Resurrection of a monster
A chilling new play brings Jimmy Savile back to life — and, says QUENTIN LETTS, shames the Establishment that feted him
ALISTAIR McGowAn is better known for his TV comedy impressions, sending up the likes of David Beckham and Richard Madeley, but this week he embarked on an altogether less endearing character. At the Park Theatre, north London, he stepped on stage wearing a long white wig, training shoes, string-vest and blue shellsuit. Add gold rings, medallion, a long cigar and a yodelling Leeds accent and it was enough to send ice down the nape of your neck. Alistair McGowan had ‘become’ Jimmy Savile. For this first preview performance the Park Theatre was packed — not a seat to spare. Yet this was no middle-brow family comedy; nor would we expect one, given the presence of Savile.
A few years ago an audience would undoubtedly have laughed affectionately at McGowan’s skilful re-creation of those familiar ‘now then, now thens’ and ‘ young mans’ and the staccato enunciation Savile made his own.
Theatregoers would have smiled as they heard this gifted impressionist eerily reproduce the speaking manner of Sir James Savile oBE, charity fundraiser, Top of The Pops presenter, hospital visitor and a man who would blithely compare himself with Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and ‘Mr Jesus christ Esquire’.
on wednesday night, however, such laughter was absent. I did hear one or two chuckles during the 85-minute show but they were sardonic, sparked not by amusement but by disbelieving disgust that Savile got away with it for so long.
By ‘it’, of course, one means the sexual abuse of underage girls which did not become public knowledge until after Savile’s death in 2011 at the age of 84.
one means hi s s waggering, perverted intrusion of Broadmoor psychiatric hospital and the spinal injuries ward at Stoke Mandeville, among other nHS facilities.
And his bullying of TV researchers — forcing them to pleasure him in pungently on an all-too-recent scandal. That is an entirely legitimate function for theatre. Savile’s duplicity and ruthlessness make him a figure of rich potential for any actor (in this case the excellent McGowan) and playwright (the Park’s show has been written by experienced investigative TV journalist Jonathan Maitland).
we see f l ashes of an al most deranged rage when, behind the scenes, Savile lashes out at people. He does so when he fears he is about to lose command of a situation. He was a control freak, exerting his power through bluster and bribery and old-fashioned menaces.
Before seeing the show I feared for the impact it could have on Savile’s victims and their families, who must wish only to forget the man.
Mr McGowan’s voice gets so close to the real thing that anyone who was attacked by Savile might indeed, on
hearing the impression, be terrified that had returned from the fires of Hell, where he must have been broiling these past four years.
I would certainly not recommend this show for anyone who was hurt by Savile — no publicity shots of McGowan in his blond wig have been released because the subject is so sensitive.
For the rest of us, however, this is a striking, memorable, urgent piece of work. It holds a mirror to our society and becomes a powerful ‘J’accuse’, which lands blows on people in public life, from Prince Charles to Margaret Thatcher to Michael Aspel and even the late Cardinal Hume, who were suckered by Savile. Such grandees were persuaded to laud and magnify the leerer from Leeds. The fact that they did is evidence that our society’s value systems have gone troublingly wrong.
When word f i rst l eaked of Mr Maitland’s play, initial comment was not favourable. There was a fear that it might be some sort of edgy comedy. Mr Maitland quickly gave assurance that was not the case. This is a serious evening, though highly watchable and never po-faced.
It is set in the context of a This Is Your Life style TV show, presented by an Aspel figure who appeases and eulogises Sir Jimmy. I have no knowledge how Michael Aspel really behaved around Savile, but it is undeniable that he presented a This Is Your Life programme which celebrated Savile and his achievements. You can see it on YouTube, if you have the stomach for such overripe fare.
Did no one think to tell the producers of This Is Your Life that Savile was dodgy? It was common knowledge in much of the media.
Mr Maitland’s play shows how newspapers tried to expose him, but were prevented from doing so by threat of libel actions.
