In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (16 page)

20. LITTLE SLAVES

N
ews of Jimmy Savile was spreading. In late 1959 he received a call inviting him to appear on a new television programme on the BBC hosted by David Jacobs.
Jukebox Jury
saw four panellists asked to judge whether a new record was going to be a ‘hit’ or ‘miss’. It was filmed at Lime Grove studios in London on a Saturday evening. At that time, it was unheard of for a dancehall manager to be away on the busiest night of the week. But having already experienced the mysterious power of television, Jimmy Savile chose to go anyway.

He was determined to make an impact, and settled on an outfit of clashing colours, even though the show was filmed in black and white: a light biscuit-coloured suit, gold bowtie, bright green patent shoes and a pink shirt. During the broadcast he never once made any reference to his attire, figuring it better to let the public make up its own mind about why he’d dressed as he did. It was the same policy he adopted when wearing his Sunday best in the cage on the way to the coalface.

When Mecca head office learned of his Saturday night foray, Savile was given a sharp dressing-down, although not from the one person whose opinion really mattered to him: ‘The top man Carl Heimann, he could see it and he sent me a cheque for £25.’ Better still, a music paper ran four pictures of the curiously garbed Yorkshire dancehall boss.

Savile decided to strike while the iron was hot. He wrote a letter to the BBC in Manchester, asking whether there were any opportunities ‘panel-wise or teenage programme-wise’
¹
and followed up with
a letter, also enclosing the cutting from the music paper, to George and Alfred Black, the owners of Tyne Tees Television. He told them that he would be in Newcastle the following Thursday. A couple of days later he got the call to say they wanted to meet him.

So, on his one day off in the week, Jimmy Savile drove up to Newcastle in his Rolls-Royce, making sure he parked it right outside the Tyne Tees building. ‘I had a camel hair overcoat on and a collar and tie,’ he told me, ‘but my hair was slightly pink in shade. I walked into George Black’s office and he said, “Yes, so you were on
Jukebox Jury
.” Then he looked up and noticed the curious figure standing before him had pink hair. So he stood up and he went through into his brother’s office and said, “Come through here, I’ve got a fella with pink hair in here.” It was unheard of at the time.’

Savile claimed a senior producer then rushed in to find out whether someone famous was in the building after spotting the Rolls-Royce parked outside. The plan had worked: ‘One of the brothers turned to me,’ he claimed, ‘and said, “I suppose that’s yours?” And I said, yes.’

A few months later, Jimmy Savile received another call, this time from an Irishman named Pat Campbell who explained that he worked for a record company. Campbell had witnessed one of the record sessions at the Mecca and explained that Warner Brothers, who had decided to release its records in the UK under licence to Decca Record Company, were looking for a new radio disc jockey to showcase their product on Radio Luxembourg.

In an era that saw the BBC operate a monopoly on domestic broadcasting, Radio Luxembourg was developing a strong following, especially among teenagers. It was billed as ‘the one bright listening spot on the dial’, beaming light-hearted entertainment and pop music every night of the week via a 300-kilowatt transmitter in the Grand Duchy, where, unlike Britain, commercial radio was permitted. Programmes were recorded in London and sponsored by record companies who bought airtime to showcase their newest releases.

Campbell had recommended the name of the little-known Yorkshireman to Decca boss, Sydney Beecher-Stevens, reporting that he ‘had blown him away’
²
with his energy and originality. Beecher-Stevens, who would later gain infamy alongside Decca’s A & R man Dick Rowe for turning down The Beatles, was in the market for a disc jockey who would be exclusive to Warner Brothers, rather than playing records on shows sponsored by a number of different labels.

Jimmy Savile arrived for his Radio Luxembourg audition at 38 Hertford Street in London sporting tartan hair. After five minutes and only three records, producer Frank Barnes stepped out of the glass box and said, ‘Thanks, we’ve heard enough.’ Two days later, Savile said he flew to New York on a two-week holiday courtesy ‘of a grateful Mecca’ who had recently presented him with the Manager Winter Season Gold Cup. But before he’d had a chance to fully explore the city, a cable arrived from Warner Brothers: ‘Return by the weekend. Luxembourg series starting immediately.’

