9 November 2011

Jimmy

Seven years after writing this post I look back and realise that I was duped by Savile like everybody else. It turns out that he was a fraud, a pervert and a paedophile who used his position and his eccentric veneer to prey upon others. It is a pity that the truth of his life did not come out before he died...  July 20th 2018
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I guess that overseas visitors to this blog may never have even heard of Jimmy Savile. In my view, he was a very special man whose funeral is taking place in the city of Leeds even as I write these words.

Most British people will remember him as a flamboyant disc jockey - the first and last presenter of our iconic TV music programme - "Top of the Pops" but he was more than that, much more.

These are some of the things that Jimmy Savile was: a Yorkshireman, a coal miner, a professional wrestler, a marathon runner, a loyal friend, a proud uncle, a radio presenter, a TV quiz show host, a hospital porter at the Leeds General Infirmary, a counsellor to psychotic murderers in Broadmoor, a massive fund raiser for the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, an honorary member of the Royal Marines, a member of MENSA, a lifelong committed Christian, a smoker of big fat Cuban cigars, a generous sponsor of university medical students in Leeds, a nightclub entrepreneur... The list is almost endless. It would be difficult to calculate the millions of pounds that he raised for a range of charities.

I am proud to say that I met him when I was sixteen - at a gathering for the National Association of Youth Clubs in St James's Palace, London. Typically, this was another organisation that Jimmy supported though I should point out that the palace wasn't named after him! He was real eccentric, a showman, a "one off" but underneath it all he had a heart of gold. No wonder the people of Leeds are lining the streets in his honour at this very minute.

Owzabout that then?

5 comments:

  1. In the first photo (but not the second), Jimmy looks to these American eyes like a very old, decrepit, pale Prince Charles. I guess the adjectives are superfluous.

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  2. You forgot to say that he was a Tory. Just thought I'd mention it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RHYMES Superfluous indeed.
    SHOOTING PARROTS I think that you are also conservative with a small "c" and so am I. Yes he was attracted to Thatcher. The love child they had together is called Boris Johnson. Jimmy was never a card-carrying Tory but point taken. We all have our faults.

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  4. I first met Jimmy when I was a kid in Wharfedale Childrens Hospital. I spent three years there, it was a cross between hospital and boarding school, surrounded by chainlink fence with barbed wire topping. We inmates called it Stalag Luft III.
    It wasnn't a nice place. But Jimmy Savile occasionally bounced in, btinging us entertainment, music, and his larger-than-life self.

    Years later, I'd bump into him often, at Dunny's Caff, by the river in otley, a no-nonsense biker and working boots sort of place. We'd exchange nods, and comment on the weather. Everybody or mostly everybody, respected his privacy, he'd be in stealth mode, a big woolly hat covering his head...
    I never got to thank him for caring about poorly kids in a forgotten backwater.

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  5. As for Jim's political thoughts? He never gave himself up to be a political stooge, unlike many I could think of.
    I know one of his very good friends was a communist.
    If he was a tory, then he was also a man who raised, so it's said, over £46 million for charities and gave large amounts of his time, throughout all of his life, to help those worse-off than him. Unlike, for instance, Millionaire Blair.

    ReplyDelete

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