In this searing interview, veteran DJ Tony Blackburn breaks down over sex abuse claims and the end of his glittering 49-year career. So is he a man traduced by the BBC? Read this and decide
TONY BLACkBURN is ashenfaced, tearful. The veteran DJ — so effortlessly voluble when broadcasting — struggles to find words that encompass his hurt and bewilderment. This week, after a career with the BBC that spanned almost half a century, the DJ whose voice launched Radio 1 in 1967 was sacked.
Yet the reasons for his peremptory dismissal from the job he loved are, he claims, as insubstantial as they are convoluted. They involve an historic allegation of sex abuse about which, he contends, he was never questioned and for which he has been exonerated.
Yet Tony, 73, was told his contract with the Corporation had been terminated days before the £6 million Jimmy Savile inquiry published its findings on Wednesday.
He was fired, it emerged, because his evidence to the Savile inquiry ‘fell short’ of the standards the BBC demanded.
The DJ, who intends to sue his former employer, has always strenuously denied the allegation at the heart of these events: that he seduced Hertfordshire teenager Claire McAlpine in 1971.
He contends that he was never so much as questioned about the allegation by his bosses. However, Dame Janet Smith — author of the Savile review — chose to believe that his evidence was flawed. Unfortunately for Blackburn, the BBC accepted her view.
Today, Tony is hurt and mystified. ‘I can’t understand why the BBC has sacked me,’ he says. ‘It’s quite disgraceful. I’ve committed no impropriety. The whole thing baffles me. When I was told I’d been dismissed, I cried. I want to go back to work, to do my job. It feels awful.’
Behind this week’s furore is the tragic story of 15-year- old Claire McAlpine, one of the many teenagers drawn to live recordings of Top Of The Pops at the BBC Television Centre in the Seventies.
Claire chronicled her visits, which took place in early 1971, in her diary, which also contained the names of a string of celebrities, including Tony Blackburn, Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson, who had, she alleged, seduced her.
Her mother’s discovery of the diary — and its disturbing contents — prompted her to call the BBC to make a complaint.
Ten days later, a BBC memo, which emerged into the public domain yesterday, recorded that Blackburn was interviewed by Bill Cotton, Head of Light Entertainment, over the allegation and ‘flatly denied’ the accusation that he had slept with the girl.
Claire McAlpine subsequently withdrew her allegation against Blackburn. But a sinister twist was to come.
On the morning of March 30, 1971, Claire was found dead on her bedroom floor next to two empty boxes of pills. A brief suicide note was found inside her diary.
It read: ‘Don’t laugh at me for being dramatic, but I just can’t take it any more.’
After Claire’s death, her mother passed the diary to Scotland Yard, but police chose not to investigate the teenager’s claims.
‘It would be ridiculous to connect anyone or anything in her diary with reality,’ a spokesman said at the time. Claire, it was concluded by her inquest, was a troubled teenager and her diary was deemed to have been the work of a fantasist.
‘The diary was a teenager’s fantasy,’ says Blackburn, who asserts that he first learned about the allegations against him in a newspaper report after Claire’s suicide.
‘I didn’t know Claire McAlpine, although when I saw her photograph I recognised her as one of the girls who used to hang around (at Top Of The Pops) asking for autographs.’
Blackburn contested reports yesterday that the ‘new’ memo proved that, contrary to his own claims, he had, in fact, been investigated by the BBC.
The Daily Mirror published extracts from the memos, which appeared to give an account of Blackburn’s interview, so what’s the truth? ‘ I wish I could say the complaint against me was investigated — if it had been, the BBC would have been doing its job,’ he says. ‘But I was never questioned about it.
‘I am saying the BBC didn’t carry out any inquiries in 1971, and they should have done. But nothing happened. I think my bosses wanted me to say “It’s such a long time ago that I don’t remember”, but that would be lying, because I can recall categorically that it didn’t happen.
‘So I told the truth and now I have been hung out to dry.
