Voice of the Proms’ leaf let on child abuse

Late BBC presenter was supporter of paedophile group, says documentary

THE BBC’s voice of the Proms wrote a 20-page pamphlet promoting child sex abuse while he was working as an announcer on Radio 3, a documentary claims.

John Holmstrom was a supporter of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which asked him to pen the disturbing leaflet.

Holmstrom, who died in 2013 aged 86, was also a close friend of an Eton master accused of abusing boys at the elite public school, the Radio 4 In Dark Corners series reveals.

Raef Payne, who taught at Eton for 35 years and died in 2001, attended parties where men traded photos of naked children. Eton archives contain six boxes of correspondence between Payne, Holmstrom and other masters at the college.

‘Payne had photographs of what today the police would call child pornography,’ a former teacher told In Dark Corners presenter Alex Renton, who was Eton educated and has explored the dark nature of public schools in a documentary and book.

‘ That sort of thing was going on at Eton College,’ the teacher added.

Papers from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse ( IICSA) reveal Holmstrom wrote a public information pamphlet in the late 1970s for the PIE titled Paedophilia: Some Questions And Answers.

Holmstrom, who attended King’s College, Cambridge, joined the BBC in the early 1950s and became known for his recognisable voice and wry asides on the airwaves.

He also founded Colts Of Hampstead, a fashion shop specialising in continentalstyle clothes for boys aged between seven and 14. And after retiring from the BBC, he compiled an encyclopaedia of child film actors called The Moving Picture Boy.

PIE member Thomas O’Carroll, who was a former Labour Party member, Open University information officer and was once described as ‘one of the most infamous perverts on Earth’, said in a statement to the IICSA: ‘It is my firm conviction, based on what he candidly told me and my understanding of his rich life and of the imagination, that John’s private life was lived entirely inside his own head.

‘I am quite sure he was never involved in anything scandalous unless being a friend of mine could be so considered.’

A BBC spokesman said the organisation was ‘ utterly against all forms of abuse’.