncomfortable."
    Street-Porter's comments came after Scotland Yard confirmed it had taken the national lead in assessing allegations against the late TV and radio presenter.
    The force said it will "work closely" with the BBC and is currently considering a number of claims, including an historic rape allegation referred to them by Surrey Police.
    MP Anne Main has also written to Lord Justice Leveson asking him to investigate how the broadcaster handled the allegations as part of his inquiry into press standards.
    A growing number of victims have come forward to allege that Sir Jimmy sexually assaulted them after five women took part in a documentary claiming that they had been abused.
    In the film, screened on Wednesday, the alleged victims accused the Jim'll Fix It presenter of sexually assaulting them, some while on BBC premises.
    Police in Northamptonshire have been contacted by two alleged victims, while it emerged this week that Surrey, Sussex and Jersey Police have also received complaints.
    The Metropolitan Police said the assessment of claims will be led by Detective Superintendent David Gray from the force's Child Abuse Investigation Command, and that a formal investigation had not yet been launched.
    The force issued a statement which said: "Our priority will be to ensure a proportionate and consistent policing response putting the victims at the heart of our inquiries.
    "It is too early to say how many individual allegations there are, and we will be making contact with all those concerned in due course.
    "We will be working closely with the BBC investigations unit.
    "Anyone else with information is urged to make contact with their local police so that any further information can then be passed to us."
    The BBC said it will assist police with investigations.
    A spokesman said: "We have asked the BBC investigations unit to make direct contact with all the police forces in receipt of allegations and offer to help them investigate these m

    The Life and History of Jimmy Savile


    Jimmy Savile
    Sir James Wilson Vincent SavileOBEKCSG (31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011) was an English disc jockey, television presenter and media personality, best known for his BBC television show Jim'll Fix It, and for being the first and last presenter of the long-running BBC music chart show Top of the Pops. He is the subject of a police investigation into allegations of sexual assault made after his death.
    After working as a conscripted coal miner during the Second World War, Savile began a career playing records in, and later managing, dance halls. His media career started as a disc jockey on Radio Luxembourg in 1958, and on Tyne Tees Television in 1960, developing a reputation for his flamboyant character and eccentricities. He later worked primarily for the BBC, where he presented the first edition of Top of the Pops in 1964 and worked on BBC Radio 1 from 1968. Between 1975 and 1994 he presented Jim'll Fix It, a popular television programme in which he arranged for the wishes of viewers, mainly children, to come true. During his lifetime, he was noted for his fundraising and support of various charities and hospitals, in particular Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Aylesbury inBuckinghamshireLeeds General Infirmary and the Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. He was widely described as a philanthropist and was honoured for his efforts.[1][2] He was awarded the OBE in 1971 and was knighted in 1990.
    After his death, claims surfaced that he had sexually abused young teenage girls at the height of his fame in the 1960s and 1970s. Police have since described him as a "predatory sex offender",[3] and there have been public calls for him to be stripped of the honours that he had received during his lifetime. In October 2012, the Metropolitan Police began an assessment of the allegations, and set up a joint inquiry with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) into sexual assaults reported to have been carried out by Savile over four decades. Investigations also began into past practices at some of the places where he had worked, including the BBC and hospitals.

    Savile in 2006, leading the pipe band throughFort William to the Lochaber Highland Games in his capacity as Honorary Chieftain of the games 
    Born: James Wilson Vincent Savile, 31st October 1926, Leeds. West Riding of Yorkshire, England
    Died: 
    29 October 2011 (aged 84) Roundhay, Leeds, West  Yorkshire, England
    Nationality: British
    Occupation: Disc jockey, television and radio personality, dance hall manager, actor
    Early Life
    Savile was born in Leeds, the youngest of seven children (Mary, Marjory, Vincent, John, Joan, Christina and James) born to devout Roman Catholics,[4] Agnes Monica (née Kelly) and Vincent Joseph Marie Savile, a bookmaker's clerk and insurance agent.[5] Savile almost died of pneumonia at the age of five months. He was a Bevin Boy, conscripted during the Second World War to work as a coal miner at South Kirkby Colliery, West Yorkshire, England. He suffered serious spinal injuries in a mine explosion and spent a long period in recuperation.[6]
    Having started playing records in dance halls in the early 1940s, Savile claimed to be the first ever disc jockey. According to his autobiography, he was the first person to use two turntables and a microphone, at the Grand Records Ball at the Guardbridge Hotel in 1947.[7] It was billed as 'Jimmy Saville introducing Juke Box Doubles'. Savile is acknowledged as being one of the pioneers of using twin turntables for continuous play of music,[8] although his claim has been disputed (twin turntables had been illustrated in the BBC Handbook in 1929 and were advertised for sale in Gramophone magazine in 1931).[9]
    He became a semi-professional sportsman, competing in the 1951 Tour of Britain cycle race[10] and working as a professional wrestler.[11] He said:
    If you look at the athletics of it, I've done over 300 professional bike races, 212 marathonsand 107 pro fights. [He proudly announces that he lost all of his first 35 fights.] No wrestler wanted to go back home and say a long-haired disc jockey had put him down. So from start to finish I got a good hiding. I've broken every bone in my body. I loved it.[12]
    Savile later lived in Salford, and worked as manager of the Plaza Ballroom in Oxford Road, Manchester, in the mid-fifties. He lived in Great Clowes Street in Higher Broughton, Salford, and was often seen sitting on his front door steps. He also managed the Mecca Locarno ballroom in Leeds in the late 1950s and early 1960s.[13] Mecca also owned the Palais, a dance hall in Ilford, Essex, and Savile did a stint as manager there between 1955 and 1956. His Monday evening records-only dance sessions (admission one shilling) were a huge favourite with local teens.[14]

    Radio

    Savile started his radio career working as a Radio Luxembourg DJ from 1958 to 1967. He ran the Teen and Twenty Disc Club (TTDC),[15] membership for life, on Radio Luxembourg. For a small fee listeners received a certificate and a small bracelet with a disc on it, inscribed with the show's name. He stated on the BBC television series Inside Out that the title Teen and Twenty Disc Club had been rejected by the BBC in favour of Top of the Pops as too long; also that he introduced dancing to records, and that therefore he was the originator of the discothèque.
    In 1968 he joined BBC Radio 1, where he initially presented Savile's Travels, a weekly programme broadcast each Sunday in which he was recorded travelling around the UK and talking to members of the public.[16] From 1969 to 1973 he also fronted Speakeasy, a discussion programme for teenagers. His best-remembered contribution to Radio 1, however, is the Sunday lunchtime show Jimmy Savile's Old Record Club, where entire top tens from years gone by were played. This was the first show to feature old charts. It began in 1973 as The Double Top Ten Show and ended in 1987 as The Triple Top Ten Show, at which point he left Radio 1 after 19 years, although he could be heard presenting The Vintage Chart Showon BBC World Service between March 1987 and October 1989, playing top tens from the years 1957 to 1987.
    From March 1989 to August 1997 he was heard on various stations around the UK (mostly taking theGold format, such as the West Midlands' Xtra AM and the original Classic Gold network in Yorkshire) where he revived his Radio 1 shows.
    In 1994, satirist Chris Morris gave a fake obituary on BBC Radio 1 (as a joke), saying that Savile had collapsed and died, which allegedly drew threats of legal action from Savile and forced an apology from Morris.
    On 25 December 2005, and 1 January 2007, Savile presented shows on the Real Radio network. The Christmas 2005 show counted down the festive Top 10s of 10, 20 and 30 years previously, while the New Year 2007 show (also taken by Century Radio following its acquisition by GMG) featured Savile recounting anecdotes from his past and playing associated records, mostly from the 1960s although some were from the 1970s.

    Television

    Jimmy Savile presenting Top of The Popsin 1964
    In 1960 he presented Tyne Tees Television's music programme Young at Heart. Although the show was broadcast in black and white, Savile dyed his hair a different colour every week.[17]
    On New Year's Day, 1964, he presented the first edition of the BBC music chart television programme Top of the Pops from a television studio – a converted church (now demolished) – in Dickenson Road, Rusholme, Manchester. On 30 July 2006 he also co-hosted the final edition, ending the show with the words "It's number one, it's still Top of the Pops", before being shown turning off the studio lights after the closing credits.[18]When interviewed by the BBC on 20 November 2008 and asked about the revival of Top of The Pops for a Christmas comeback, he commented that he would welcome a "cameo role" in the programme.[19]
    During the early 1960s he co-hosted (with Pete MurrayNew Musical Express Poll Winners' Concert, annually held at Empire Pool, Wembley, with acts such as The BeatlesCliff Richard and The Shadows,Joe Brown and the BruvversThe Who, and many others. These were broadcast on television. On 31 December 1969, Savile hosted the BBC/ZDF co-production Pop Go The Sixties, shown across Western Europe, celebrating the hits of the 1960s.
    Savile is also remembered for a series of Public Information Films promoting road safety, notably "Clunk Click Every Trip" which was promoted the use of the car seatbelts, the clunk representing the sound of the door and the click the sound of the seatbelt fastening. This led to Savile's hosting his own Saturday night chat/variety show on BBC1 from 1973 entitled Clunk, Click, which in 1974 featured the UK heats for theEurovision Song Contest featuring Olivia Newton-John. He also fronted a long-running series of advertisements in the early 1980s for British Rail's InterCity 125, in which he declared "This is the age of the train". After two series, Clunk, Click was replaced by Jim'll Fix It, which he presented from 1975 to 1994.
    He was interviewed by Dr. Anthony Clare for the radio series In the Psychiatrist's Chair, where Savile appeared to be "a man without feelings".[20] In 1995 he was interviewed at length by Andrew Neil for the TV series Is This Your Life? (made by Open Media for Channel 4).[21]
    In April 2000, he was the subject of an in-depth documentary by Louis Theroux, in the When Louis Met...documentary series. In the series, Theroux accompanied a different British celebrity in each programme as they went about their day-to-day business, interviewing them about their lives and experiences as he did so. In the documentary, Savile seemed distrustful of the project and was reluctant to reveal much about himself, although he did "confide on camera that he used to beat people up and lock them in a basement during his career as a nightclub manager".[12] "When Louis Met...Jimmy" was voted one of the top fifty documentaries of all time in a survey by Britain's Channel 4.
    Savile visited the Celebrity Big Brother house on 14 and 15 January 2006. During these visits he "fixed it" for some of the housemates to have their wishes granted; for example, Pete Burns received a message from his significant other and friend while Dennis Rodman was able to trade Savile's offering for a supply of cigarettes for other housemates.
    In 2007 Savile returned to television with Jim'll Fix It Strikes Again, in which he showed some of the most popular 'fixits' ever, recreating them with the same people, as well as making new dreams come true.[22]