‘There is no secret at all about these documents. I was made aware of them in 2012 and, again, when I voluntarily gave evidence to Dame Janet Smith’s inquiry.
‘The evidence I gave her was with the full knowledge of their existence and contents.
‘As I told her, and have repeated publicly since, the contents of these documents are untrue. It is simply not true that I was interviewed by anyone at the BBC in 1971 or 1972 about these matters.
‘The memos are part of the whitewash and cover- up, which regrettably characterised the BBC’s handling of these allegations.
‘ I’ve been made a scapegoat because I gave an honest account of what I recalled of events that happened 45 years ago.
‘Unfortunately, I’m the last of the Savile generation. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and they wanted to get rid of me.
‘I loved the BBC and was very proud to work there. It’s tragic. I feel destroyed by it.’
Tony’s responses are calm, measured; even understated. Debbie, his wife of 23 years, is, by contrast, incandescent with fury.
The full force of her ire is directed at BBC Director-General Tony Hall who — after dismissing a popular
and long-serving broadcaster — has not even had the courtesy to reply to Tony’s requests for a meeting.
‘I’m absolutely appalled by what has happened,’ says Debbie, 55, a theatrical agent. ‘He was asked to give an honest account of what happened in 1971 and he did so voluntarily and has been sacked for it.’ Tony, she adds, was so utterly loyal to the Corporation that she and their daughter Victoria, 19, always joked that they came second to the BBC.
‘He felt honoured to be part of the BBC, and always fought for, supported and defended it, yet this is how they treat him. They betray him.
‘He’s become a victim because he worked at the BBC during an era when so many heinous crimes against young women were committed.
‘He’s the last of that generation, so now the BBC thinks they’ll just wipe him out of the picture and bring in a shiny new set of presenters. They’ve tainted his good character and it’s grossly unfair. They have got rid of him to show they’re “doing something” about the awful whitewash over Savile.
‘This week the news should have been focused on those women who were victims of Savile’s heinous crimes. Instead, it was centred on Tony. The whole thing stinks.’
Debbie and Tony have been together for 25 years. They have Victoria together, and Tony also has a son Simon, 43, from his first marriage to actress Tessa Wyatt, and one grandchild — a second is on the way. This week the Blackburns’ home near Barnet, North London, has been besieged by reporters. Ironically, Tony has had requests from 15 different BBC programmes for interviews. He has politely declined each.
He is a man of quiet, old- school charm and courtesy.
He admits the sacking has all but destroyed him, but he has been shored up by thousands of messages of support: from Twitter followers, colleagues and other celebrities — among them fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini — whose reputations have been tarnished by unfounded historic sexual allegations. Whenever he has crumbled, Debbie has been there.
‘I’ve had to be strong for him,’ she says, ‘When he was sacked he was distraught — in tears. It has affected all of us. We sit at home with the curtains drawn, yet Tony has done nothing wrong.’
It seems superfluous to ask whether she believes his strenuous denials of sexual assault.
‘Of course I do. I adore him — I trust him absolutely. Do you need to ask that?’ she says, aghast. Tony,
whose Radio 1 breakfast show garnered daily audiences of 20 million, presented Top Of The Pops along with Savile, Dave Lee Travis and a host of other DJs in the Seventies. He admits he took full advantage of the ready availability of women, and was promiscuous.
‘I’m not proud of the fact, but I probably slept with 500 women,’ he says, ‘But they were all consenting adults and no one was hurt or touched inappropriately.
‘I was single. It was fun. I never did anything improper.’
THeRe are, he insists, no secrets from his past to be exhumed: ‘I never took drugs; I was — and remain — almost boringly interested in radio and working. Which is why I’ll miss it so much.’ His eyes well up again. Of course, he remembers Jimmy Savile very well: his egotism, his arrogance, his idiocy. ‘He was a silly guy in a shellsuit — a joke, and not a particularly good broadcaster. He loved being seen with young girls. His dressing room was always full of kids.’
Did Tony see evidence of abuse? ‘I never saw him do anything wrong, but, of course, I heard all the rumours,’ he says.
