In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile

by Dan Davies

  The official BBC line on what it was that Newsnight had been investigating was now taking shape. When the website Digital Spy ran a story on how similar the BBC’s investigation was to the one in ITV’s upcoming documentary, the BBC press office moved to set the record straight. ‘We [the BBC] were pursuing a particular angle related to the CPS/Police which we were unable to substantiate and which was therefore not broadcast.’2

  The very next day, some nine days after receiving the letter from Williams-Thomas and Gardiner, Julian Payne, the BBC’s head of press, finally sent a reply. It stated the Newsnight investigation was abandoned for ‘editorial reasons’ and quoted exactly the same rationale about the CPS and the police.

  Lesley Gardiner was furious about the time it had taken for the BBC to respond. ‘[It] was almost dismissive in terms of what they were going to do about it,’ remembers Williams-Thomas. ‘I think that was a significant point. [The situation] was aggravated, of course, by the fact that they … then issued a very different statement. That was only because it was massively in the media eye. It raises the question of what they thought. Did they think it was just going to go away?’

  On 28 September, five days before the ITV documentary was scheduled to be broadcast, and amid widespread reporting of the allegations it contained, the BBC issued a second statement: ‘While the BBC condemns any behaviour of the type alleged in the strongest terms, in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates the allegations that have been made it is simply not possible for the corporation to take any further action.’3

  Newsnight’s editor, Peter Rippon, added his voice to the denials coming out of the BBC. ‘It is absolutely untrue that the Newsnight investigation was dropped for anything other than editorial reasons. We have been very clear from the start that the piece was not broadcast because the story we were pursuing could not be substantiated. To say otherwise is false and very damaging to the BBC and individuals. The notion that internal pressure was applied appears to be a malicious rumour.’4

  In an email to Rippon, Meirion Jones expressed his concern at his editor’s attempt to ‘rewrite history’.5 He pointed out that if there was to be an investigation – by the BBC Trust or the House of Commons Culture and Media Committee – ‘we have to be honest’.

  Jones continued: ‘You made the decision that we had enough to TX [transmit] once we had confirmation that the police had investigated [Savile] – on top of the victim interviews we had already done … I don’t know what happened to change your mind and I thought that was a bizarre decision but I accepted that you decided to drop the story for Editorial Reasons because ultimately you are the Editor and it is up to you to make those calls.’

  Rippon drafted a response that he emailed to Stephen Mitchell for approval. The email was never sent to Jones. Instead, they met face-to-face. Rippon contends that it was at this meeting that Jones told him that Surrey Police had interviewed all the women they had spoken to. Both Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean maintain they were consistently transparent about the fact that Keri was not part of the police investigation and therefore Newsnight had more than Surrey Police did when the CPS made its decision.

  As the pressure on the BBC continued to mount, questions were now being asked in the press about whether information had been withheld from the police. Meanwhile the chain of internal communication within the BBC only seemed to grow. The BBC press office advised, wrongly, that a response should emphasise that the information provided by Keri was already known to the police.

  Williams-Thomas remembers the week before transmission as being one of the most stressful of his life. ‘It was probably the closest I’ve been to having a nervous breakdown,’ he admits. ‘We were about to expose an individual who was highly regarded and respected and who had been a national institution. And ultimately, it was down to Lesley and I. We were responsible for this and for looking after the five people who were about to go on national TV. That is a big, big commitment.’

  The first wave of press coverage about the imminent Exposure film contained some strong criticism. Roger Foster, Savile’s nephew and one of the organisers of his three-day funeral, said he was ‘sad and disgusted’. He voiced his fear that the allegations would have a negative effect on his uncle’s charity legacy. ‘The guy hasn’t been dead for a year and they’re bringing up these stories,’ he said. ‘I just don’t understand the motives behind this.’

  ‘His family came out and said that it was a disgrace,’ says Williams-Thomas. ‘So I was in the firing line from that. I was in the firing line for ITV, I was the face of the programme.’ It was upsetting, but he says he tried to ignore it. ‘I was very determined that what I was doing was right. I wanted to give a voice to those five people. I knew there would be other victims out there and I was hoping they would come forward. I never knew it would be as many as did come forward but I always hoped that there would be some other people that had the confidence to [do that].’