One of the prouder things I have done in life is to include Savile as one of the nefarious characters in my 2008 book 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. I hinted as hard as the libel laws would allow me that he was a wrong ’un.
We never heard a squeak from his lawyers after the book was published. The man, like so many villains, relied on publishers’ fear of libel losses.
Mr Maitland’s play rips away the schmaltzy fakeness of the showbiz world and suggests something nastier and more cynical behind.
The shellsuit worn by Mr McGowan’s Savile is so shiny that it reflects the stage lights back at us. We are dazzled by the electric gleam of the limelight. Perhaps that is only right, for Savile knew t hat showbusiness f ame blinded people.
The play has a few descriptions of Savile’s sexual abuse, but for dramatic purposes it concentrates on one young woman by the name of Lucy. We see her struggle to persuade not only the police but also her father that she is speaking the truth when she claims to have been raped by the famous Savile.
This Lucy character, played with dignity by Leah Whitaker, is a composite of several of Savile’s real victims. Finally, Lucy confronts Savile at the swanky home he so often liked to show to the media — a penthouse flat where he kept his dead mother’s clothes i n polythene wrappers, dry-cleaning them every year.
In the show’s programme, Mr Maitland argues that drama can do things that factual journalism can not. Drama can, in a sense, be more truthful. This scene in Savile’s home is an example. It may be entirely fictitious, but the way we see Savile’s facade slip is fascinating and highly instructive.
One moment he is the ‘ public’ Jimmy, doing his silly voices and mannerisms. The next he is feral, shouting and swearing. Lucy, raped by Savile as a little girl and for so long too terrified to tell the outer world of her ordeal, somehow f i nds the strength to stand up to the bully. It is the moment Savile is conquered. The bully has had his bluff called.
This is a show that BBC controllers, charity- sector executives, politicalparty managers and other grandees of our society should be compelled to see, for it illustrates the dangers of abandoning rigour in the way we judge merit. It is a caution against over-promoting the meretricious.
The whole sorry saga of Jimmy Savile shows what happens when you allow a system of civic esteem to be based on fashion and celebrity. At a time when we are about to have another batch of honours dispensed in the name of the Queen, this is indeed timely.
I would go further and argue that Savile was the product of a society which had become so in hock to a political creed of ‘equality’ that it had lost the desire to be led by people with genuine merit.
Savile got away with it because our politicians and cultural l eaders swallowed the lie that elitism and excellence are undesirable. Jimmy Savile had no great talent save for self-publicity. He was not intellectual or artistic. He did not offer good looks or any scintillating insight.
But with his caricatured Leeds accent, his gaudy wardrobe, his silly haircut and his apparent iconoclasm (though by jingo he knew how to suck up to the powerful) he was a totem of egalitarianism.
He ticked boxes fo r BBC commissioning editors who f elt under pressure to dump old gauges of social value and to ‘reach out’ to the bog-standard.
Terrifyingly, this is still happening. Jimmy Savile may be dead, but our TV stations are still promoting egregious nobodies, some of them palpable creeps.
Worse, our good causes are still l eaping i nto the arms of such egomaniacs, allowing sub- standard celebrities to publicise themselves by wrapping themselves in the good name of charity.
The Church remains pathetically impressionable. On the Sunday after Savile died I heard a groovy Anglican vicar in Herefordshire give a sermon about what a holy man Savile had been. I have since tried not to have much to do with that fool of a clergyman.
Thanks to Alistair McGowan and his Park Theatre colleagues, we are shown the error of our ways. We also have the dramatic satisfaction of seeing Savile confronted by his sins, something he avoided in real life.
The play ends by noting that when he was found dead, he had his fingers crossed. It will surely have taken more than crossed fingers for such a grotesque charlatan to get past St Peter at the pearly gates.
One minute he’s the public Jimmy, the next he’s feral