Read In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile Online
Authors: Dan Davies
Rolling in cash thanks to his Radio Luxembourg shows,
Top of the Pops
appearances and DJ gigs up and down the country, he took to generating further publicity via various madcap stunts. He ran from London to Brighton to win a £100 bet, and donated the money to the Little Sisters of the Poor. He worked a seven-hour shift in a Welsh coalmine with his brother Vince to raise money to buy a guide dog. He competed in the Latrigg Fell Race, continued to wrestle professionally at halls across Britain and completed a Royal Marines endurance march across Dartmoor. After the latter, Savile remarked that he hoped it would encourage teenagers to walk long distances to help charities.
Jimmy Savile’s relationship with the Royal Marines extended to his final act, when his coffin was carried into St Anne’s Cathedral in Leeds on the shoulders of a regimental guard of honour. It was through the Royal Marines that he established a rapport with Lord Louis Mountbatten that in turn established the bridgehead for his long and close affiliation with the royal family. The association with one of Britain’s crack fighting forces began with his desire to physically prove himself and then developed as he resolved to complete every element of Royal Marine training, earning himself in the process an honorary Green Beret.
‘I invited three Marine Commando N.C.O.s to
Top of the Pops
last week, two of them photographers,’ he wrote in his newspaper column after completing his first run, in which he beat his brother
Vince, a serving naval officer at the time. ‘And seeing as they’re used to snapshots of strong men doing strong things, to see them taking pictures of all those miniskirts was a good laugh. They didn’t even mind lying on the floor in their best suits for the best pictures.’
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On other occasions, he wrote about how teenagers should spend a compulsory four weeks working in a hospital so they could see another side of life, and about the Manchester taxi run to Blackpool with his ‘family of 200 blind or crippled children’. Savile and his other brother, Johnnie, organised a fund-raising concert at the Royal Albert Hall for the victims of the Aberfan disaster in Wales, the proceeds from which they planned to hand out from his car. It was not to pass without incident, however: ‘I refuse to hand over the money to the Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil,’ Johnnie Savile told one newspaper. ‘There has been so much arguing about it.’
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Meanwhile Jimmy Savile, further embellishing his standing as a philanthropist, was using his newspaper column to publicise the talks he gave to gatherings of Catholic priests and nuns. He spoke on the topic of teenagers.
On one occasion, he was invited to speak to a group of nuns who taught at schools in Lancashire. The event was organised by a Jesuit priest, Father George Giarchi, who Savile had worked with on a series of ‘pop missions for teenagers’.
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‘Children want the chance to respect people,’ Savile told the sisters. ‘They know they’ve got to have authority, and that there must be a penalty when they do wrong.’ He explained that teenagers were ‘80 per cent don’t knows, 10 per cent “right” people and 10 per cent hard cases’, and advised the nuns to concentrate on the 80 per cent because ‘It’s better to save a load of the could-be’s, than waste time on the ones born to be double villains.’ As a parting shot he said that he would pray for them, adding ‘and I hope you’ll pray for me’. He naturally failed to mention his own special focus on those teenagers that could not be saved.
Dave Eager told me he remembered accompanying Savile to some of Father Giarchi’s ‘preach-in’ events, which were aimed squarely at the young. ‘He was a character,’ Eager said of the
priest. ‘It was all anti-drugs, anti-underage sex, live the Catholic life, that sort of thing.’ I tried on more than one occasion to contact George Giarchi, who left the clergy in the 1970s, for comment, but got no reply.
‘[The clergy] had never heard anything like it,’ Savile said after their first appearance together. ‘I was honest with them. I told them all about sex and drugs and the dangers. I didn’t mince words. And they believed me.’
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So did Guy Marsden, Jimmy Savile’s nephew. One of 14 children raised by Savile’s older sister Marjory, Marsden is now a father of four and grandfather of ten. He works as a roofer in Leeds.
Marsden told me that he decided to run away in his early teens having been ‘in and out of trouble with the law’. He hitchhiked to London with three friends where, he explained, they stayed for around five weeks. It was the first of a number of such trips that took place over an 18-month period.
On their first trip in 1967, Marsden recalled they were hanging around Euston Station. ‘Unbeknown to us then … it’s like a pick-up point,’ he said. A man approached them, asked what they were doing and offered to buy them food. Marsden said he and his friends accompanied the man to a nearby flat.
After a few days at the stranger’s flat, Guy Marsden’s uncle mysteriously appeared. ‘I half hid, I half ran because I thought, “I’m properly going to get bashed,”’ he said of seeing Jimmy Savile walk into the room. ‘But it weren’t. It were a more casual thing – “You better come with me.” And then I thought I were probably still in trouble. We all went; we stuck together.’
