Bee Gee saved wife from Savile
BEE GEEs singer Barry Gibb squirmed when Piers Morgan asked how he met his second wife, Linda Gray, during filming for last night’s episode of Morgan’s ITV chat show. As Morgan knew from hints in media reports, the pair (pictured in 1970) were introduced through notorious sex offender Jimmy savile, at a 1967 recording of Top Of The Pops.
‘There is a whole slew of stories behind all that,’ said Gibb, in a scene that ITV deleted from the final edit of Piers Morgan’s Life stories because the presenter’s probing about his past made Gibb ‘uncomfortable’. ‘some of them cannot be told.’
Until now, that is. Entertainment veterans who knew savile in the sixties, when the posthumously vilified BBC presenter had a brief career as a professional wrestler, have revealed the full story of how the Bee Gees frontman met his future bride.
Max Crabtree, 83, a retired wrestling promoter and brother of the late wrestling giant Big Daddy, tells me he booked savile to fight in a 1967 bout in Leith, where a bikini-clad Linda — then a local beauty queen — introduced savile to the ring.
The following day, 17-year-old Linda was invited to travel down to London to appear on savile’s BBC show, Top Of The Pops, in her modelling capacity as Miss Musselburgh.
It is unclear whether the teenager’s train fare was paid for by savile personally or the BBC.
During his two decades presenting Top Of The Pops, savile had so many young girls passing through his dressing room, the late status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt called the chart show a ‘den of iniquity’.
But Linda was one of the few who got away. Crabtree says Barry Gibb winked at Linda from the stage while performing, and Linda ‘vanished’ to spend time with the handsome Bee Gees singer — now her husband of 46 years and counting.
Three weeks later, back in scotland, spurned savile told Crabtree that Linda was ‘naughty’ for disappearing.
‘savile was annoyed that Linda had gone off with someone else,’ says Crabtree. ‘I am delighted that she and Barry stuck together.’