  In the period leading up to the documentary being aired, Williams-Thomas sat at home with his eldest daughter listening to a particularly vociferous phone-in show on Radio Leeds. ‘My phone was ringing all morning,’ he remembers. ‘My agent was calling me saying “Radio Leeds are after you.” I thought, I’m just not talking. So they did this phone-in and people were saying [they were] trying to get hold of Mark Williams-Thomas and he’s not returning their calls.’

  Williams-Thomas has three children. His eldest daughter was 17 at the time. ‘I remember [her] saying, “What you’ve done is right.” You know what, that is quite a strong thing to say.’ His 13-year-old daughter, also ‘got it’, he says. ‘[She said] it was the right thing to do to expose an individual like that.’

  At five minutes past five on the afternoon of 2 October, Peter Rippon responded to internal pressure within the BBC by publishing a blog post outlining his reasons for not broadcasting Newsnight’s report on Jimmy Savile. Helen Boaden, Stephen Mitchell, the Corporate and News PR departments and the BBC’s head of Corporate and Public Affairs were all involved in tweaks made to the original briefing document Mitchell had instructed Rippon to prepare. The office of Director General George Entwistle was also kept in the loop.

  In the final, approved text, Rippon denied there had been a ‘BBC cover-up’ and that Newsnight had ‘deliberately withheld information from the police’. However, he did nail his colours firmly to the mast by claiming, ‘if we could establish some sort of institutional failure we would have a much stronger story’. He restated the line that the CPS decision not to proceed was based on a lack of evidence rather than Jimmy Savile’s age, and that it was the crucial factor in persuading him ‘not to publish’.6

  Within an hour, Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight’s most senior presenter, emailed Rippon with his own thoughts. He said the blog post did not answer all the accusations laid against the programme, adding, ‘I think we make a problem for ourselves by running away from this story.’7 He outlined five points of serious concern and asked Rippon to reconsider doing something on the story. In one of a series of subsequent emails, Rippon argued that not covering the story was ‘the least worse option’.8

  Amid the deluge of newspaper stories and the spiralling sense of confusion at the BBC, the trustees of one of Jimmy Savile’s charitable funds released a statement of their own: ‘We are conscious of the dedication and effort that Sir Jimmy made throughout his lifetime to charity. He raised more than £40 million for good causes, giving away 90 per cent of his income. The broadcast of such serious allegations, which by their very nature will be one-sided, may impact on the charitable trust and its endeavours.’9

  Williams-Thomas and Gardiner were still in the editing suite on the morning of 3 October. Their documentary was to be broadcast later that evening. By now, the media tide had turned firmly in their favour, and a dozen victims of Jimmy Savile were now telling their stories in papers and on news bulletins across Britain. ‘It was a real change,’ Williams-Thomas acknowledges. ‘We then had the medi
a onside.’

  Even the BBC had finally bowed to the pressure, announcing its Investigations Unit would assist police inquiries into its former star, a man who was now being posthumously rebranded as Public Enemy Number 1.

  The former Surrey Police officer at the centre of the growing storm spent the rest of the afternoon doing interviews. Williams-Thomas was tired and surviving on shredded nerves. He agreed to stay on at ITV headquarters until the early evening in case any further changes were required to the programme, but was adamant that he wanted to watch the documentary at home with his family.

  He remembers trying to grab a couple of hours’ sleep at a London hotel. ‘It was still frantic,’ he says. ‘My phone was ringing non-stop … I must have got half an hour because I was just exhausted.’

  The walls had been breached and beyond lay the ugly truth Jimmy Savile had spent his life trying to conceal.

  47. SIR JAMES

  The new decade began with Britain’s first female prime minister in residence at 10 Downing Street. Jimmy Savile had been keen to capitalise on the promise of his early contacts with Margaret Thatcher, who he had hosted on a visit to Stoke Mandeville in December 1977. He even claimed a share of the credit for her election triumph. When they had filmed a segment for Jim’ll Fix It at the Houses of Parliament, she’d asked him to fix it for her to become PM.