    Personal life

    Savile at the 1982 Leeds Marathon
    Savile was famous for his yodel[23] and his catchphrases included "how's about that, then?", "now then, now then, now then", "goodness gracious", "as it 'appens" and "guys and gals". Savile was frequently spoofed for his distinctive appearance, which almost always featured a track suit or shell suit, along with gold jewellery. A range of licensed fancy dresscostumes were released with his consent in 2009. Savile was also known as a cigar smoker and usually smoked very expensive Cuban brands.[24][25]
    He was a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists[26]and drove a Rolls-Royce.[27] He was also a member ofMensa.[28] He was made a life member of the British Gypsy Council in 1975, becoming the first "outsider" to be made a member.[29] He was chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games for many years, and owned a house in Glen Coe. His appearance on the final edition of Top of the Pops in 2006 was pre-recorded as it clashed with the games.[30] While still alive he arranged for a bench, in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, to be dedicated to his memory, with the words 'Jimmy Savile – but not just yet!' added as an inscription.[31][32]
    Through his support of hospital charities, Savile became a friend of Margaret Thatcher, who described his work as "marvellous".[33] He reportedly spent 11 consecutive New Years Eves at Chequers - located close to Stoke Mandeville Hospital - with Thatcher and her family.[34]
    A bachelor, Savile lived with his mother (whom he referred to as "The Duchess") and kept her bedroom and wardrobe exactly as it was when she died. Every year he had her clothes dry cleaned. Savile's personal relationships were rarely the subject of media report or comment during his lifetime. He claimed in his autobiography that he had had many intimate relations with members of the opposite sex, describing his first introduction to women in detail and then adding that "there have been trains and, with apologies to the hit parade, boats and planes (I am a member of the 40,000 ft club) and bushes and fields, corridors, doorways, floors, chairs, slag heaps, desks and probably everything except the celebrated chandelier and ironing board."[35]
    During 1988, the Secretary of State for HealthKenneth Clarke, appointed Savile to lead a task force overseeing the management of Broadmoor Hospital, after its management board had been disbanded.[36]In 1989, Savile started legal proceedings against News Group Newspapers after their paper, the News of the World, published an article in January 1988 suggesting Savile had been in a position to secure the release of patients in the hospital who were considered "dangerous". Savile won the case on 11 July 1989 with News Group agreeing to pay all legal costs, and received an apology from editors Kelvin MacKenzieand Patsy Chapman.[37]
    On 9 August 1997, Savile underwent a three-hour quadruple heart-bypass operation at the Killingbeck Hospital in Leeds, having learnt that he had needed the operation for at least four years when attending regular check-ups.[38]

    Allegations of sexual abuse

    Jimmy Savile accused of being a sexual predator by five women who claim he abused them when they were underage schoolgirls

    • Alleged victim says: 'There was a little sort of couch and he would have me lie down on it and just do the sex act'
    • Woman tells TV documentary he raped her in his dressing room
    • 'We colluded with him as a child abuser, claims broadcaster Esther Rantzen
    • She says people in TV 'blocked our ears' to rumours... Savile was made into a 'god-like figure'
    • Sir Jimmy's nephew 'disgusted and disappointed' about allegations
    • Personal assistant of 40 years claims accusers are starstruck fantasists
    PUBLISHED: 22:22, 29 September 2012 UPDATED: 15:21, 30 September 2012
    Five women have branded Sir Jimmy Savile a sexual predator who allegedly raped and abused them when they were underage schoolgirls.
    The explosive sex grooming allegations are made in a documentary to be aired on national TV on Wednesday night.
    The women, now in their fifties, claim Sir Jimmy was at the peak of his fame when he is said to have molested them in his Rolls-Royce, at a hospital, a school and the BBC Television centre 
    'Untouchable': Rantzen said Savile was made into a 'god-like figure'
    'Untouchable': Rantzen said Savile was made into a 'god-like figure'
    Luxury car: Sir Jimmy is said to have taken schoolgirls for rides in his Rolls-Royce
    Luxury car: Sir Jimmy is said to have taken schoolgirls for rides in his Rolls-Royce
    Accused: Five women claim he used his fame to groom and sexual abuse when they were schoolgirls
    Accused: Five women claim he used his fame to groom and sexual abuse them when they were schoolgirls
    One of the alleged victims claims the Top of The Pops DJ raped her in his dressing room, while another alleges she lost her virginity to him when she was 15.
    In the ITV1 documentary, Exposure: The other Side of Jimmy Savile, the star, who died last year aged 84, is accused of allegedly:
    • Promising a victim he would not rape her but then did
    • Asking one girl to perform an indecent act on him in the back of his Rolls
    • Wearing a shell suit so that he could easily pull down the elastic trousers to assault his victims. 
    • Giving a girl who said she lost her virginity to him, his autobiography with a message written inside which said: 'No escape' and signing it her 'keeper'.
    The documentary also features damning contributions from former BBC production staff who reveal that the star’s predatory behaviour with girls as young as 12 was an open secret
    One woman given the pseudonym Angie claimed she lost her virginity in a London hotel room with Savile who later gave her his autobiography in 1974 with the message inside 'No escape' and signing it her 'keeper.' 
    She said he regularly abused her in his dressing room. She claimed: 'There was a little sort of couch and he would have me lie down on it just to do the sex act.
    'It was very quick and unemotional and that was it. I wasn't able to do anything about it. I just feel he took huge advantage of me.'
    Savile, knighted for raising millions for charity, is said to have preyed on girls at Duncroft Approved School for Girls in Staines, Surrey, when he visited in the 1970s in his caravan.
    A former pupil given the pseudonym Fiona, was 14 when she says she was abused after being invited to be in the audience of his show Clunk Click.
    She says: 'He had an alcove in his dressing room and took you behind the curtain. He wanted you to sit on his knee while he spun you around in the chair.'
    Fiona alleged he would lure girls by taking them out in his car when he visited the school.
    She claimed that the first time he abused her was in the back of his Rolls-Royce while pupils were at picnic tables in the grounds.
    'I was having this wonderful day out and was expected to pay for it. And that's what I did.'
    Fame: Savile when he was a DJ on Top Of The Pops

    Visits: Sir Jimmy arrived at Duncroft girls' school in Surrey in the 1970s in his caravanFame: Savile when he
was a DJ on Top Of The Pops
    Visits: Sir Jimmy arrived at Duncroft girls' school in Surrey in the 1970s in his caravan
    'Blocked our ears': Broadcaster Esther Rantzen now believes that Jimmy Savile was a child abuser after watching the documentary. She said that some in television 'colluded with him as a child abuser'
    'Blocked our ears': Broadcaster Esther Rantzen now believes that Jimmy Savile was a child abuser after watching the documentary. She said that some in television 'colluded with him as a child abuser'
    After viewing the documentary, Esther Rantzen has told how some in broadcasting ‘blocked our ears’ to claims about Jimmy Savile made during his career.
    In an emotional interview, the broadcaster and Childline founder told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I feel that we in television, in his world, in some way colluded with him as a child abuser – because I now believe that’s what he was. We all blocked our ears. There was gossip, there were rumours.

    SARAH'S STORY: SHE MET SAVILE AT 1973 CONCERT 

    Image of a woman
    After the concert at Stoke Mandeville hospital, while everyone was getting on the coach to leave, I ran up to him to let him know I was the one who had sent him the letter about the choir.
    Before I knew what had happened he'd stuck his tongue into my mouth.
    It didn't seem to bother him that other people could have seen what he was doing.
    I was just so shocked. I pulled away and dashed on to the coach. I couldn't believe what had happened.
    Looking back now, as an adult, I realise he'd been grooming me by calling me at home and arranging to come and see me in the choir.


    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210592/Jimmy-Savile-accused-sexual-predator-women-claim-abused-underage-schoolgirls.html#ixzz29D5MYLVM 
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    VAL'S STORY: SHE MET SAVILE AT THE BBC IN 1969 WHEN SHE WAS 15

    Image of woman
     I think people need to know that there was another side to him and it was quite a dark side. He was a predator really, a predator on young girls.
    The first time something happened he actually got me into an alcove in the dressing room and he pushed me back against the wall and then it was a hand up the skirt and touching me.
    He did it on various occasions in various places and it was always very quick, a quick fumble, hand up the skirt and that was it.
    When I was 16 one of these fumbles then turned into sex, full sex.he promised me he wasn't going all way, but he did.
    There was no foreplay, no romance, no taking off clothes. So was, I'm sure, why he always wore a shellsuit so he could just whip his elastic bottoms down very quickly .
    As a mature woman now, I look back and I think I was actually raped on that first occasion because I definitely didn't know we were going to have full sex and I definitely said to him
    "You're not going to go all the way". So looking back I think, "Oh my God, he actually raped me".
    I was very young and he was in his 40s. I think when he was alive I would have been too frightened to have spoken out

    FIONA'S STORY: MET THE STAR WHEN A 14-YEAR-OLD SCHOOLGIRL 

    Image of a woman
    To have this gentleman say he wanted to take two or three of you out, with just him, it was freedom, it was wonderful.
    The very first time he abused me it was actually in the back of his car.
    We were in the car park and the other girls were sat at one of those picnic tables, and I was sat with him on my own in the back of the car and I knew the moment he asked me to stay in the car with him, I knew what was expected of me.
    Because I was having this wonderful day out and I was expected to pay for it. And that's what I did.
    I now know it was wrong and I can still get very angry about it, but nobody believed me then, so I don't expect anybody to believe me now.
    By the time I'd finished spending some time with him, the wire from my bra had come up over the top of my breast.
    And he hadn't restrained himself just to my breasts, he'd also had a good fumble around in my knickers and it didn't make me feel comfortable or good about myself, but I thought it was expected of me. 
    At the BBC he had an alcove in his dressing room that had a curtain over it and he would take you behind the curtain.
    He often wanted you to sit on his knee whilst he spun round in the chair, you could feel him whilst you were sitting 

    ANGIE'S STORY: SHE ALLEGES SHE LOST HER VIRGINITY TO STAR AT 15

    Image of woman
    It was quick and it was in a London hotel. He invited me to come round. When I got there it was chitchat first of all.
    And before I knew it he had me on the bed and he was having sex with me.
    Jim didn't do kissing, he didn't do emotion or foreplay or anything.
    It was just basically what he wanted - in and out and that was it.
    And afterwards it was as though nothing had happened.
    I was very naive. I had no idea what was happening and in the light of day he was a middle-aged man, he was in his early 40s.
    He shouldn't be doing that to 15-year-olds.
    And actually I'm quite angry and it's quite repulsive what he did to me and other girls.

    CHARLOTTE'S STORY: SHE SAYS SAVILE GROPED HER AT 14

    Image of a woman
    We all went into this caravan and Jimmy Savile was there and the teacher was saying to us: "Oh he's going to do a recording of all you girls and he's going to play it on the radio".
    I don't know if he beckoned me first but I do remember that I sat on his lap. Then the next thing, I felt this hand, sort of go up my jumper and on my breast.
    I jumped up, I absolutely freaked out and started swearing and "What do you think you're doing?" And then I was just dragged out of the caravan by two of the staff.
    I was told what a filthy mouth I have, how can I make those terrible accusations.
    I was taken upstairs to the isolation unit, left there for two or three days and said that I could come back when I refrained from saying such filthy things.
    ‘It’s very distressing. We made him into the Jimmy Savile who was untouchable, who nobody could criticise. He was a sort of god-like figure. Everybody knew of the good that Jimmy did and what he did for children. And these children were powerless.
    ‘What these women say is so matter of fact, they corroborate each other. The style of the abuse and the attack on them was consistent one with each other. I’m afraid the jury isn’t out any more and what upsets me so much is that not one of these children could ask for help. The abuse of power was as great as the sexual abuse.’
     
