jimmy savile a british horror story

 

I don't know what induced me to watch this except I saw it was on and I had a mild interest. Like many, in the 70s/80s to the degree he meant anything to me I thought Jimmy Savile was a slightly bizarre but benign figure (same thing we all thought about Rolf Harris, another saint who fell). I remember really enjoying Jim'll Fix It when we lived in Britain in the mid-70s (though in my memory I get it a teensy bit mixed up with That's Life). Anyway, I thought this two-parter was really strangely put together and containing nothing new. Presumably it was for a global audience, so he had to be explained a lot (to the degree that's possible) but after that, the story was: he was a grotesquely awful person, he said and did strange things too which should have alerted people to how terrible he was, but no-one ever put two and two together, and the police conspired to stop any investigation. Then he died with his fingers crossed. 

This documentary didn't use what I thought was a wonderful thing, when John Lydon talked about the rumours on radio (in the late 70s?). 

Although there is a considerable amount of detail on the times he was nearly exposed in the press, etc, I was still a bit reminded of that film Scandal from 1989 where a big part of the story of the film was that the mainstream press 'didn't know'. But as the various Private Eye accounts show, everyone knew, they just didn't want to upset the establishment by talking about it. 

It's just all so English.