  After the election of 3 May 1979 had swept the Tories into power and Thatcher into office, he said Downing Street staff had followed up to secure her the spoils. ‘Her secretary rang to say she was rather upset because I hadn’t been round to give her her badge. ‘I reported to Downing Street a few days later and presented [it].’1

  Savile ‘bumped into’ Thatcher again soon afterwards, during the Conservative Party conference at Blackpool. He was in the process of completing ‘Jim’s Daily Dozen’, a month-long series of sponsored runs through towns across Britain, sponsored, thanks to Brooksby, by Hoover and Procter & Gamble. Savile told the prime minister that he would like some of the money raised to go to a charity of her choice.

  He was wooing her, and it was working.

  Mrs Thatcher would present a cheque for £10,000 to the NSPCC, courtesy of Jimmy Savile, at a luncheon at Downing Street on 6 February 1980. As his host heaped praise and photographers snapped away happily, Savile squirmed with faux embarrassment. It was merely the prelude to the serious business of his visit. He needed something back from the prime minister, especially having agreed to spare her government’s blushes by leading the campaign to build a new National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

  The wooden Nissen huts housing the unit since 1944 had been badly damaged in a series of winter storms. Five ceilings had collapsed, seriously jeopardising the centre’s ability to treat the 750 inpatients and 2,000 outpatients it saw each year. When no NHS funding was forthcoming for repairs, the country’s leading spinal injury facility faced up to the prospect of imminent closure. Staff and patients staged a sit-in protest that generated column inches in the newspapers but little else. Time was running out.

  The situation at Stoke Mandeville dominated the meeting Jimmy Savile orchestrated with Dr Gerard Vaughan, minister of state for Health. Over tea and cake at the House of Commons, Vaughan outlined the new government’s thinking on the National Health Service, a philosophy which ordained that special projects such as rebuilding work at hospitals, even such urgent work as that required at Stoke Mandeville, would need to be supported by voluntary contributions, in line with the cuts in public expenditure Prime Minister Thatcher was implementing across the board. Vaughan suggested this meant they had a problem. ‘Not really,’ replied Savile, and they struck a deal.2

  Jimmy Savile would lead a campaign to rebuild the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville using private money and donations. In other words, it was to be a pioneering example of the type of ‘partnership’ between government and the public that the prime minister was so keen to promote.

  ‘Jim needed high profile institutions,’ explained Janet Cope, who had worked at Stoke Mandeville Hospital since she was fifteen. ‘The spinal injuries centre was world famous, it was unique. It pioneered the treatment of the paralysed. Broadmoor was the first hospital for the criminally insane; Leeds General Infirmary was on his doorstep and a huge teaching hospital. Little local hospitals were no good to him. They were not high profile enough. He needed something that would smack you in the face. Stoke Mandeville was very, very high profile and it brought Jim fame and us money.’

  Jimmy Savile launched the campaign in late January at a press conference at Church House, Westminster. The target, he said, was between six and ten million pounds. He maintained he was unconcerned about those who said it was the responsibility of the NHS, and therefore the government, to find the money.

  ‘This is the way they used to build hospitals years ago,’ he said, ‘and it’s not that bad a way to build a hospital in these straitened times.’ He went on to explain that a £5 donation would pay for a brick, £50,000 would provide a bed and £250,000 would fund a ward.3

  Afterwards, Vaughan pledged the government’s support for the appeal. ‘This is a unit we must sustain, look after and develop,’ he told the assembled reporters. ‘There is a public responsibility to see that these people get the kind of care they deserve.’ When asked what backing the government would give, Vaughan replied, ‘There’s a limited amount of money available in this country for health care. If we want more, we have to look outside the NHS.’ According to the Spinal Injuries Association, he did at least offer assurances that government money would pay for the running costs of the new centre.