    A BBC spokesman said it had found no record of ‘misconduct or allegations of misconduct’ by Savile during his time at the BBC.
    'He was all over me': 14-year-old Coleen Nolan (pictured with Savile on Top Of The Pops in 1979) said she was horrified when he intimately cuddled her on the show
    'He was all over me': 14-year-old Coleen Nolan (pictured with Savile on Top Of The Pops in 1979) said she was horrified when he intimately cuddled her on the show

    Singer Coleen Nolan, who does not appear in the ITV programme, revealed four years ago that she was horrified when Savile intimately cuddled her in 1979 on Top Of The Pops when she was 14. She said: ‘He was all over me. I could see my sisters glaring, “You touch her and we’ ll kill you!” – and they would have done.’
    A child protection expert who investigated the claims for ITV tells the programme he is convinced Savile, who died last year, would face arrest if still alive.
    Mark Williams-Thomas, who for 12 years was a detective and child protection officer, spent a year talking to Savile’s former victims.
    He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘They were in awe of an individual who could give them a great number of benefits, and so the abuse could go on and on unchecked.
    'The women thought no one would believe them then, and even now they are terrified of the potential backlash from his fans and from his estate. But I have no doubt that on the evidence I have gathered, if Savile was still alive I would be banging on his door to get him nicked.’ 
    Mr Williams-Thomas was a child protection officer with Surrey Police and worked on the prosecution of pop impresario Jonathan King on charges of sex with underage boys. 
    Since leaving the police, he has become a consultant on child protection and fronted the ITV documentary To Catch A Paedophile.
    He said: ‘Early last year I was asked by a contact if I was aware of allegations that had circulated for years about Savile and young girls and if I knew of an investigation into a complaint made to Surrey police in 2007.
    ‘When Savile died, I began an investigation and was put in contact with several women who alleged they had been abused by him.’
    The shocking conclusion of his investigation is that Savile, who was the face of Top Of The Pops for three decades as well as Jim’ll Fix It, groomed girls as young as 12 for sex.

    Esther Rantzen
    Esther Rantzen
    During broadcasting: Rantzen (pictured left in 1987 and right last year) said that Savile's style of abuse and the attack on the girls was consistent. 'What upsets me so much is that not one of these children could ask for help,' Rantzen said
    Savile’s victims tell strikingly similar stories in the documentary, which is to be screened at 11pm – two hours after the watershed.
    Until his death at 84, Savile was seen as an outlandish but avuncular star who loved tracksuits and ostentatious jewellery. But despite his tireless charity work, he never escaped dark rumours about his lifestyle. The ITV investigation makes concrete allegations for the first time. 
    A nephew of Sir Jimmy has said his family is 'disgusted and disappointed' that allegations have been made when he is no longer around to defend himself.
    Roger Foster from Goole, East Yorkshire, said he was not only concerned for his uncle's reputation and legacy but also for the damage the allegations could do to his charities.
    He said: 'I just get so disgusted and disappointed by it. The guy hasn't been dead for a year yet and they're bringing these stories out.
    Reputation: His personal assistant of 40 years claimed he would never risk destroying his public image
    Reputation: His personal assistant of 40 years claimed he would never risk destroying his public image
    'It could affect his legacy, his charity work, everything. I'm very sad and disgusted.'
    He added: 'I just don't understand the motives behind this. I just think it's very, very sad you can say these things after someone's died and the law says you can't defend yourself when you're dead.'
    The woman who worked as Sir Jimmy's personal assistant for 40 years said yesterday she would be shocked if  the allegations were true.
    Janet Cope believes his accusers were starstruck fantasists.
    She said:'Some of his female fans were attracted to him like bees to a honey pot.'
    Janet, now a 70-year-old widow, of Aylesbury, Bucks, added: 'I never had an inkling of him misbehaving or taking advantage of impressionable young girls.
    'If there had been I would have seen it and tried to stop it. But if the documentary conclusively proves his guilt then I'd be really shocked.'
    She insisted he would never have risked destroying his carefully cultivated public image.
    'He was far too savvy, knowing how reputations like his could easily be trashed overnight.
    'To my knowledge, he never once stepped out of line. 'I think I'd have known if he had.'
    Would have: Savile, who died last year, pictured is his grave, would have faced arrest if still alive, a child protection expert claims on the documentary
    Would have: Savile, who died last year, pictured is his grave, would have faced arrest if still alive, a child protection expert claims on the documentary

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210592/Jimmy-Savile-accused-sexual-predator-women-claim-abused-underage-schoolgirls.html

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210592/Jimmy-Savile-accused-sexual-predator-women-claim-abused-underage-schoolgirls.html#ixzz29D5IMjei 
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    Savile claimed that the key to his success on Jim'll Fix It had been that he disliked children, although he later admitted to saying this to deflect scrutiny of his personal life. He did not own a computer, explaining that he did not want anybody to think that he was downloading child pornography.[39] In October 2012 it was reported that Savile had publicly defended the convicted paedophile pop star Gary Glitter saying that "he just watched a few 'dodgy films' and was only vilified because he was a celebrity... It were for his own gratification. Whether it was right or wrong is up to him as a person. But they didn't do anything wrong."[40]
    In 2007 Savile was interviewed under caution by police investigating an allegation of indecent assault in the 1970s at the now-closed Duncroft Approved School for Girls near Staines, Surrey, where he was a regular visitor. The Crown Prosecution Service advised that there was insufficient evidence to take any further action and no charges were brought.[41]
    In March 2008, Savile started legal proceedings against The Sun newspaper which had, wrongly he claimed, linked him in several articles to the child abuse scandal at the Jersey children's home Haut de la Garenne.[42] Savile initially denied visiting Haut de la Garenne, but later admitted that he had done so, following the publication of a photograph showing him at the home surrounded by children.[43] The States of Jersey Police said that in 2008 an allegation of an indecent assault by Savile at the home in the 1970s had been investigated, but there had been insufficient evidence to proceed.[44]
    On 30 September 2012, it was reported by UK newspapers that up to ten women stated that they had been sexually molested or raped by Savile during the 1960s and 1970s. One of the alleged victims was reported to have been aged 14 at the time.[45] The ITV1 documentary Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile was broadcast on 3 October 2012. It was researched and presented by former police detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who had been a police investigator on the successful 2001 Jonathan King child-sex prosecution. It was later claimed that Savile had abused at least one boy as well as numerous girls.[46]
    The Metropolitan Police stated on 4 October 2012 that their Child Abuse Investigation Command would lead a process of assessing the allegations, which was "not an investigation at this stage".[47] On 12 October 2012 they announced that they have received 340 lines of enquiry, are dealing with 40 potential victims, and have recorded 12 allegations of sexual offences which date back to 1959.[48]

    Fundraising, sponsorship and voluntary work

    Aside from his TV and radio work, Savile carried out a considerable amount of charity work and is estimated to have raised some £40 million for charity.[49]
    One of the causes for which he raised money was the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where he worked for many years as a volunteer porter. Staff reported that he would search the wards for young patients to abuse and that they would instruct patients in the children’s ward to feign sleep during his visits.[50] He raised money for the Spinal Unit, NSIC (National Spinal Injuries Centre). Savile also raised money for St Francis Ward – a ward for children and teens with spinal cord injuries.
    Savile also worked as a volunteer at Leeds General Infirmary and at Broadmoor Hospital. In 1988 he was appointed chairman of a task force set up to advise on governing Broadmoor. Savile had his own room at both Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor.[51] It was later reported that Savile regularly sexually abused vulnerable patients at these hospitals.[52]
    From 1974 to 1988 he was the honorary president of Phab (Physically Handicapped in the Able Bodied community).[53]
    He also sponsored medical students at the University of Leeds to perform undergraduate research in the Leeds University Research Enterprise scholarship scheme (known as LURE), donating over £60,000 every year, giving young medics a helping hand.[54] In 2010 the scheme was extended with a commitment of £500,000 over the following five years.[55] Following Savile's death in October 2011 it was confirmed that a bequest had been made to allow continued support for the LURE programme.[56]
    Savile was also well known for running marathons (many of them again for Phab, including their annualhalf marathon around Hyde Park). He completed the London Marathon in 2005, at the age of 79.

    Honours

    Death

    Savile's coffin on display at the Queens Hotel in Leeds, 8 November 2011
    Savile was found dead at his home in Roundhay, Leeds, on 29 October 2011, two days short of his 85th birthday.[67][68] He had recently been in hospital with pneumonia, and his death was not treated as suspicious.[67] His closed satin gold coffin was displayed at theQueens Hotel in Leeds,[69][70] together with the last cigar he smoked and his two This Is Your Life books.[71] About 4,000 people visited to pay tribute.[72] His funeral took place at Leeds Cathedral on 9 November 2011,[73] and he was buried at Woodlands Cemetery inScarborough.[74][75] As his will had specified, his coffin was inclined at 45 degrees to fulfil his wish to "see the sea".[75][76] The coffin was later encased in concrete "as a security measure".[77]
    An auction of Savile's possessions on 30 July 2012 saw his silver Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible go for £130,000 to an Internet bidder. The vehicle's number plate, JS 247, featured the original medium wave wavelength used by BBC Radio 1 (247 metres).[78][79]
    A memorial plaque was placed on the wall of Savile's former home in Scarborough, but was removed in 2012 after it was defaced with graffiti.[80] A wooden statue of Savile installed at Scotstoun Leisure Centre in Glasgow was removed around the same time.[81] A sign on a footpath in Scarborough bearing Savile's surname was removed.[82] On 9 October 2012, the headstone of Savile's grave was removed, with his family citing "respect [for] public opinion". The headstone was broken up and sent to a landfill.[83]

    Works

    Books
    • Jimmy Savile, As it happensISBN 0-214-20056-6, Barrie & Jenkins 1974 (autobiography)
    • Jimmy Savile, Love is an Uphill ThingISBN 0-340-19925-3, Coronet 1976 (softback edition of As it Happens)
    • Jimmy Savile, God'll Fix ItISBN 0-264-66457-4, Mowbray, Oxford 1979
    Recordings

