h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suspect the reason why he got away with it at first was because everyone thought he just fancied teenage girls..and that the prevailing attitudes of the 60s,70s and 80s was that it made him a bit of a 'lad' and so they looked away.

After that as people moved up ladders and away from the positions they held that they 'forgot' as attitudes to abuse changed during the 80s-the present day.How many of those in the know at first actually had much to do with him actually saw him during the latter years when attitudes were hardening against such abuse?

What I find hypocritical though is how the papers are now putting the boot in to institutions like the BBC and NHS when they apparently never got a sniff of Savile's behaviour.How come they didn't ask more about why the Newsnight programme was pulled?How come their antenna let them down so badly?

Mind that might be because they wouldn't recognise the truth being so used to making facts up for so long.

Well it's not quite blackmail, but he did have the whole charity thing to shield him; anyone making allegations would risk hurting all those people who benefited from his work. Who would want to be the one to do that? Remember also that it is currently open season on Savile, and there's no way of telling which of these allegations are actually true.

One of the few good things that the now defunct News of the World did as I recall is track Gary Glitter down in Vietnam where he was holed up and expose his child molesting paedophilic behaviour over there. I think they were instrumental in getting him jailed were they not?

For those not in the know.

Gary Glitter (real name Paul Gadd) was a fairly big pop star in the 1970s here in the UK although not really a very good one. I don't recall ever liking him although I think when I was about six I might have harboured a desire to 'be in his gang' for a short time. Thank god that never happened.
Anyway, in later years he was discovered to have masses of child porn on his computer and was jailed here in the UK for that. He letter hid away in Thailand and Vietnam where some reporters hunted him down and got him jailed over there for raping 10 and 11 year olds :-
He is a serial paedophile and now very much on the UKs bad guy list.

Jimmy Savile was a rather unique personality. He was one of the earliest disk jockeys in existence and had a long career as such including stints on national radio stations. he was also employed by the BBC to host a lot of TV shows - in particular during the 60s, 70s and 80s he hosted both the premier pop show of the UK, Top of the Pops and also a long running show called Jim'll Fix It where kids used to write in and request that Jim Fix it for them to do unusual and wacky things that would not normally happen. So famously some kids got to eat their dinner on a roller coaster, Some would get to meet their favourite stars, one kid got to be a butler for the day, stuff like that. He was a strange strange man but (until recently) made up for it by doing A LOT of work for charity. He ran about 20 marathons a year, he volunteered to porter in hospitals for free and just generally raised HUGE amounts of cash for charities. He supposedly gave away 90% of his lifetime earnings to charity whilst allegedly living with his mother in a caravan (trailer).
The guy died about 2 years ago somewhere just short of a saint.
Of course as it now transpires, it seems he had a somewhat darker side, to put it midly.

As said a couple of posts earlier it was his massive charity raising activities that seem to have shielded him rather than having any dirt on anyone (although that might be true too I guess). I think the previous poster rather undersold the industrial scale of his charity work though - he really did raise massive amounts and until this scandal broke had several charities running under his name after his death. They have now disbanded.

Ewww, having just been doing some reading about Gary Glitter I've now got 'I love you love...' going round in my head

Anyway, it turns out that although not well known across the pond, his 1972 hit Rock n Roll part II is actually really massive in the USA as a sporting anthem.
So you may well not know him, but it's likely you've heard him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xd44PWZGzg

<>

Thanks for that, atinythorn, I've just had to wipe yogurt off my screen

Deb

I see this has sold out - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghostly-Ball-Gown-Size-Clothing/dp/B002TF1FP8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350503874&sr=8-1

*smirk*

Did you look at the review (plus comments)?

No.

But I did like "Tags Customers Associate with This Product"

"A former BBC governor for Wales and Children in Need chairman says he had suspicions about Jimmy Savile more than a decade ago and would not allow him any involvement with the charity.

Sir Roger Jones heard of rumours from London staff, and the charity decided not to allow Savile "anywhere near" it.

He said he did not tell management because he did not have evidence Savile abused children while a BBC employee."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20120302

I can understand this. In Scotland there was a very well-known actor (primarily from his TV roles in the 70s) who was banned from working in most Scottish theatres because of the number of incidents involving young female employees and him - schoolgirls working as ushurettes or in the pantomimes. None of the girls pressed charges AFAIK, maybe because they were all stage-struck and desperate to have a stage career whilst this man was very much the big star.

When he arrived at a theatre I was working at as part of a touring production, it was very much a surprise as he hadn't been in the cast list. When he was physically ejected from the building, the producer of the show threatened to cancel the performances and sue the theatre for quite a large sum. Grudgingly, he was allowed back in but a member of Stage Management acted as his chaperone for the week the show was on.

So yes, we all knew he was a dirty, repulsive sod but there wasn't much we could actually do about it other than take precautions.

"Jimmy Savile estate frozen after abuse claims"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20162980

more or less what I said in post 79.

Interesting article about something I commented on earlier regarding the erasing of people's actions and memories from history...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20165466

I read with sadness, but sympathy, of the actions being taken
until I came to references to the Roman "damnatio memoriae - the
damnation of the memory."

From that link:
"Heads were smashed off statues, names were chiselled off tablets.
The aim was to pretend they had never existed at all."

At that point I recalled the Taliban destruction of the giant Buddhas
and became very conflicted...

I feel the same way about unnecessarily negative American attitudes
toward the Rebel flag, the Stars and Bars...

There is a point where mob mentality seizes PC notions and gives
rise to legitimizing vandalism and an unhealthy denial syndrome.

The ancient swastika, revived by German aercheologists digging
in the ruins of Troy, became a symbol now so reviled that any
use or reference triggers a Pavlovian response of hatred and
condemnation without account to context.

Uhm... yes, unhealthy denial syndrome... I like that idea.
Some sort of Achilles healing is prescribed.



~jwf~

Freddie Starr arrested now.

PP.

Being Akhenatened. A new phrase I have learned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20174081

But they STILL use Savile's photo and not Starr's.

PP.

Maybe they can't find one that looks creepy enough

Well, it happened to Oscar Wilde. His name was painted over in the Roll of Honour in his secondary school.

Now when you google Portora Royal School the first thing you get is 'Historic school with Oscar Wilde and Samuel Becket among its past pupils.'

That's definitely Freddie Starr, PP (although they may have changed it in the last 15 mins)

Yep. Changed.

PP