Victims’ shattering accounts that convinced me this tale had to be told
DURING the past 12 months I have heard more appalling stories about Jimmy Savile than is good for me. But there is one I think about every day.
In 1973, 16-year-old Jane was admit ted to Leeds General Infirmary with a nervous illness. One day a porter told her that Jimmy Savile wanted to see her.
Jane, who’d seen Savile on TV, was excited that a celebrity had ‘made me the chosen one’. The porter led her to an office and, literally, delivered her into Savile’s clutches
The details of what happened next a distressing enough. But it was the respon of her father, a senior administrator another hospital, that struck me.
When Jane called to tell him wh happened, he hung up. He couldn’t believe national hero could do such a thing.
Hearing Jane’s story, as the parent of small child myself, I was horrified. Jane, wh
went on to become a nurse, says her relationship with her father never recovered. Her story formed the basis of my play An Audience With Jimmy Savile.
Unsurprisingly, some people feel the issue shouldn’t be given a stage. I disagree. No matter how controversial the issue, theatre can shine the most revealing light of all if it is handled sensitively and responsibly.
This scandal touches on our attitudes to children; the way we deal with abuse; our cravenness before celebrity; the limitations of our libel laws. And the most crucial question of all: how did he get away with it?
A week into the project, I wobbled but resolved to carry on. So I pieced together a story based on fact, using police interview transcripts, public inquiry reports and Savile’s own words from TV, radio and books. I also spoke to many of his victims.
Some testimonies had me gasping. One concerned a 12-year-old girl whom Savile raped in her bed at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. After the attack she tore pages from a Bible in her bedside cabinet and wrote to tell her father what had happened. It’s not known why, but he never got the letter.
Visual recreation of Savile’s crimes in the play felt wrong. There is distressing verbal detail, however, because surprising numbers of people still think he was more harmless groper than predatory paedophile.
Soon after the scandal broke, a film editor at the BBC was told to edit every trace of Savile out of every edition of Top Of The Pops he’d been in. The job took several weeks.
That urge to erase him is understandable. But until we have learned from the mistakes of the past, we risk repeating them. Covering our eyes and ears is no longer an option.
If the play makes a profit, a substantial proportion will go to victims of abuse.