    References

    1. ^ Anthea Lipsett (14 July 2009). "'Jim Fixes it for medical students"The Guardian (London). Retrieved 30 October 2011.
    2. ^ Taylor, Paul (1985). Popular Music Since 1955: A Critical Guide to the Literature. Mansell Pub.. ISBN 0-7201-1727-5.
    3. ^ Savile was a 'predatory sex offender' say police BBC News, 9 October 2012. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
    4. ^ Sir Jimmy Savile - Telegraph
    5. ^ Barratt, Nick (17 March 2007). "Family detective: Jimmy Savile – Telegraph"The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 28 July 2008.
    6. ^ Fox, Margalit (2 November 2011). "Jimmy Savile, TV Personality, Dies at 84"The New York Times (New York). Retrieved 13 November 2011.
    7. ^ Miller, Harland (27 April 2004). "Harland Miller on Jimmy Savile: inventor of hip-hop style"The Guardian (London). Retrieved 28 July 2008.
    8. ^ Brewster, Bill; Frank Browghton. "DJ Awards-History". djawards.com. Archived from the original on 23 March 2008. Retrieved 28 July 2008.
    9. ^ Donovan, Paul (1991). The Radio Companion. London: HarperCollins. p. 198. ISBN 0-246-13648-0. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
    10. ^ "Tour of Britain's long ride for respect". 4 May 2007. Retrieved 18 December 2008.
    11. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile"The Daily Telegraph (London). 29 October 2011.
    12. a b Hattenstone, Simon (11 April 2000). "In bed with Jimmy"The Guardian (London). Retrieved 18 December 2008.
    13. ^ "Jimmy Savile". DJHistory.com. Retrieved 16 January 2011.
    14. ^ "Ilford Recorder Ilford Palais". Ilfordrecorder.co.uk. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
    15. ^ John Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Music of the World, Volume 1, Media, Industry and Society, page 468 (Continuum, 2003). ISBN 0-8264-6321-5
    16. ^ Radio Rewind: Jimmy Savile. Accessed 9 October 2012
    17. ^ "Sixties Pop and Music Television 1960–64"Sixties City. Retrieved 17 September 2007.
    18. ^ "Top of the Pops bids fond goodbye"BBC News (BBC). 31 July 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
    19. ^ "BBC interview"BBC News. 20 November 2008.
    20. ^ ""Professor Anthony Clare" – Obituary at". Telegraph.co.uk. 30 October 2007. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
    21. ^ BFI database. Retrieved 31 October 2011
    22. ^ Oatts, Joanne (26 October 2006). "UKTV brings back 'Jim'll Fix It'".Digital Spy. Retrieved 26 March 2011.
    23. ^ Bernadette Strachan, Little White Lies, chapter 21 (Hodder, 2008). ISBN 978-0-340-89805-5
    24. ^ "'Ow's about that, then?". Yorkshire Post. Retrieved 8 April 2010.
    25. ^ Sir Jimmy Savile: He raped me as a teenager claims woman - Telegraph
    26. ^ "Veteran Savile fixes traffic jam"BBC News (BBC). 18 August 2008. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
    27. ^ "Obituary: Sir Jimmy Savile"BBC News. 29 October 2011. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
    28. ^ "Meeting of Mensa minds in Wales". news.bbc.co.uk. 17 June 2005. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
    29. ^ "Gipsies honour Jimmy Savile"Evening Times: p. 9. 16 January 1975.
    30. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile: The medallion man with a heart of gold"The Scotsman. 30 October 2010. Retrieved 30 October 2010.
    31. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile statue considered for Scarborough"BBC News(BBC). 31 October 2011. Retrieved 17 November 2011.
    32. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile OBE". Scarborough In Pictures. Retrieved 28 July 2008.
    33. ^ "Margaret Thatcher: Radio Interview for IRN". Margaret Thatcher Foundation. 31 December 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
    34. ^ "Jimmy Savile, the big fixer". Daily Telegraph. 30 October 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
    35. ^ As It Happens, pp 138–139
    36. ^ "Jimmy Savile scandal: government could face civil claims"The Guardian. 12 October 2012. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
    37. ^ "Savile wins libel action"The Glasgow Herald: p. 7. 12 July 1989. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
    38. ^ "Heart surgeons fix it for Sir Jimmy Savile"The Independent. 9 August 1997. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
    39. ^ Obituary – Sir Jimmy Savile Daily Telegraph, 29 October 2011.
    40. ^ Alleyne, Richard (31 May 2011). ""Jimmy Savile claimed paedophile Gary Glitter 'did nothing wrong' at". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
    41. ^ "Jimmy Savile interviewed under caution over indecent assault allegation"The Telegraph. 1 October 2012. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
    42. ^ "Jimmy Savile turns to Fox Hayes for action against The Sun | News". The Lawyer. 17 March 2008. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
    43. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile: He raped me as a teenager claims woman". Daily Telegraph. 3 October 2012. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
    44. ^ "Jimmy Savile named in Jersey children's home abuse inquiry"BBC News (BBC). 2 October 2012. Retrieved 2 October 2012.
    45. ^ "'Sir Jimmy Savile abused us at the BBC', claim women"Telegraph(
    46. (Telegraph). 30 September 2012. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
    47. ^ Beckford, Martin; Alleyne, Richard (5 October 2012). "Met investigate Sir Jimmy Savile as dozens more abuse allegations are made". The Telegraph. Retrieved 5 October 2012.
    48. ^ "Met Police to assess Jimmy Savile claims"BBC News (BBC). 4 October 2012. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
    49. ^ Evans, Martin (12 October 2012). "Jimmy Savile sex scandal: BBC apologises to 'victims' as it launches two inquiries"The Telegraph. Retrieved 12 October 2012.
    50. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile: Obituary"The Daily Telegraph (London). 29 October 2011. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
    51. ^ "Jimmy Savile did 'ward rounds’ at Stoke Mandeville to find young girls to abuse". Telegraph. Retrieved 11 October 2012.
    52. ^ Adam Sweeting. ""Sir Jimmy Savile obituary" at guardian.co.uk". Guardian. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
    53. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile: fourth British TV personality accused in sex allegations"The Telegraph. Retrieved 11 October 2012.
    54. ^ "PHAB homepage". Retrieved 11 November 2011.
    55. ^ "Jimmy Savile gives young medics a helping hand – University of Leeds". leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
    56. ^ "Sir Jimmy's £500,000 for Leeds trainee doctors – Yorkshire Evening Post". yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
    57. ^ "Now Scarborough turns out for Jimmy Savile’s final farewell".Yorkshire Post. 10 November 2011. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
    58. ^ London Gazette(Supplement) no. 45554. p. 12. 31 December 1971. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
    59. ^ "Runners for Charlotte take on 30-mile Marine challenge". The Guernsey Press. 13 July 2009. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
    60. ^ London Gazetteno. 52173. p. 2. 15 June 1990. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
    61. ^ "Could Sir Jimmy Savile lose knighthood over abuse claims?"BBC News. 9 October 2012. Retrieved 8 October 2012.
    62. ^ Tubb, Gerard (9 November 2011). "Fans Flock To Cathedral Service For Sir Jimmy"Sky News. Retrieved 10 November 2011.
    63. ^ "Savile was serial sex abuser of teenage girls, say police". The Times(London). 10 October 2012.
    64. ^ "'How about that then' Jimmy Savile donates £60,000"Daily Mail(London). 14 July 2006. Retrieved 2 November 2011.
    65. ^ McVeigh, Tracy (30 October 2011). "Jimmy Savile, eccentric king of children's TV, dies aged 84"The Observer (London). Retrieved 3 November 2011.
    66. ^ Appendix, list of recipients of the Order pro merito Melitensi of theSovereign Military Order of Malta published in the Annual Report of the British Association, Sovereign Military Order of Malta, 2010
    67. ^ "Honorary Freemen and Honorary Aldermen". Scarborough Borough Council. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
    68. a b "DJ and TV presenter Jimmy Savile dies, aged 84"BBC News. 29 October 2011. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
    69. ^ "Veteran Star Sir Jimmy Savile Dies Aged 84"Sky News. 29 October 2011. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
    70. ^ Tubb, Gerad (8 November 2011). "Sir Jimmy Savile's Coffin Put In Leeds Bar"Yahoo.com Sky News. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
    71. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile: More time for fans to view gold coffin"BBC News(BBC). 8 November 2011. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
    72. ^ "Sir Jimmy Savile bid farewell by people of Leeds"BBC News (BBC). 8 November 2011. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
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    75. ^ "Gold coffin among final wishes of Leeds’s own Sir Jimmy Savile".Yorkshire Evening Post. 2 November 2011. Retrieved 2 November 2011.
    76. a b "Jimmy Savile buried in Scarborough cemetery"BBC News (BBC). 10 November 2011. Retrieved 10 November 2011.
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    87. External links


     







    An old friend of Jimmy Savile who worked with him to raise funds for Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the 1970s has said she was saddened by allegations of sexual abuse against him but never saw him do anything "inappropriate".

    Sylvia Nicol told Daybreak on Friday: "I am very sad, I don't like it, it takes away 40 years of very happy, very good memories.

    jimmy savile

    Jimmy Savile has been accused of molesting a brain-damaged girl in hospital

    "Knowledge of all the good Jimmy did, because from the time he came to Stoke Mandeville I only saw him do good."

    But Caroline Moore has claimed she was assaulted by Savile at the age of 13 while being treated for spinal injuries at the Buckinghamshire hospital in 1971, the Press Association reported.

    Nurses at the hospital are also understood to have dreaded Savile's visits because of his behaviour and would tell children to stay in bed and pretend to be asleep when he came round.

    Mrs Moore, from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, told BBC Radio Scotland: "I was outside a ward or a gym and he came out and just rammed his tongue down my throat.

    "I told my family at the time. They didn't take it seriously because he was such a high profile character."

    Police believe Savile could have abused as many as 25 victims over a period of 40 years, and have so far formally recorded a number of criminal allegations against him including rape and indecent assault.

    Greater Manchester, Lancashire, North Yorkshire and Tayside are the latest forces to say allegations have been made.

    A woman told Greater Manchester Police of a sexual relationship she had with Savile from the age of 15, while a second said she was groped by him in Salford when she was under 16.

    jimmy savile

    Allegations of abuse against the former DJ date back to the 1960s

    Another woman told Tayside Police she was targeted in the Liverpool area, an alleged victim told North Yorkshire Police she was preyed on by Savile in Scarborough in the 1980s, and two women complained to Lancashire Police about incidents when one was 14, in the 1960s, and the other 15, in the 1980s.

    June Thornton, a patient at Leeds General Infirmary in 1972, said she saw Savile abuse someone she thought was a brain-damaged girl.

    Ms Thornton said that when she told a nurse about the abuse, she was ignored.

    "I thought he was a visitor coming to see her. He started rubbing his hands down her arms and then, I don't know of a nice way to put it, but he molested her. He helped himself. She just sat there and couldn't do anything about it," she told ITV News.

    Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Stoke Mandeville, and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said they were helping police with their investigations.

    The number of allegations against Savile has been branded a "cesspit" by BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten who pledged to hold an independent inquiry as swiftly as possible after the police investigation.

    It emerged on Thursday that BBC director-general George Entwistle has asked a senior colleague to answer journalists' questions on the dropping of a documentary about Savile.

    Ken MacQuarrie, director of BBC Scotland, will speak to Newsnight journalists about the aborted broadcast after several of them wrote to Mr Entwistle to ask why the film was not aired.

    The BBC's reputation is increasingly under fire after an avalanche of allegations that the corporation was aware of claims about Savile's actions, but did nothing about them.

    jimmy savile

    Savile raised millions for charity, especially for Stoke Mandeville Hospital

    David Nicolson, who worked as a director on Jim'll Fix It, claimed to have caught Savile having sex with a girl in his dressing room, but was laughed away when he voiced his concerns, The Sun said.