Marsden claimed that ‘Uncle Jimmy’ moved the runaways into a house. Over the ensuing weeks, he also took the boys to a number of parties. There were no women at these soirees, only men and children. Marsden maintained that he realised immediately what sort of parties they were.
One of the houses, he described as being particularly memorable: ‘The big feature of it were, when you went in, the swimming pool …’ he explained. ‘It were a room with a big swimming pool
and it were so inviting. Everybody used it and were diving into it. It had lights in it; it was lit up. It was unbelievable … All you wanted to do was stay there for ever.’ Marsden said he believes the house belonged to a famous pop impresario of the time.
‘What happened were if the parties run through, at some time you’d fall asleep through [the] night or early morning. And then, next day when you woke up, you still had the run of wherever you were.’ If another party was being held, he said, the boys would be put in the car and taken there. He claimed some parties would continue for days and across a number of locations.
Marsden told me that he remembered the children in attendance. He said they were aged between six and ten, and from time to time they were led into rooms with adult males. Noises could be heard coming from inside, he said. ‘None of these kids were stressed. It was as though they were really, really enjoying what they were doing. That’s the sad part really.’
He went on to name a number of celebrities that he encountered at these events but insisted he never saw his uncle Jimmy go into a room with any of the children.
Marsden is adamant he wasn’t abused and that only one of his three friends ‘went behind the door’ with a man. He now thinks he knows why they were there: ‘Someone must have had an idea that we would [be] a good intermediary for these kids. We were all young and slapping each other and messing about … and kids relate to things like that, so they’d come to us. It might have stressed them if there were only adult men.’
He went on to tell me their stay in London came to an end when one of his friends was caught stealing money. It was at this point that Marsden said he first met ‘Uncle John’: ‘I hated him because he were taking us away from all we loved down in London. But … we were getting the boot anyway. We couldn’t be trusted.’ He maintained it was Johnnie, Jimmy Savile’s older brother, who ordered them back to Leeds.
Guy Marsden and his friends made further trips to London and he says that each time they fell back into the same scene. Known
to the police in Leeds, he claims he told them about what he’d experienced in the capital. ‘I might have said it three times in all the times I was picked up,’ he told me. The response? ‘Shut up yer knob.’
Marjory Marsden, Guy’s mother, idolised her youngest brother, thanks in no small part to the fact he would occasionally turn up at the Seacroft estate in Leeds carrying a colour television or a new telephone under his arm. As a result, the Marsdens were one of the first families on the estate to own either. But according to Guy, his father, Herbert Marsden, ‘couldn’t stand [Jimmy Savile], he absolutely hated him … hated him with a vengeance’.
When I asked him whether he ever discussed with his uncle what had gone on in London, Marsden insisted there was an unspoken agreement that nothing would ever be said. He also told me he was sent to Borstal at the age 16, and believes Jimmy Savile was responsible. ‘Apparently one of the people who were meant to be defending me … it turned out they were quite good friends. And [Jimmy Savile] said to the judge, “I think [a custodial sentence] will do him the world of good” … He made it seem like the reason I were in prison was because of him.’
In later life, Jimmy Savile would boast about the calibre of his contacts within the legal profession to police officers investigating allegations against him regarding historic sex offences.
31. GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT
O
tley had been largely untouched by the decade of change. The hills that enclosed this sleepy market town at the gateway to the Yorkshire Dales seemed to act as a buffer to the seismic activity going on beyond. But as chairman of the town’s urban district council in 1967, Mayor Ronnie Duncan was determined to bring a flavour of the Swinging Sixties to town.
Duncan was a big noise locally, the fifth generation of his family to run William Ackroyd and Company, a textile company established in 1836 that had once employed the majority of Otley’s adult population. As mayor and head of the council, he wanted to do something different with the town’s gala social event, the annual Civic Ball.
He told the local newspaper that by rebranding what had traditionally been a staid affair, and calling it a ‘Pop Civic Ball’, he hoped to appeal to ‘the young and young-in-heart amongst our townspeople’.
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The event, which was to be held in a marquee on the grounds of the local rugby club on Friday, 6 October, would feature live music supplied by Chris Barber and his jazz band supported by local outfits, The Mouldy Warp and Ellison’s Hog Line. It would also have a celebrity guest of honour.
Knowing that Jimmy Savile was well-known in Otley thanks to his cycling and his early DJ engagement in the Wharfedale Café in the town centre, Duncan decided to write to the star of radio and television and invite him along as his ‘chief guest’. He also recruited an old friend of Agnes Savile, who was also a regular visitor to Otley, to make contact to see if she could apply some gentle persuasion.