At the very start of a decade in which pop music was to transform British culture, and his place in it, the Radio Luxembourg gig for Decca not only sent Jimmy Savile’s earnings rocketing, it consolidated his position as one of the coming men in a new industry. He might not have had a choice in the music he played, but how serendipitous it was that the very first record on his very first show, a record which also happened to be Warner Brothers’ very first UK single, turned out to be ‘Cathy’s Clown’ by The Everly Brothers. It entered the charts on 14 April 1960 at number 22 and three weeks later it was number one, where it stayed for a further six weeks.

Introducing himself with his trademark line, ‘And hi there, guys and gals, welcome to the Warner Bros record show,’ Jimmy Savile’s voice was unlike anything that had been heard before. He was a massive hit.

‘The reason I sounded different to everyone else was that I was the only DJ in the whole world who stood up,’ he said. ‘I knew that your voice sounds different and I was used to standing up behind
all the gear in the dancehalls. All I asked for was a music stand to put a list of the records on … My urgency came across. I’d gesticulate and wave my arms around. I’d talk to the people rather than spout words.’

In May, less than a month after his first show for Radio Luxembourg and with the listenership for his slot having more than quadrupled, Jimmy Savile’s television career began in earnest. His speculative visit to the Black brothers in Newcastle had paid off and he’d been chosen to present a new, weekly pop music show on Tyne Tees aimed at teenagers.
Young At Heart
, co-hosted by 20-year-old singer Valerie Masters, ran for eight weeks and added another £100 a week to his salary.

He was now on a roll. He was given additional shows on Radio Luxembourg, and after three months was presenting no fewer than five different half-hour pop programmes every week, travelling to London on Thursdays, his day off, and recording them in quick succession.

The most famous of all was the
Teen and Twenty Disc Club
, which went out on Tuesdays at 10.30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 10 p.m. It quickly became one of the highest-rated shows on the station and its success spawned a club offering individually numbered membership cards and a bracelet with a charm in the shape of a record. On one side was engraved the letters ‘TTDC’, on the other ‘Dig Pop’.

Alan Simpson remembered Jimmy Savile signing his TTDC membership card on a visit to the Wakefield Locarno: ‘Everyone wanted to be in a club at that time and that signed card was huge for me at school.’ Even the pre-teens were encouraged to join in the fun; the ‘Under the Bedclothes Club’ saw the show’s host urging them to put their transistor radios under the sheets so they could follow the show after bedtime.

‘As kids, it was the music we wanted to hear,’ said Simpson. ‘Most DJs were public schoolboys from the south. Jimmy Savile wasn’t. He was a working-class lad from the north who had catchphrases and gimmicks.’

In January 1961, Savile scored his greatest coup to date by flying to Los Angeles to present a gold disc to Elvis Presley on behalf of Decca. The singer was filming the closing scenes to
Wild in the Country
, and his visitor arrived late and was forced to battle through security at the studios of 20th Century Fox. Waiting for him inside was Colonel Tom Parker, complete with pink nylon coat, bowler hat and cigar.

When he got back to Britain, Savile gave an interview to the
New Musical Express
, ‘I was the first d-j to be photographed with Elvis, an honour of which I’m particularly proud,’ he told the reporter. He paid for the photographs to be blown up and placed on a large board outside the Mecca Locarno.

‘Sure enough,’ recalled Alan Simpson, ‘it was in all the papers: Jimmy and the King. That’s when he had his break. It showed his ability to think on his feet. Savile was the greatest PR man I ever met.’ As well as the giant photo on the front step of the Mecca, he also sold copies through his Radio Luxembourg shows and donated some of the proceeds to the National Playing Fields Association. The organisation’s patron was the Duke of Edinburgh.

As Savile explained to me many years later, ‘[Prince Philip] was a bit impressed with the style of it and we’ve been pals ever since.’

*

Tony Calder was 18 when he first met Jimmy Savile in the corridors of Decca Records. It was 1961, and the young man who would go on to co-manage The Rolling Stones with Andrew Loog Oldham, was a precocious sales and marketing trainee at the time. He told me he had just stormed out of a meeting when he bumped into the DJ. He has never forgotten what he said to him: ‘“Come with me to Leeds for the weekend. I’ll make sure you get laid.”’

Calder says they drove north in Savile’s Rolls-Royce, arriving on a Saturday morning to find the city centre ‘packed with kids’. When Calder then witnessed the scenes in the Mecca, with teenagers bopping and jiving to the new music from America, he recalls thinking to himself, ‘Fuck that, I’m having some of this.’ But it
wasn’t only the music, and the way Jimmy Savile blended records together to produce such an effect on the crowd, that appealed to the youngster.