  Savile rounded off proceedings by asking for the first donation to the new fund. On hand was Douglas McMinns, a retired businessman from Buckinghamshire who handed over a cheque for £150,000. As Vaughan posed outside with the cheque and two young paraplegics from Stoke Mandeville, Jimmy Savile reiterated that he was very happy to support the government’s controversial stance.

  The very next day, an editorial in the Daily Mail began banging the drum: ‘Those like Mr Savile, who tirelessly take the hat round for this country’s hospitals, do a wonderful job,’ it boomed. ‘The Daily Mail is wholly in favour of a financially beleaguered National Health Service tapping as much as it can from the charitable impulses of the public.’4

  Despite the economic malaise afflicting Britain, the response was instantaneous. A spray paint company pledged to donate a penny for every can sold that year. Ski Yoghurt offered £100,000. Quaker Oats offered £200 a mile for Savile to run a marathon around Ben Nevis. BUPA sponsored an entire ward. Meanwhile, all over the country ordinary people found unusual ways of raising money, from sitting in baths of baked beans to donating money left by the tooth fairy. Cheques and postal orders flooded into the Spinal Injury Centre offices at Stoke Mandeville, where members of staff suddenly found themselves pressed into action as campaign organisers.

  At the Downing Street luncheon, Jimmy Savile had pressed the prime minister on the subject of tax deduction for charitable donations. Not, in this case, to enhance his own bank balance, but because it would significantly facilitate the success of the campaign. Thatcher had told Savile that she considered the existing arrangements a ‘considerable disincentive to those who are contemplating charitable donations’.5

  A week after his visit to Downing Street, Savile sat in his small flat on Park Crescent, a short walk from Broadcasting House, and began penning a letter: ‘Dear Prime Minister, I waited a week before writing to thank you for my lunch invitation because I had such a superb time and I didn’t want to be too effusive. My girl patients pretended to be madly jealous + wanted to know what you wore + what you ate. All the paralysed lads called me “Sir James” all week. They all love you. Me too!! Jimmy Savile OBE.’ He signed off with three kisses.

  The roadmap had been unfurled and the destination was now clear: a knighthood.

  This fawning letter was not the first piece of correspondence on the matter of the premier
’s lunch with Jimmy Savile. A confidential memo sent on the afternoon of the event from Mike Pattison, Thatcher’s private secretary, to Martin Hall of the Treasury, and also copied to Gerard Vaughan’s office at the Department of Health, requested the chancellor’s clarification on the seven-year covenant system.

  Two weeks later, a note from the Treasury revealed that the chancellor had already decided that the next Finance Bill would reduce the time necessary for charitable covenants to qualify for tax relief from seven years to four. ‘We cannot even hint at this to Jimmy Savile at present,’ Pattison wrote in his memo to the prime minister. ‘We have to treat it as a Budget secret. Would you like to write to Jimmy promising to take it up personally as in the attached draft [of a letter]? We will then give you a follow-up letter when the Budget has been announced.’6

  Jimmy Savile was moving in rarefied circles. In May 1980, following his annual sponsored walk in aid of the Central Remedial Clinic in Dublin, he sat down for a meeting with Charles Haughey, the newly elected Irish prime minister. Haughey had requested the meeting through Lady Valerie Goulding, the aristocratic founder of the clinic. In the early 1970s, the two had worked closely when Haughey was head of the clinic’s fund-raising committee.

  Afterwards, in a note written on Central Remedial Clinic headed paper, Lady Goulding repeated a suggestion made by Ireland’s most senior politician at the time, stating Savile ‘could be a good mediator as he really is very well in with Mrs Thatcher and members of the opposition as well.’7 In subsequent years, Savile became a regular visitor to Haughey’s home in Abbeville, Kinsealy.

  As well as his direct line to the prime minister, he admitted to frequently calling in to Buckingham Palace: ‘Yes, I can call them up there and go round for a chat, but I can’t say any more than that,’ he told one reporter.8

  Years later, he was more forthcoming with me about the extent of his relationship with the royal family, and how he put it to use in persuading Victor Matthews, construction magnate and proprietor of the Daily Express, to come on board with the bid to rebuild the facilities at Stoke Mandeville.