Jimmy Savile didn’t bother writing a letter of reply; he simply scribbled his thoughts on Duncan’s letter and sent it back to him, using the same envelope. ‘He responded to say yes, he would like to come,’ Duncan told me, although further research proved the deal wasn’t quite as simple as he said. In fact, Jimmy Savile outlined a set of six conditions for the councillor, as reported in the local newspaper:
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If Jimmy Savile’s demands for girls were barefaced, what’s also notable was his insistence on being given access to the local hospital. According to Liz Dux, a lawyer representing scores of Jimmy Savile’s victims, it became one of his regular conditions for
making personal appearances in the decades that followed: ‘Whenever he arrived at a new place that he hadn’t been to before, he’d ask where the hospital was.’
In his autobiography, Savile boasted that his unusual demands ensured that the tickets to the Otley ball sold out in record time: ‘My ultimatum of “no tents, no girls, no me” meant the council had to go through with it,’ he wrote.
3
He also claimed that a notice for female volunteers brought in ‘well over a hundred young lady applicants’.
Council records show that the 12 members of Otley District Council met on Monday, 11 September 1967 and Duncan referred to arrangements that had been made both for the Pop Civic Ball and ‘for the reception and convenience of his official guests’,
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which presumably covered Savile and the six young women he’d demanded as his fee.
‘Some of the members only then realized what they were doing,’ claimed Savile in his book, ignoring the fact he wasn’t present at the meeting. ‘[They said] “We can’t have a council meeting to decide which six of our girls sleep with this man.”’ He maintained the council members were ‘more bewildered than outraged’, yet claimed half of them still got up and left the meeting.
Ronnie Duncan remembered it rather differently: ‘Some of the blue-haired Tories were not exactly in favour of having a Pop Civic Ball but their distaste was levelled at me and not at Jimmy Savile.’
Six girls were finally selected: Andrea Barber, Alma Lucas, Lynn Mitchell, Ann Simpson, Catherine Spence and Jennifer Woodhead. When I asked Duncan how old they were, he replied: ‘I don’t think we are talking about sub-teenage. I imagine they were all over the age of 16 but I have no reason to know.’
It is clear from a local newspaper article, however, that there was considerable unease in Otley over the event, and Jimmy Savile’s demands. In the build-up, the BBC Home Service sent a reporter to interview John Herdman, the chairman of the Pop Ball committee. In a subsequent newspaper article, Herdman admitted, ‘the interview touched on some topical and controversial points’.
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Ronnie Duncan did not attend the Pop Civic Ball for the simple reason that he was getting married on the same day. Jimmy Savile arrived wearing a Union Jack blazer, strings of beads round his neck and a sou’wester on his head. He also had a friend in tow.
Jimmy Corrigan was king of Scarborough’s seafront amusement arcades and a member of Savile’s informal running club in the North Yorkshire seaside town. When we spoke, however, Duncan was adamant the Jimmy Corrigan in question was James Lord Corrigan, owner of the recently opened Batley Variety Club and a string of bingo halls around Yorkshire. The two men not only shared a name; they were first cousins.
On the night of the Civic Ball, the six young women were kitted out in identical patterned shift dresses. As Jimmy Savile recalled, ‘They looked good enough to eat.’
According to Savile’s account, one of the girls’ fathers arrived and ‘hauled her off home. She protested loudly but dad would have none of this preposterous situation.’ Corrigan, who Savile described as his ‘millionaire pal’, clearly couldn’t believe his luck: ‘When he saw the crumpet his eyes shot out a mile and his total conversation for the evening was an incredulous “Are we kipping with them?”’
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Jimmy Savile was not required to do anything at the ball other than bide his time. At the end of the night, he recounted how he, Jimmy Corrigan and the five remaining girls were driven up to the Chevin, a local beauty spot overlooking the town, where two tents were waiting for them in a clearing in the trees. ‘Needless to say,’ he added with a sickening inevitability, ‘the girls’ tent fell over and we all had to finish up together.’
Savile’s account of the night was typically upbeat: ‘Dawn came and with it the council chairman and his cars. It was seven totally exhausted campers that fell back down the hill to a breakfast we couldn’t eat because we had laughed too much.’
The photograph in the following week’s paper tells a different story. Jimmy Savile and Jimmy Corrigan are pictured with the six girls. Only Andrea Barber appears to be laughing. It looks
like she has just said something to Lynn Mitchell, who unlike the forced smiles worn by the other girls, looks decidedly grim-faced.
‘To my knowledge [Jimmy] behaved perfectly sensibly,’ protested Duncan, who said he was impressed with the way Savile conducted himself on the hospital visit the following day. ‘The revelations that have come upon us since then are an amazement to all of us, I think … I had got no suspicions of any sort that he’d be taking advantage of the girls. My view was here is a man who has got nothing to sell but himself, and therefore what he wished for in terms of publicity and newsworthy comment is the price that I’m paying.’