    Grant Shapps, chairman of the Conservative Party, told BBC1's Question Time that it "seems unimaginable" that people at the BBC were unaware of the child abuse allegations.

    He said: "What happened now appears to be outrageous. It's particularly disturbing that a programme paying tribute, a three-parter, went out just last Christmas after it was already known at senior levels within the BBC that something was wrong, enough to have had a serious Newsnight programme made about it and enough to raise serious concerns.

    "I do think there are definitely questions that do need answering."

    Mr Nicolson told The Sun he caught Savile having sex with a "very, very young" girl in his dressing room.

    "It was a bog standard changing room in the basement. They both quickly pulled up their pants. The girl could have been 16, maybe 15. But she was just one of many - he always had one in the room."

    When he reported the incident, he said he was told: "That's Jimmy. I was revolted by his behaviour. They just shrugged it off, saying 'Yeah, yeah - that's the way it goes'."

    He added: "Everyone knew what was going on. That includes senior BBC people - chiefs at the highest levels."

    SEE ALSO:




    John Peel, Jimmy Savile's Colleague,

    'Got 15-Year-Old Schoolgirl Pregnant'

    The Huffington Post UK  |  Posted:



    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090106/twl-rise-in-attacks-on-europe-s-jews-3fd0ae9.html



    Rise In Attacks On Europe's Jews


    Rise In Attacks On Europe's Jews


    Attacks on Jews in Britain and Europe are rising as the violence in Gaza continues.

    According to the Community Security Trust, a group which protects Jewish people, there have been 24 incidents in Britain since December 29.

    This includes an arson attack on a synagogue in London.

    "There has been a significant rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents, especially when compared with what is usually a very quiet time of year for racist, anti-Jewish attacks," spokesman Mark Gardner said. 

    "It is a pattern with which we and the police are now sadly familiar, whereby hysteria is whipped up against Israel, and British Jews then suffer a wave of anti-Semitism."

    In the attack on the synagogue in Brondesbury north west London, arsonists tried to smash a window.

    They failed because of the toughened protective glass.

    In another incident, a gang of youths in Golders Green, north west London, tried to enter Jewish shops on New Year's Eve while shouting "Jew".

    Nearby, a Jewish man was pulled from his car and assaulted by three men, but not seriously hurt.

    There have also been incidents outside London, including graffiti on a synagogue, anti-Semitic hate mail sent to another, and "Hamas HQ" graffiti on a Jewish building in Manchester.

    Police in one of the North East's biggest Jewish communities have stepped up their patrols. 

    The Northumbria force said it had increased its presence in the Bensham area of Gateshead, home to around 5,000 Orthodox Jews.

    And violence against Jews is increasing in other parts of Europe.

    Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night.

    On Sunday slogans including "murderers ... You broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm, Sweden.

    In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun.

    And the government in Belgium has ordered police in Antwerp and Brussels to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests.

    Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has written to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith about the apparent rise in anti-Semitic incidents.

    Mr Huhne said: "I am deeply concerned by the evidence in the Community Security Trust's report that the Israeli invasion of Gaza is being used as a pretext for threats against the Jewish community in Britain.

    "It has already had to invest substantially in extra security even for public institutions such as state-maintained Jewish faith schools, on the advice of local police forces."

    Related content

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090106/twl-southern-lebanon-residents-look-to-g-3cd7efd.html

    Southern Lebanon residents look to Gaza with angst

    Akil Sayegh will not stick around this time. Like many of his fellow residents in this southern Lebanese town pummeled during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, he stands ready to flee at the first sign of a renewed conflict.

    "We will leave the country in the event of war because this time there will be no place for us to hide if Israel strikes," he said, the devastating 2006 war that left some 1,200 mostly Lebanese civilians dead still fresh in his mind.

    Qana grabbed headlines at the time after an Israeli raid left nearly 30 people dead, most of them women and children. The village 10 years earlier had also been the scene of Israeli strikes which killed 105 civilians who had sought shelter in a UN base during the Jewish state's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive on Lebanon.

    A father of four, Sayegh has already packed a tent in the trunk of his car, purchased extra diapers for his three-month-old and stocked up on essential items.

    "I will head straight to the southern coastal town of Tyre at the first sign of trouble and leave by boat," he said as he huddled around a television set with fellow villagers at a local cafe to watch the latest developments in Gaza.

    He recalled the wave of panic that spread through the village at the weekend when two Israeli jets overflew the region.

    "Suddenly you had everyone in the village running for cover," he said.

    Imad Chebli, 32, said locals were living in fear with everyone glued to their television sets since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on December 27 in a bid to halt rocket attacks by Hamas fighters.

    Still, like dozens of residents interviewed this week in several southern Lebanese villages, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, Chebli and Sayegh believe that the Shiite group will come out victorious in the event of a new conflict.

    Many say under cover of anonymity that Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria and is considered a terrorist organization by Washington, has mobilized its troops and readied its weapons arsenal since the Gaza offensive began.

    However the Lebanese government, in which Hezbollah is represented, has played down the possibility that the conflict could spill over with another front opening up in southern Lebanon.

    "We have not received from Hezbollah any sign that they will risk dragging Lebanon into this conflict," Information Minister Tarek Mitri said Monday.

    And residents in southern Lebanon who are still recovering from the 2006 war say they are all but ready to suffer through another conflict despite their adherence to Hezbollah.

    In the village of Haris, Zeinab Jawad, 15, said his father had rushed to stock up on gasoline after Hezbollah chief declared that his party was ready to respond to any aggression.

    In Ayta Eshaab, a border village, houses still bear the scars of the fierce battles that took place there during the 2006 war.

    "The Jews will not dare return here," said confidently Jamal Srour, 62, sitting in his newly rebuilt house.

    His wife approves adding: "This time we will wipe them out inchallah (God willing)."

    Further north in the village of Al Abassiyeh, Mahmoud Chehab, who owns a small shop facing a UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) post warns that in the event the situation in Gaza escalates "we must open another front".

    But not everyone shares his opinion.

    "Our homes are still destroyed," said Siham Al Saadi, a mother of six who lives in the village of Shebaa. "We suffered too much and lost our loved ones.

    "We won't be able to survive another war."





    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090106/tpl-uk-palestinians-israel-westbank-sb-43a8d4f.html

    Spirit of solidarity sidelines Palestinian split

    Israel's offensive on Gaza appears to be creating a mood of unity on the streets of the West Bank that the leaders of hostile Palestinian factions have been unable to obtain in months of negotiation.

    It is not the formal entente they say they are searching for, but it is a grassroots solidarity of suffering that some feel exposes how artificial is the split in Palestinian ranks at the level of the political leadership.

    On Tuesday, angry Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah protested, chanting: "Today Gaza is under fire, tomorrow it will be the West Bank."

    Slogans called for an end to the schism between President Mahmoud Abbas' secular Fatah faction and Islamist rival Hamas, winner of a 2006 parliamentary election. Since fighting in 2007, the two now control the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively.

    Abbas and his allies are ready to negotiate peace with Israel after 60 years in return for an end to occupation and an Arab state that would live side by side with the Jewish state, in mutual security.

    Hamas has refused to recognise Israel's right to exist and its leaders call on all to join their resistance platform.

    Some analysts say Israel is content to have Palestinians divided, and doubt that there would be serious progress towards a peace deal with them if Islamist hardliners were brought back into the fold.

    Non-stop television pictures of charred corpses and children's body parts plucked from the smoking rubble of bombed buildings are shocking West Bank Palestinians.

    Israel's 11-day offensive has killed 600 of their people, including many civilians. And it has sidelined the once all-engrossing Fatah-Hamas schism, for the time being at least.

    Some blame Hamas for allowing the situation to reach such a destructive state, but others praise Hamas fighters for their courage in confronting Israeli troops.

    "People in the West Bank sympathise with the civilians in Gaza who get killed, not with Hamas," said Lama Hourani of Ramallah.

    "People here are aware that Israel's aim is not to destroy Hamas but to destroy the will of the Palestinian people everywhere. That is why people here call for unity."

    A shopkeeper in Qalqilya had a different view.

    "Hamas has succeeded in winning the people's support during this war," Fathi Abdel-Al said. Hamas was winning the peoples' hearts for resisting Israel's military might.

    Some Palestinians, however, recalled the widespread destruction of West Bank cities during the Israeli invasion of 2002, when the late Yasser Arafat came under siege in his Ramallah compound. They fear it could happen again.

    Since the Israeli offensive began Hamas leaders have threatened to resume suicide bombing attacks in Israeli cities.

    But some Palestinian analysts doubt they will do that.

    "Sometimes such threats are media-oriented, and sometimes it has to do with local abilities," Hamas lawmaker Ayman Daraghmeh told Reuters.

    "I also see that the world is seeing pictures of the Palestinian people as victims ... maybe any martyrdom attack now could alter this image."

    (Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Haitham Tamimi in Hebron, Naim Sweilem in Qalqilya and Atef Saad in Nablus; Editing by Douglas Hamilton)

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    City workers walk past the Bank of England

    Bank set to cut interest rates to record low 


    The Bank of England looks set to cut interest rates by at least half a percentage point this week to their lowest level on record as it tries to prevent the economy sliding into a long and painful recession.

    Financial markets have fully priced in a cut of at least 50 basis points to 1.5 percent when the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee ends its two-day meeting on Thursday. Several analysts are even predicting another 100 basis point reduction.

    And the cuts won't end there. Another big reduction that could take interest rates below 1 percent looks a sure bet in February alongside a signal that borrowing costs will stay low for long time to come.

    "We have pencilled in the Bank rate bottoming out at 0.75 percent, but we stand ready to change this if the Bank of England hints that rates could fall further," said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec.

    Caught on the hop by the severity of the downturn, the Bank has already cut interest rates by 3 percentage points since October.

    Before that, a number of policymakers were even thinking about raising interest rates in order to bring down inflation, which is still running well above the Bank's 2 percent target.

    DEFLATION?

    Worries about price pressures, however, have fallen by the wayside as evidence the economy is facing a serious recession is overwhelming and policymakers have become more worried about inflation falling below target or turning negative.

    House prices suffered their worst year on record, falling by nearly 16 percent and the service sector, which makes up 75 percent of the economy, shrank at a near record pace in December, according to two separate surveys on Tuesday.

    Retailers are complaining of a very lacklustre Christmas trading period and have been slashing prices in the New Year sales. Thousands of jobs look set to disappear this year.

    Woolworths, one of the nation's best-known store chains, finally closed for business this week as it became one of the most high-profile victims of the global credit crunch that has made raising cash so hard for so many firms.

    Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week that, with interest rates close to zero, it was right that the government take fiscal action. Further tax cuts and extra government spending look likely in the March budget.

    That still may not be enough to get the economy moving again as long as banks run shy of new lending. Bank policymakers have even been thinking of ways of boosting the economy through more unconventional means once interest rates cannot go any lower.

    Quantitative easing, or literally boosting the money supply, is probably a way off yet but central banks all around the world are perhaps for the first time having to think about the same kind of steps the Bank of Japan took earlier this decade.

