Depraved... and as crafty as a cartload of monkeys

THE STARS WHO SUSPECTED

HE raped, groped and abused girls and boys under the noses of complacent BBC chiefs.

In the corporation’s canteens, studios, dressing rooms and even corridors and staircases, he molested his young victims for decades and nobody stopped him.

Yesterday the scale of Jimmy Savile’s reign of abuse at the BBC – where he was an ‘untouchable’ – was exposed by the leaked copy of Dame Janet Smith’s review.

It found the warped Jim’ll Fix It star preyed on his 45 victims in almost every BBC building he set foot in – at the BBC Television Theatre, Television Centre, Broadcasting House, Lime Grove Studios and BBC premises in Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow. Abuse took place on the sets of Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It, in dressing rooms and at least once on camera.

‘Savile would seize the opportunity for sexual contact even in public places,’ Dame Janet found. ‘I heard of incidents that took place in virtually every one of the BBC premises at which he worked.’ BBC stars knew of rumours that Savile was a ‘groper and a paedophile’ who interfered with corpses but no one at the corporation tried to stop him.

Esther Rantzen, Terry Wogan, Louis Theroux, Nicky Campbell, and Andy Kershaw were among 107 people who admitted hearing stories about the DJ’s ‘darker side’.

Dame Janet wrote: ‘There were a number of specific rumours. Perhaps most surprising is that several people (about five or six) heard that Savile was a necrophiliac. Some heard that he was a paedophile. Some heard that he took girls to his caravan for sex’.

Dame Esther Rantzen heard that Savile was sexually interested in young girls. The That’s Life presenter and Childline founder told the inquiry she first heard rumours in the 1970s, and ‘was told by the sound editor of Savile’s Travels [his Radio 1 show] that Savile had recorded himself having sex with nurses at Stoke Mandeville Hospital’.

‘Her personal experience of him was that he was repulsive in the way he kissed, or, rather, licked, her hand and up her arm when they met’, Dame Janet says.

Sir Terry Wogan reportedly described a conversation about Savile with newspaper columnist Jean Rook, in which she asked: ‘When are you going to expose him?’, and he replied: ‘That’s your job.’

Sir Terry is reported to have commented to the Press: ‘And nobody ever did [expose him], even though everybody had heard these rumours.’

The review wanted to speak to Sir Terry ‘but unfortunately he said he was too busy working on Children in Need’.

Radio 1 DJ Andy Kershaw first heard rumours in the early 1980s, including that in the 1950s and 1960s, Savile had a reputation as a gangland enforcer.

When Kershaw joined the BBC he was advised to steer clear of Savile because he was a ‘bad lot’ and ‘nasty piece of work’, and Kershaw ‘found that was so’. He heard stories relating to Savile’s interest in underage girls, including about him having sex with them in his camper van. These rumours were rife throughout the industry and not limited to the BBC, Kershaw added.

Presenter Nicky Campbell heard rumours that Savile was a necrophiliac but regarded it as an urban myth. His impression was that Savile was ‘sexless’. He found him ‘fascinating and enigmatic’ but did not like him.

Broadcaster and author Mark Lawson heard rumours about Savile before he joined the BBC. While at the BBC, he heard that Savile was ‘a groper and a paedophile’. He told the review a common joke dating back 20 years at the BBC was: ‘What do Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Savile have in common? They both screwed the miners (minors).’

Film maker Louis Theroux said in 1998 he was told Savile had a fetish for dead bodies and abusing the disabled, two years before he made a chilling documentary about the DJ’s strange life.

LAZY, DRUNK BOSSES

VICTIMS were put off complaining to lazy BBC managers who spent their days getting drunk at public expense, Dame Janet said.

Most staff felt the management culture ‘was too deferential and that some executives were “above the law”,’ she wrote. ‘During the Savile years, the culture in the BBC and the BBC’s management style did not encourage the reporting of complaints or concerns. Until the late 1980s, most BBC managers had drinks cabinets in their rooms. The cabinets were replenished at public expense.’