I put it to Ronnie Duncan that six girls was a highly unusual payment for a personal appearance. ‘I just thought it was one of his gimmicks, you know, that would make good publicity for him,’ he replied. ‘I saw absolutely nothing sinister in it. Maybe I should have done but I didn’t.’ He also maintained there were no complaints from any of those who camped on the Chevin.
I was able to track down and speak to one of the women who stayed on the hillside with Jimmy Savile and Jimmy Corrigan that night, although she asked not to be identified. Her account is rather different from Duncan’s.
She was 17 at the time, and insists she was not the youngest of the six girls selected. Moreover, she also claims there was no selection process, as most of the girls were the daughters of, or known to, local councillors and prominent local businessman. Indeed it was Andrea Barber’s father, who ran the tobacconist’s shop in town where Jimmy Savile bought his cigars, who forbade his daughter from going.
She also told me the Jimmy Corrigan in question was a good deal younger than Jimmy Savile, making it highly unlikely that it was James Lord Corrigan of Batley Variety Club fame, despite Duncan’s insistence. Jimmy Corrigan of Batley was born in 1925, making him a year older than Jimmy Savile. He was also known throughout his life as James rather than Jimmy. Jimmy Corrigan
of Scarborough, on the other hand, was born in 1939, putting him in his late twenties at the time of the ball.
Perhaps most significant is the revelation that they did not in fact spend the whole night on the hillside. And this was not due to one of the tents collapsing, but because it was attacked by a group of local youths.
The woman recalled it was bitterly cold when the girls got into their sleeping bags in the separate tent that had been set up for them in the clearing. It was at this point, in the early hours of the morning, that Jimmy Savile, who had been plying them with vodka all night but not drinking himself, came in and ‘tried it on’ with each of the girls.
Although the woman refused to elaborate on what had happened on the grounds she didn’t think it fair on the others in the tent that night, she did describe Jimmy Savile as ‘a disgusting old man’ and ‘a pervert’.
Her version of events was that they ‘were saved’ when youths from the rugby club shot out the paraffin lamps with air rifles. ‘They had followed us up there,’ she said. She described the girls huddling in the tent while a fight broke out between Savile and the youths. ‘[Savile] was violent, really nasty once he turned,’ she added.
When I asked her about the newspaper photograph taken the next day, she sighed. ‘I was just thinking, “Get me out of this shit.” I was out of my depth. It was horrible.’
*
If Jimmy Savile was confident enough by 1967 to ask local government officials for payment in girls, it was possibly because he had recently dodged a bullet. According to George Tremlett, who worked weekend shifts on the news desk at the
People
from 1961 to 1968, the newspaper’s crack team of reporters carried out an investigation into Jimmy Savile.
When I asked Tremlett whether it was an investigation into Jimmy Savile’s preference for underage girls, he replied: ‘Without a shadow of a doubt. And it was specific. They had names. The standard practice with the
People
… was everything had to be
evidenced with statements that needed to be agreed by lawyers and so on. That was standard drill.’
The
People
, then a broadsheet, was a paper with a pioneering reputation in the field of investigative journalism.
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In the 1950s it had broken the story of the Messina brothers’ prostitution ring in Soho, which Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the rival
Daily Mirror
and
Sunday Pictorial
, described as ‘the most courageous exposure of its kind’.
So why did the
People
’s findings never see the light of day? Editor Sam Campbell had hired Jimmy Savile as a columnist in a bid to attract a younger readership, chiefly on the advice of his daughter who listened religiously to his Radio Luxembourg shows. She was a boarder at Roedean School in Sussex at the time, and like millions of other teenagers across Britain, listening to
The Teen and Twenty Disc Club
was a guilty pleasure, one that was best enjoyed, at Savile’s behest, ‘under the bedclothes’.
‘The reason that he spiked it was that Jimmy Savile wrote a weekly column for the paper,’ claimed Tremlett. ‘I was about eight or ten feet from the [Campbell’s] desk because he used to sit in the same room as the editorial staff. I was there when somebody walked past me to the desk and they were told that [the story] was killed. They walked back and grumbled. It wasn’t what I would call a rebellious grumble; people expected the editor to edit the paper, and Sam Campbell was one of the great Fleet Street figures.’
In 1966, Sam Campbell died suddenly from a heart attack, aged 58. In January 1972, shortly after Jimmy Savile had been awarded an OBE in the New Year’s honours list, the second instalment of a major four-part series was published in the
People
. Its banner headline screamed: ‘Me and My 3,000 Birds – At last! Jimmy Savile’s own story’.
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