    "We are sceptical that QE in the strict sense, i.e. flooding the banking system with reserves, will give the real economy a significant push, especially as this did not appear to have a material effect in Japan," said Investec's Shaw.


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    Boris Johnson quotes

          “My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”

    “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”

    “The Tory Party - the funkiest, most jiving Party on Earth!”

    “Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form.”

    “Ken doesn't think he's got anything to say sorry for and if that's really his feeling, then I think that he should stick to his guns.”

    "But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic.”

    “Pyramid of piffle [no, not his views on Liverpool but a report Petronella Wyatt was his mistress]”

    “The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas.”

    “I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.”

    “I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis

    “To rely on a train in Blair's Britain is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil.”

    “Sometimes, in our thinking about higher education, we're too narrowly confined to a utilitarian calculus about what it's doing to the bottom line of UK plc. I wanted to make the point that higher education adds immeasurably to the value of the UK economy without necessarily obliging everybody to pursue courses that have some immediate vocational application. I wanted to stick up for medieval history, among other things, which was deprecated by Charles Clarke.”

    “It's economically illiterate. A degree in classics or philosophy can be as valuable as anything else.”

      I Like this quote I dislike this quote“I've always known my life would be turned into a farce. I'm just glad it's been entrusted to two such distinguished men of letters.”

    “It's forbidden.”

    “It's very, very good news for Cameron. He's going to storm through, I've absolutely no doubt he's going to be Prime Minister.”

    “I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap dancing, and other related and vital subjects.”



    Boris Johnson

    Met police officer numbers will not be cut, insists Boris Johnson's deputy
    Guardian Unlimited  A police van in London. Photograph: Paul Owen

    Boris Johnson's deputy mayor today insisted that policing numbers in London would remain stable despite the Conservative mayor's decision to tell Scotland Yard to find £472m of savings over three years. Full Article at Guardian Unlimited

    BBC Bias On Israel: Fabricant Notices
    Anorak 2 hours ago

    MICHAEL Fabricant MP - he of the Boris Johnson fright wig and keen eye - has noticed that the BBC is about as neutral as a Austrian jackboot manufacturer: I have been horrified and angered by the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Full Article at Anorak

    LONDON - DECEMBER 22:  Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, receives a Chanukah gift of a Mezuzah (a piece of parchment inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah) after he helped to light a sacred Menorah, marking Chanukah (Hanukkah), on December 22, 2008 in London, England. Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish holiday, which occurs either late November or December.

    LONDON - DECEMBER 22: Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, receives a Chanukah gift of a Mezuzah (a piece of parchment inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah) after he helped to light a sacred Menorah, marking Chanukah (Hanukkah), on December 22, 2008 in London, England. Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish holiday, which occurs either late November or December. View Photo »

    Great design has been the hallmark our great city from our historic palaces and squares to our modern offices. Boris Johnson SOURCE: Creative Review

    Celebrity Feature: What do celebs want from 2009? Here are their new year's resolutions!
    The London Paper 2 hours ago

    Tuesday, 06 January 2009 ‘Lose a stone’ Boris Johnson, Mayor of London "My promise has to be to tighten my belt – quite literally. I’m as determined as ever to lose a stone around my waist but at this stage I’m unnervingly off target. I will clearly have to run further, cycle faster and eat slower. Full Article at The London Paper

    Police launch online neighbourhood crime maps

    Guardian Unlimited 4 hours ago

    ... In some areas, such as London, the maps allow the public to report non-urgent crimes. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, launched the crime map for the capital last September. Full Article at Guardian Unlimited

    London News: Boris Johnson announces more police for isolated rail stations in outer London

    The London Paper 4 hours ago

    Tuesday, 06 January 2009 MORE police are to operate at London suburban rail stations, the capital's Mayor, Boris Johnson, has announced. Mr Johnson is to fund an additional 50 British Transport Police (BTP) officers to help reduce crime at key stations. It is also expected that train operating companies will assign 50 of their staff to work with the BTP teams. Full Article at The London Paper

    London News: Boris Johnson announces more police for isolated rail stations in outer London

    Tuesday, 06 January 2009 MORE police are to operate at London suburban rail stations, the capital's Mayor, Boris Johnson, has announced. Mr Johnson is to fund an additional 50 British Transport Police (BTP) officers to help reduce crime at key stations. Full Article at The London Paper

    Related Topics:

    1. More police for suburban stations

      Page last updated at 09:36 GMT, Tuesday, 6 January 2009 Some train companies have replaced staff with ticket machines Key train stations in suburban London will be policed by 50 extra officers in a bid to reduce crime, Mayor Boris Johnson has announced.... Full Article at BBC News

    2. Letters: Moving Heathrow

      Sir Peter Hall says putting Heathrow due west of London was a wartime mistake ("Should we build a new airport in the sea?", 27 October). But was it? At that time, much of the surrounding area was green fields and small villages and, although London's... Full Article at The Independent


    London in 2009: Slimline Boris Johnson promises things can only get better
    The Telegraph 

    On the 31st of December 1665, Samuel Pepys wrote: 'Certainly this year of 1666 will be a great year of action, but what the consequences of it will be God Knows.' The famous London diarist was not the only one looking grimly into the future; in the Full Article at The Telegraph

    London News: Boris Johnson announces more police for isolated rail stations in outer London

    The London Paper 

    Tuesday, 06 January 2009 MORE police are to operate at London suburban rail stations, the capital's Mayor, Boris Johnson, has announced. Mr Johnson is to fund an additional 50 British Transport Police (BTP) officers to help reduce crime at key stations. It is also expected that train operating companies will assign 50 of their staff to work with the BTP teams. Full Article at The London Paper



    Celebrity Feature: What do celebs want from 2009? Here are their new year's resolutions!
    The London Paper 

    Tuesday, 06 January 2009 ‘Lose a stone’ Boris Johnson, Mayor of London "My promise has to be to tighten my belt – quite literally. I’m as determined as ever to lose a stone around my waist but at this stage I’m unnervingly off target. I will clearly have to run further, cycle faster and eat slower. Full Article at The London Paper

    BBC Bias On Israel: Fabricant Notices
     Anorak 

    MICHAEL Fabricant MP - he of the Boris Johnson fright wig and keen eye - has noticed that the BBC is about as neutral as a Austrian jackboot manufacturer: I have been horrified and angered by the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Full Article at Anorak

    Met police officer numbers will not be cut, insists Boris Johnson's deputy

    Guardian Unlimited  A police van in London. Photograph: Paul Owen

    Boris Johnson's deputy mayor today insisted that policing numbers in London would remain stable despite the Conservative mayor's decision to tell Scotland Yard to find £472m of savings over three years. Full Article at Guardian Unlimited

    Related Topics

    1. London Development Agency
    2. Ken Livingstone
    3. David Cameron
    4. Michael Bloomberg
    5. Ian Blair
    6. Gordon Brown

    More information on Borris Johnson Sourced

    • Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.
      • Telegraph Column, Oct 21, 2008, endorsing Barack Obama
    • Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase… Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms: Chinese concert pianists are technically brilliant, but brilliant at Schubert and Rachmaninov. Chinese ballerinas dance to the scores of Diaghilev. The number of Chinese Nobel prizes won on home turf is zero, although there are of course legions of bright Chinese trying to escape to Stanford and Caltech… It is hard to think of a single Chinese sport at the Olympics, compared with umpteen invented by Britain, including ping-pong, I’ll have you know, which originated at upper-class dinner tables and was first called whiff-whaff. The Chinese have a script so fiendishly complicated that they cannot produce a proper keyboard for it.
      • Have I Got Views for You p277
    • The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more... Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. ... the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right... If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited... The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.
      • Discussing his views on Africans and "Instant Carbohydrate Gratification" The Spectator 2 February 2002
    • It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.
      • Daily Telegraph 10 January 2002
    • The proposed ban on incitement to “religious hatred” make no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself.
      • Daily Telegraph 21 July 2005
    • Ok, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape.
      • Friends, Voters, Countrymen p59
    • Not even Mr Blair has been able to erode the unions conviction that we all have a “right” to a minimum wage… Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.
      • Lend Me Your Ears p387
    • Labour's appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.
      • The Spectator 15 April 2000
    • Not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him.
      • Have I Got Views for You p272
    • That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me.
      • Daily Telegraph 26 February 2004
    • Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power.
      • "A wise guy playing the fool to win", Sunday Times, 16 July 2000, p. 17.
      • While at the Daily Telegraph, explaining why his work was usually late.
    • Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth profit matrix, and stay conscious.
      • Beth Pearson, "Has Howard got news for Boris?", The Herald (Glasgow), 13 November 2004, p. 15.
      • Explaining why he quit after a week as a management consultant.

     