As Calder explains: ‘At one point, [Jimmy] said, “See that girl over there, you’re going home with her. But you’ve got to kick her out by nine o’clock in the morning.” I said, “Yeah, OK. Why?” And he said, “Because you’re going to have another one coming at 10 o’clock.” I said, “Yeah, right.”’

Savile had what Calder describes as a ‘shag pad’ in Leeds; almost certainly the grace and favour flat supplied by Mecca: ‘Three or four bedrooms and beds with people shagging in them all night long,’ he says. ‘There were queues of girls outside waiting to get shagged. He’d share them out. They’d do as they were told.’

Calder describes these girls as Savile’s ‘followers’. ‘They were his little slaves. He’d obviously shagged them all before he passed them on: “Julie, go with TC.” “Julie, go with Raymond.” They would. They’d be told to go off and shag a few guys before they could shag him again. “You’ll like that, won’t you?” “Oh yes, Jimmy.” “Who’s the boss?” “You are, Jimmy.” “Off you go then.”’

The attraction, Calder felt at the time, was that Jimmy Savile ‘was the father figure’. Girls trusted him.

Jimmy Savile became Tony Calder’s ‘mentor’ and the young man spent the next 18 months being trained as one of his DJs and playing gigs on the London circuit of Mecca venues. He even took a room at the run-down Aaland Hotel in Bloomsbury, where Savile stayed when he was in London to record his radio shows.

‘[He] lived in the front room so he could check who was coming in and out,’ Calder recalls. ‘Some nights he’d come in because he’d been out in Leeds. He’d knock on my door and say, “Oh good, you’re on your own. I’m sending [a girl] down because she’s got nowhere to sleep. And he’d send this girl down and you’d have to shag her.”’

At Mecca, Savile reported directly to Eric Morley, who ran the Miss Great Britain contest for the company. For one 12-week period in 1961, Calder says that both mentor and protégé were seconded to work for Morley, chaperoning beauty queens.

According to Calder, teenage girls threw themselves at Savile. ‘His rule was: the younger the better. I remember he shagged one girl and he told me, “That was close. I thought she was underage. But it was her [16th] birthday.”’

He insists Savile was terrified of being caught having sex with underage girls and warned him about the dangers: ‘Jimmy said to me, “If you fuck underage girls you can go to jail. Sixteen is the limit.” … If a girl had her 16th birthday he was over the moon.’

According to Calder, Savile couldn’t get enough sex: ‘Shagging … was not just a night-time pastime, if it was available there and then it was, “I’ll shag it now” – he never took precautions.’ Instead, he boasted about his fail-safe technique. When it was put to him that he must have illegitimate children all over the country, Savile’s response to his young protégé was blunt: ‘Maybe, but if I don’t know about them I don’t care about them, and I don’t want to care about them.’

Tony Calder likens the Jimmy Savile of this period to ‘the Pied Piper’. He says he was ‘leading them down the path and getting a blowjob on the way. It was a great life for him.

‘All he was doing was going out to clubs, playing music. He had a second hand Roller and the money started to come in. And when it started, it came in like an avalanche. He was playing all over the country, doing guest appearances. He had a phenomenal place in Leeds [the Mecca Locarno]. He was king of the castle.’

By the early 1960s, Jimmy Savile might have been forgiven for feeling untouchable. With a series of hit Radio Luxembourg shows, a budding television career, a packed dancehall and a fleet of cars scattered around Leeds, life seemed sweet. But while all this was going on in the glare of publicity, it is clear he was conscious of the need to keep his other activities away from prying eyes.

Calder remembers being at the table one evening as a senior police officer was wined and dined. ‘We’d go out on a Saturday night somewhere near Leeds, maybe Wakefield, and I remember going to see a jazz act. [Savile] didn’t go there to hear the music, he went there because the police would all turn up and they’d have
dinner. It was the only time he ever bought anything other than fucking chicken and chips.

‘This guy would drink, and the one thing Jimmy hated was paying for somebody to drink alcohol. But he’d pay for it. I asked him why he was paying for it and he said, ‘I’m paying for it because he’s the chief of police and he’s my friend and I’ve got to be a friend.’