Meetings were often conducted ‘with the aid of alcohol’.

‘ Even early morning coffee might be laced with a spirit. I heard accounts of executives and managers being the worse for wear in the afternoons or at evening engagements,’ she said.

‘I heard accounts of managers who would meet in the Club when it opened either at 11.30am or noon and would remain there, drinking, until it was almost time for last orders.

‘A lot of alcohol was drunk at controller’s lunches, which occurred on Wednesdays. Little work was done afterwards.’

A floor manager told Dame Janet how his head of department and a senior producer used to lounge around on sofas ‘with their socks and shoes off, watching the television’.

A cameraman who complained to his line manager about a senior executive was told ‘it was not appropriate to question senior management even if senior management was wrong’. A production assistant who complained of a sexual assault in the early 1980s was told by the personnel department that she would ‘not be making the right decision’.

Dame Janet concluded: ‘The only option for a victim of inappropriate behaviour during the Savile years was to put up with it or leave.’

UNTOUCHABLE STAR

STARS such as Savile were held in such awe as to be ‘untouchables’, said Dame Janet.

Known as ‘The Talent’, they could get away with shocking behaviour because they were ‘more valuable than the values of the BBC’, it was said.

Dame Janet concluded: ‘The

general perception of the witnesses I heard was that The Talent was treated with kid gloves and never challenged.

‘I have the clear impression that most people in the BBC held The Talent in some awe and treated them deferentially. They appeared to have the ability to influence careers and were themselves untouchable. It would be a brave person indeed who would make a complaint against such a person. It was important to keep the star of the show happy.

‘The producers of programmes on which Savile worked did not ask him to stop his habit of wet kissing or licking the hands and arms of staff members to whom he was introduced.’

Stars were permitted to treat the corporation as a private members’ club, lavishing treats on friends in their dressing rooms at licence- payers’ expense. One witness told the review: ‘The BBC would be prepared to overlook certain things for fear of losing talent.’

As a consequence, members of The Talent were protected from criticism – giving Savile a free rein to carry on his abuse.

‘He seems never to have had any fear that any of the girls would report him,’ Dame Janet concluded.

THE MISSED CHANCES

SAVILE ‘hid in plain sight’ while abusing girls while working on Top Of The Pops – yet managers missed several ‘wake-up calls’.

One was when a Claire McAlpine, 15, killed herself after being abused by an unnamed DJ on the show in 1971.

BBC chiefs dismissed her as a teenage fantasist when her distraught mother Vera later phoned to complain about a DJ who ‘had invited [Claire] back to his flat and seduced her’.

Claire, from Watford, was found on her bedroom floor. Near her body was a bottle of tablets and her diary.

She had written: ‘Don’t laugh at me for being dramatic, but I just can’t take it any more.’

Dame Janet said BBC management had prejudged the case believing it was ‘out of character’ for the star – and proposed not taking any further action.

SAVILE’S CUNNING

SAVILE was ‘as crafty as a cartload of monkeys’ and challenging him about his depravity would have been pointless, the report stated.

On the few occasions he was questioned, by a manager in 1973 and by Surrey police in 2009, ‘they got nowhere’.

Describing his modus operandi, she wrote that with adult victims Savile was ‘opportunistic’ in molesting them – but with children he plotted his abuse by grooming them. If an opportunity arose, for example because a member of staff had to visit him in his caravan, he would ‘have a go’, she said.

‘With young girls, his chosen tactic was to invite them to watch him perform either on radio or television. This was a form of grooming. He used his entree to the BBC and his connections with other stars as bait with which to draw young girls into his sphere.

‘Savile seems to have assumed that any girl or young woman whom he came across would be not only willing to have sexual contact with him but would actually want it.

‘He would show surprise and irritation when a woman rejected his advances.’