    • But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic.
      • "Quotes of the Day", The Times, 18 February 2005, p. 2.
    • I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.
      • Hickey, The Express, 21 March 2005.
    • I'm having Sunday lunch with my family. I'm vigorously campaigning, inculcating my children in the benefits of a Tory government.
      • "2-minute interview: Boris Johnson", The Guardian, 11 April 2005, p. 7.
      • Asked whether he was canvassing at Sunday lunchtime.
    • Howard is a dynamic performer on many levels. There you are. He sent me to Liverpool. Marvellous place. Howard was the most effective Home Secretary since Peel. Hang on, was Peel Home Secretary?
      • Ben Macintyre, "'Hello, I'm your MP. Actually no, I'm your candidate. Gosh'", The Times, 19 April 2005, p. 23.
      • On Michael Howard.
    • What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored.
      • "Labour's cleaning up on the council tax", 21 April 2005, p. 24.
      • On the fears of MPs.
    • Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It's time for a rethink, and the Tory party - the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth - is where it's happening.
      • "No one obeys the speed limit except a motorised rickshaw", Daily Telegraph, 12 July 2001, p. 27.
    • I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap dancing, and other related and vital subjects.
      • "What has the BBC come to? Toilets, that's what", Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2002, p. 29.
    • We are confident in our story and will be fighting this all the way. I am very sorry that Alastair Campbell has taken this decision but I can see that he got his tits in the wringer.
      • Catherine Macleod, "Angry Blair takes on press", The Herald (Glasgow), 24 April 2002, p. 1.
      • On Campbell's negative reply to the Spectator's report that the Government had influence the Queen Mother's funeral arrangements.
    • Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.
      • "To the lady who berated me, I say: on your bike", Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2002, p. 21.
    • I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil.
      • "A horse is a safer bet than the trains", Daily Telegraph, 3 July 2003, p. 22.
    • I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.
      • Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, 22 July 2003, p. 13.
      • Asked by pupils of Gillott's School in his constituency whether he would like the job of Prime Minister.
    • The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP, they have run out of better ideas.
      • "What's wrong with 40 Liverpool Road?", Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2003, p. 24.
    • The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition.
      • "The least said about Lib Dems, the better", Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2003, p. 24.
    • Any seat would be mad not to take him. He's a terrific chap.
      • "Keeping it in the family", Daily Telegraph, 23 January 2004, p. 29.
      • On his father, Stanley Johnson's plans to become an MP.
    • It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall.
      • "The BBC was doing its job - bring back Gilligan", Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2004, p. 21.
      • Reaction to the Hutton Report.
    • As snow-jobs go, this beats the Himalayas.
      • "The BBC was doing its job - bring back Gilligan", Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2004, p. 21.
      • Reaction to the Hutton Report.
    • Some readers will no doubt say that a devil is inside me; and though my faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, in that the signal comes and goes, I can only hope that isn't so.
      • "What's so funny about the Passion?", Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2004, p. 24.
    • If Amsterdam or Leningrad vie for the title of Venice of the North, then Venice - what compliment is high enough? Venice, with all her civilisation and ancient beauty, Venice with her addiction to curious aquatic means of transport, yes, my friends, Venice is the Henley of the South.
      • "Paying through the Doge for Europe", Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2004, p. 22.
    • He's lost the plot, people tell me. He's drifting rudderless in the wide Sargasso Sea of New Labour's ideological vacuum.
      • "Blair dead in the water? No such luck", Daily Telegraph, 29 April 2004, p. 24.
      • On Tony Blair.
    • Look the point is ... er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it.
      • Toby Helm, "Boris Johnson named shadow arts minister", Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2004, p. 12.
      • On being appointed Shadow Arts Minister.
    • It was a stellar performance. I may as well give up now and make way for an older man.
      • Hickey, The Express, 12 May 2004.
      • On his father Stanley's appearance on Have I Got News For You.
    • There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.
      • "Face it: it's all your own fat fault", Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2004, p. 24.
      • On the dangers of obesity.
    • My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.
      • "You ask the questions", The Independent, 17 June 2004, p. 7.
      • Asked "Admit it: you want to become prime minister, don't you?" by Amanda Findlay of Bolton.
    • I didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers.
      • David Smith, "Focus: Big Brother brawl", Observer, 20 June 2004, p. 17.
      • On Big Brother.
    • I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel.
      • Simon Walters, "Boris, Petsy and a 'pyramid of piffle'", Mail on Sunday, 7 November 2004, p. 7.
      • Denying accusations of his having an affair with Petronella Wyatt.
    • I advise you all very strongly - go for a run, get some exercise, and have a beautiful day.
      • Valentine Low, "Shiver me timbers Boris", Evening Standard, 15 November 2004, p. 3.
      • Cornered by reporters asking about his affair after a morning run.
    • Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form.
      • David Charter, Joanna Bale, "Tories suggest door will open for Boris Johnson to return", The Times, 15 November 2004, p. 7.
      • Asked how he was feeling after being sacked as Shadow Arts Minister for having misled Michael Howard.
    • Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under.
    • My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
    • I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?
      • "The Genelection Game", Sunday Mirror, 24 April 2005, p. 19.
      • During the campaign trail of the 2005 general election.
    • Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.
      • Francis Elliott, "Boris casts his vote: 'Spectator' editor tells 'Desert Island Discs' he'll quit to spend more time with David Cameron", Independent on Sunday, 30 October 2005, p. 3.
      • Said in April 2005 during the general election.
    • Old Man Howard, that Old Man Howard, he just keeps rolling, just keeps rolling.
      • Andrew Pierce, "Boris on a roll", The Times, 29 April 2005, p. 40.
      • When asked by The Oxford Student whether he sees anyone amongst his younger colleagues who would one day replace Howard.
    • I’m very attracted to it. I may be diverting from Tory party policy here, but I don’t care.
      • Andrew Pierce, The Times, 30 April 2005, p. 42.
      • When asked about the 24 hour drinking legislation.
    • Life isn’t like coursework, baby. It’s one damn essay crisis after another.
      • "Exams work because they're scary", Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2005, p. 22.
    • I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest.
      • "Conference Diary", The Independent, 5 October 2005, p. 7.
      • On The 2005 Conservative Leadership Contest.
    • I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.
      • "Londoner's Diary", Evening Standard, 17 October 2005, p. 15.
    • I'm a rugby player, really, and I knew I was going to get to him, and when he was about two yards away I just put my head down. There was no malice. I was going for the ball with my head, which I understand is a legitimate move in soccer.
      • Ed Harris, "Boris bites Herr legs...: The MP for Henley does his bit for Anglo-German diplomacy", Evening Standard, 4 May 2006, p. 9.
      • On his tackle on German midfielder Maurizio Gaudino in a charity football match.
    • Look, I wouldn't trust Harriet Harman's political judgement.
      • "BBC News Video Interview", BBC News, 2nd May 2008
      • When told the Harriet Harman (Labour Politician) thought he had won the election for London Mayor.
    • Had it been us staging the Games, I don't think we would necessarily have done the switcheroo with the girl with the braces
      • "Boris Johnson In Beijing", The Guardian, 21 August 2008
      • When asked whether he had any criticisms of the Beijing Olympic Games.

    More information on Borris Johnson UnSourced

     

     

    • I thought it was a 50-50 ball.
      • On a rough tackle on a German player during the England vs Germany legends match.
    • She's a method columnist, isn't she. She believes it while she's writing it. It's fantastic!
    • I'm making absolutely no comment...and no, I did not.
      • When asked if he intentionally misled Michael Howard, leader of the Conservative Party.
    • Ken [Livingstone] doesn't think he's got anything to say sorry for and if that's really his feeling, then I think that he should stick to his guns.
    • I think they get a fair squeeze of the sauce bottle.
      • Questioned by Michael Crick on his dedication to his political career and the Conservative Party, 2005.
    • Will I throw my hat into the ring? It depends on what kind of ring it is and what kind of hat I have in my hand.
      • When asked by the Oxford Mail if he will stand for leader of the Conservative Party.
    • I'm kicking off my diet with cheeseburger — whatever Jamie Oliver says McDonalds are incredibly nutritious and, as far as I can tell, crammed full of vital nutrients and rigid with goodness.
      • While campaigning at McDonalds in Botley, Oxford, May 2005.
    • Ian [Hislop] keeps telling me to sack him. It puts me in an impossible position.
      • On Taki, a contentious columnist in the Spectator
    • I’d want to get Blair and really interrogate the guy. I’d really want to pin him up against a palm tree and slap him around and get the truth out of him about a few things we need a bit of elucidation.

    [edit] 'Have I Got News For You'

    • I'm batting for an ideology which has been burgled by someone else.
    • There may be a reason I can't think of but the problem with that reason is that I can't think of it now.
    • Do I have to do this?
      • When told he was taking part in a special Mastermind round with questions on his leader, Iain Duncan Smith, during an episode of Have I Got News For You.
    • I've never seen this on this show before!
      • When told he was taking part in a special Mastermind round with questions on his leader, Iain Duncan Smith, during an episode of Have I Got News For You.
    • We're moving irresistably towards a conclusion.
    • Men women love love women.
    • I think it would be wrong for me to take the you know to block the path of the a needy badger.
    • Why are they called quad-bikes?
    • Is he [George Best] sleeping with Miss Jamaica.
    • Well, basically because of, for the money.
      • On why he came back on the show.
    • I paint myself.
    • What transaction happened here? Have I just bought your house?
    • I've walked straight into a massive elephant trap.
    • How do you know we can't deliver coconuts?
      • Replying to Ian Hislop's taunts regarding the Tories' apparent inability to deliver their promises.
    • I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.
    • Coconuts from the party that keeps its promises!
      • On Have I Got News For You
    • I'm in charge here!
      • When things on HIGNFY threatened to get out of hand.
    • Well he cheated death, and death is the one thing you're allowed to cheat.
    • I think the term is recklessly honest
      • When Paul Merton commented that he was refreshingly honest

    Attributed to Borris Johnson
    The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy.

    • Unsigned editorial entitled "Infantile resentment" in The Spectator, 22 November 2003, p. 7.
    • On George W. Bush.

    About Boris Johnson

    • Boris was told to engage his brain before speaking in future.
      • Conservative Party official, quoted in "Black Dog", Mail on Sunday, 12 September 2004, p. 26.
    • You are a self-centred, pompous twit. Even your body language on TV is pathetic. Get out of public life. Go and do something in the private sector.
      • Paul Bigley (brother of murdered hostage, Kenneth Bigley) to Johnson on Radio City in Liverpool. Quoted in Nigel Bunyan, "Have we got views for you, Mr Johnson", Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2004, p. 3.
    • He may seem like a lovable buffoon but you know he wouldn't hesitate to line you all up against a wall and have you shot.
    • Boris Johnson [is] known as the thinking man's idiot.
    • He's the sort of person who 200 years ago would have died aged 30 leading a cavalry charge into a volcano.
    • Boris Johnson, people always ask me the same question, they say, 'Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?' And I always say, 'No.'


    Apocalypse Now? Recession not end of world, says Boris

    LONDON (AFP) — The worldwide recession is not the end of the world, London mayor Boris Johnson said Wednesday in a New Year message quoting iconic movie "Apocalypse Now" to make his point.

    Johnson, a colourful former journalist who ousted veteran London leader "Red" Ken Livingstone in May, insisted that the capital will recover and reassert itself as the "greatest city on earth."

    "There are those who say we should look ahead to 2009 with foreboding," he said, in a pre-recorded message to be projected Wednesday evening on the South Bank, ahead of fireworks marking the turn of the year.

    "I want to quote Colonel Kilgore in 'Apocalypse Now' when he says 'Someday captain, this war is going to end', and someday, this recession is going to end."

    London has been particularly hard hit because of its world-class financial district, reeling from the credit crunch and international banking crisis which precipitated the global slowdown.

    But Johnson, a staunch supporter of the City and critic of those who blame the downturn squarely on irresponsible bankers, said London can emerge stronger when recovery comes.

    "We can speed the demise of this recession if we all help the poorest in our community and if we make the vital investment ... so that London emerges at the end better placed to compete and entrenched in its position as the greatest city on earth.

    "We are going to be working flat out at City Hall to achieve that. Let's go forward into 2009 with enthusiasm and purpose. I wish you a very happy New Year," he said. 

    Quotes by

    Boris Johnson

    To rely on a train in Blair’s Britain is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil.
    Boris Johnson quote

    Pyramid of piffle [no, not his views on Liverpool but a report Petronella Wyatt was his mistress]
    Boris Johnson quote

    Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form. [after being sacked of his role in the Tory shadow cabinet]
    Boris Johnson quote

    My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.
    Boris Johnson quote

    Ken doesn't think he's got anything to say sorry for and if that's really his feeling, then I think that he should stick to his guns.
    Boris Johnson quote

    But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic.
    Boris Johnson quote

    I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.
    Boris Johnson quote

    I say let people eat what they like. Why shouldn't they push pies through the railings?
    Boris Johnson quote

    Biography

    Colourful MP and editor of the Spectator, a full on Tory boy, and candidate for London mayor against Ken Livingstone, enjoy London!


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    Spectator, Editor, Colourful
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    A selection of Boris Johnson's most memorable quotes

    On George W Bush

    "The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy."

    On using a mobile phone while driving

    "I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on."

    On commuting

    "I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil."

    On Euro-scepticism

    "I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked Euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself."

    On Tony Blair

    "It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."

    On becoming Prime Minister

    "My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

    On Channel 5

    "I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap-dancing, and other related and vital subjects."