‘Anyone who says they didn’t would be lying.’
Tony had always been forthcoming when asked to co-operate with inquiries into historic sexual abuse at the BBC, so he was quite happy to attend when he was asked to go to a meeting with Dame Janet Smith in December 2013.
He assumed he would be asked about Savile; but it was then that the historic sexual abuse allegation against him was exhumed.
‘I thought I was just going to be asked about the Savile inquiry, so I didn’t take a lawyer,’ he says. ‘I went to meet Dame Janet in good faith for the purpose of helping with the inquiry. I didn’t expect to be cross-examined. ‘But I was asked “Was there a security guard on your dressing room?” and I said there wasn’t. Savile’s dressing room was full of young kids. I said: “Kids never came into my dressing room. I did my job and went home.” ’
Then — and this is the nub of the case against him — he was asked if he’d been interviewed by Brian Neill QC and Bill Cotton (then a senior BBC executive) about Claire McAlpine 45 years earlier.
‘ I said that I’d never been interviewed by either of them, and had never even met Brian Neill,’ recalls Tony.
‘I’d no choice but to deny all knowledge of an investigation because there wasn’t one. If there had been, the whole debacle that has taken place this week would never have happened.’ Nothing more ensued until Wednesday, February 17, when Tony was asked if he would meet his BBC bosses to discuss discrepancies between the Smith Report and his evidence.
Tony asked to see the relevant extracts from the report. None was forthcoming. It would, said the BBC, be ‘inappropriate’ to provide them.
Duly, on Monday, Tony, his wife and his agent met BBC executives including Bob Shennan, Controller of Radio 2 — the station that broadcast Tony’s popular Pick Of The Pops show — to discuss his future.
For two hours, they chewed over the ‘ discrepancies’ in the evidence. How could they have occurred? Tony speculates that his then agent — a close friend of Bill Cotton — might have spoken to the BBC executive on his behalf 45 years ago, and sought to scotch the rumours about any impropriety with Claire McAlpine, without ever telling Tony that he had done so.
Last month, Sir Brian Neill, now 92 and in retirement, said he had been prevented from filing a full report into his 1972 probe into the BBC due to lack of support from the police.
‘I tried to get all the facts. I investigated it as far as I could. The DJ denied it all.’
But Tony has never wavered in his conviction that he was not personally questioned by Mr Cotton (who died in 2008) or Brian Neill.
Indeed, when he asked to see evidence — times and dates of meetings; documents relating to them — none was produced.
‘I think they wanted me to say I couldn’t remember meeting them because it was so long ago. But that would be a lie. I can remember everything,’ he insists.
So the deadlock persisted and as there was no resolution he was offered the chance to resign.
‘They said: “We have to get rid of you, but there’s a way round it. You can resign, then we can sort everything out and bring you back later.”
Tony was incredulous. ‘I thought: “This is ridiculous.” I said: “Why should I want to do that? I love the job.”
‘They said they’d give me 24 hours to think about it. I said: “I don’t need any time — there’s no chance I’ll resign.” And that was it.’
The sense of puzzlement and shock abides.
‘I felt as if I was part of the meeting, but detached, as if I wasn’t really there. I didn’t understand it. I just thought: “Is this really happening?”’
AT A MeeTINg the next day, he was formally sacked. But he is a man of forgiving instincts. When, on Thursday — at the end of a frenetic, emotional week — Tony Hall expressed his ‘extreme sympathy’ for the plight of his former employee, Tony chose to be magnanimous.
‘It’s very kind of Tony Hall to express his sympathy,’ he says, without a trace of irony. ‘If he went further and decided to offer me my job back I would accept without any hard feelings.
‘If the BBC said “Let’s wipe the slate clean and start again”, I’d forget it. Absolutely.
‘ I’d shake the Directorgeneral’s hand and say: “If the whole thing’s been a mistake, let’s say no more about it.”
‘I’d take my job back tomorrow. That’s how much I love it.’
Tony BlackBurn received no payment for this interview.