    On being sacked by Michael Howard

    "My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters."

    On how to vote

    "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."

    On why he voted for David Cameron as Tory leader

    "I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest."

    On drugs

    "I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar."

    On the City of Portsmouth

    "Too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs."

    On tennis

    "I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around."

    On the Liberal Democrats

    "The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

    On George W Bush

    "The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy."

    On using a mobile phone while driving

    "I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on."

    On commuting

    "I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil."

    On Euro-scepticism

    "I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked Euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself."

    On Tony Blair

    "It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."

    On becoming Prime Minister

    "My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

    On Channel 5

    "I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap-dancing, and other related and vital subjects."

    On being sacked by Michael Howard

    "My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters."

    On how to vote

    "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."

    On why he voted for David Cameron as Tory leader

    "I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest."

    On drugs

    "I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar."

    On the City of Portsmouth

    "Too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs."

    On tennis

    "I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around."

    On the Liberal Democrats

    "The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

    FEMAIL TODAY



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    borischristmas

    A very merry Christmas to all Boriswatch readers! We hope you have a fantastic day!

    If you’ve forgotten to send a card to a loved one, help is at hand in the form of

    Boriscards. Send a Christmas Boriscard, and all will be forgiven

    P.S. We will leave you with perhaps our favourite video…


    Scrapping the Charge?

    December 20, 2008

    Recent reports in the Mail show that Boris has a raft of new plans for helping to keep the London economy ticking over in these almost-recession times, one of which may involve scrapping the congestion charges altogether. He’s already spoken about his plans to cut back the western extension, but now it’s looking as though the whole system might be removed. It’s certainly the right time, if it does happen, as the credit crunch is making the future look decidedly dicey for London residents who’d be subject to the fee on a daily basis.

    The stats show that the charge has reduced congestion and traffic accidents (although apparently not by enough to meet targets, or as much as might have been expected), so if it does end up being scrapped, it can be written off as at least a partial success. There’s been no definitive yay-or-nay answer on the subject yet, but it’s good that Boris’s office is consistently looking to the future to see whether changes can be made.

    Is this the right move? Will these efforts really shore up the economy, or is it likely to have a limited effect (if at all)?


    Random and Competing Forces of Nature

    December 18, 2008

    borishairNo, that’s not what determines the legislation that comes out of the Mayoral office — it’s how good ol’ BoJo described his barnet upon winning an award for best celebrity hair this week.

    And rightly so. We here at BorisWatch towers have always been rather a fan of Boris’s do — in fact, several of our interns sport an identical cut — and so we feel the only question to be asked is why he didn’t win it sooner.

    On a side note… the two ‘most offensive’ haircuts in the country apparently belong to Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. Now we’d hate to cast aspersions about the validity of the results (especially given that we can kind of see where the pollsters are coming from), but I’m sure we’re not the only ones who suspect a wee bit of political voting creeping into the mix. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course… if anything, it proves that Boris is popular with the voting public — albeit with the possible exception of barbers.

    What do you think? Will we see a plethora of thatched-roof style haircuts being paraded around the country by this time next week? Or is Boris’s style really one of a kind?

    An Open Letter to Boris Johnson

    December 15, 2008

    Dear Boris,

    Now, you know how we feel about you here at BorisWatch towers. We think you’re great. Really. Generally speaking, we think your policy decisions are marvellous, and as for your hair… well, it really is something spectacular. In fact, we’re hard-pressed to think of a time where we haven’t seen fit to laud your accomplishments and generally sing your praises.

    But you don’t half make it hard for us sometimes.

    We like the fact that you keep a very prominent public profile. It makes it easy (and fun!) to write about you, and we like having the Mayor of our nation’s capital be able to match wits with intellectual heavyweights like Jeremy Clarkson. We were even willing to forgive you for the poor laptime you gave on your last stint on Top Gear. We defended you to our friends down the pub. The sun was in his eyes, we said. He must have been ill, we said. You finished in 1m56s. We can’t go back to that pub anymore.

    But still, we forgave you. We almost managed to forget it, even, to scrub it from our memories the way it deserved, to keep your Adonis-like perfection intact in our minds. Then you went and did this:

    Boris Johnson on Top Gear.

    1m57s, Boris. You’re slower than Michael Parkinson. You’re slower than Tom Jones. You’re slower than Helen Mirren, and she’s the closest thing they could get to having the actual Queen driving round the track.

    We just don’t know what to think, Boris. We want to hope that you’ll do better next time — if there is a next time — but it’s hard to keep dreaming.

    Please don’t keep doing this to us.

    Yours, with a strange (and unfamiliar) feeling of disappointment,

    The Staff of BorisWatch Towers

    PS. The interview was great.

    Boris Goes Electric

    December 6, 2008

    Good Ol’ Boris has always had a strong position on environmental issues, specifically when it comes to cutting down on the emissions from the capitals cars — he’s famous for promoting the benefits of cycling, as well asdemonstrating the ecological benefits of the congestion charge — but, after a recent appearance on Top Gear, it seems he’s been turned on (no pun intended) to the benefits of the electric car.

    In his column in the Telegraph, Boris has pointed out that the electric Mercedes he was allowed to drive after completing his lap for the show’s ‘Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car’ segment in a Chevrolet Lacetti ran rings around the competition. Quoth Boris:

    As they have discovered on Top Gear, electric cars are not just glorified milkfloats these days. There is already something out there called the Tesla, which can apparently do 125mph and go for 250 miles without needing to have its batteries recharged.

    Such was the extent of this epiphany that Boris has pledged to keep his family car (a Toyota that, had it been a beloved family pet instead of a people carrier, would have been put down long ago) for as long as it takes for viable electric cars to hit the market. After all, at a penny a mile and with zero emissions, he’s right when he says there’s a definite economic benefit to stepping up research, and his prediction that (like mobile phones) electric car batteries will become the norm within ten or so years seems pretty spot-on.

    The episode is due to air this Sunday on BBC Two at 8pm. After his last — and, it has to be said, very poor — laptime on the track, will you be tuning in to see if he redeems himself? Or are his opinions about the future of the electric car more interesting to you?

    Evening, Commissioner

    December 4, 2008

    We here at Boriswatch Towers have previously reported on the kerfuffle that emerged between Boris and Sir Ian Blair. With Blair’s resignation and soon-to-be departure from the role, however, we assumed that any bad blood between the two would fade away, to be replaced with a professional courtesy and sense of goodwill.

    Oh, how wrong we were.

    On his last day as Commissioner, Sir Ian has brought out the vitriol in an interview with the Telegraph, in which he seemingly accuses the Mayor of using his political clout for personal reasons in an attempt to oust him from office. Why? Merely because Blair has been a controversial figure and has been in the public eye, rather than for any actual wrongdoing.

    Now, OK, we can kind of see his point: it’s very hard not to be a little bit controversial if you’re head of the Metropolitan Police. Still, have any of his predecessors had as much negative press attention as Sir Ian? Have any of them had so many press-described ‘blunders’? We can’t think of any, certainly, and while we’re not suggesting that Blair did a terrible job in office, there’s certainly reasons for him to have bumped heads with Boris that don’t include the political backbiting and Machiavellian machinations he seems to be implying.

    There’s no word on whether or not Boris will be giving a response on this, but either way, there seem to be few people clamouring for Sir Ian to reconsider. Is his departure a good thing for London’s police? Was he as inept as the media often claimed? Should Boris have tried to put his reported personal difficulties aside to work with Blair, or is he better off with a new Commissioner who better matches his vision for London?

    2012 Olympics: Breaking News

    A reputable news source has recently reported that Boris has officially claimed we’re ready for the 2012 Olympics… right now, in fact. How does next week sound?

    No, not really. As much as I’m sure Boris would like to be ready almost four years in advance, I think that’s asking just a little bit much from our mayor of only six months.

    Still, as the clamour of voices looking for a Games on a Budget gets ever-louder, with the Times calling for an Austerity Olympics out of respect (and, seemingly, fear) for the violence currently raging in Pakistan, topped off with the pressure of providing a comparable spectacle to Beijing ‘08, it’s nice to see that people are still able to look at the games (and, of course, our own, inimitable Boris) with a sense of humour.

    What do you think?

    Boris’s Christmas Gift

    December 2, 2008

    As it’s getting to that festive time of year again (not that you’d know it, given that most places have had Christmas decorations up since before Hallowe’en), many people have started to consider a seasonal break to our nation’s capital. Boris, of course, is well in favour of that… so much so that he’s announced a £3.25 million campaign to encourage folks to visit London this December. Given the current economic downturn, this can only be a good thing — like it or not, parts of the city need tourism to function properly, and it’s a multi-million pound industry when things are going well. Putting money into the system when it seems to be flagging in hopes of catching the tide of Christmas shoppers or people just looking for a seasonal West End show is a wise investment, and shows that Boris (contrary to what some people might think) does have a pretty shrewd head on his shoulders.

    Is London a good place to visit? Will it benefit from this cash injection, or is it just a waste of money?



    11/07/2008 12:23 PM Guardian Unlimited

    Diplomats deserve asbo for London congestion charge snub, says Boris Johnson

    11/07/2008 12:23 PM Guardian Unlimited
    London Mayor Boris Johnson on the balcony of his offices at City Hall. Photograph: Richard Saker Boris Johnson has criticised the US ambassador to Britain for failing to pay any congestion charges in London for the last three years and said he would
    http://content.usatoday.com/topics/quote/Boris+Johnson/0crl5qlapJ6Zg/0aG10dd1hQbLq/1

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    Hospital Bug Outbreak Baby Dies




    Prison (library photo)

    Judge warns lad of hairy men

    A young driving offender has been warned he'll attract the attention of 'ugly, hairy strong men' in prison if he continues to break the law. » Why?

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    First Dancing On Ice storm

    TV presenter Michael Underwood has already caused controversy among the 'Dancing On Ice' celebrities. » How?

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    Dozy player's 'robbery' error

    A Premier League footballer called police after finding his house ransacked, then realised he'd just left it messy. » Who?

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    Hackers have taken over the 'Twitter' accounts of 33 celebs - including Britney Spears - and sent fake messages to their fans. » What did they say?

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    Johnson says London will reassert itself as the "greatest city on earth"



    Brainy Quotes from
     Boris Johnson


    I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.
    Boris Johnson

    I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.
    Boris Johnson

    My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.
    Boris Johnson

    My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
    Boris Johnson

    The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run
    out of better ideas.

    Boris Johnson

     


    Prison (library photo)

    Judge warns lad of hairy men

    A young driving offender has been warned he'll attract the attention of 'ugly, hairy strong men' in prison if he continues to break the law. » Why?

    Michael Underwood

    First Dancing On Ice storm

    TV presenter Michael Underwood has already caused controversy among the 'Dancing On Ice' celebrities. » How?

    Footballer's feet

    Dozy player's 'robbery' error

    A Premier League footballer called police after finding his house ransacked, then realised he'd just left it messy. » Who?

    Britney Spears

    Hacked celebs' rude texts

    Hackers have taken over the 'Twitter' accounts of 33 celebs - including Britney Spears - and sent fake messages to their fans. » What did they say?

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