The BBC’s Futile Attempt To Erase Jimmy Savile
Cilla Black and Jimmy Saville before a Variety Club Luncheon at the Savoy Hotel.
Date: 10/08/1964
THE BBC very much regrest including the face of dead DJ Jimmy Savile during a Top Of The Pops highlights show this September. Sir Jimmy, as he was known at the time of filming (the repugnant man was both a Papal knight and knight of the realm), is not a BBC highlight and must be shown only on the news.
The BBC says:
“Although all programmes are reviewed before broadcast, unfortunately this brief appearance was missed. It was removed from iPlayer as soon as we were made aware and replaced with a re-edited version. We apologise for any distress caused.”
You could laugh. Savile never happened. He never presented Top of The Pops. He is being erased.
Liz Dux, an abuse lawyer at Slater and Gordon which is representing 174 of Savile’s victims, tells media:
“You can’t underestimate the amount of distress Savile’s victims will have suffered if they have seen this. It is a constant reminder of what they have been through. Many of them still await the findings of the BBC inquiry and a resolution to questions that have been ongoing for nearly two years. Seeing something like this reawakens their suffering.”
So says the lawyer.
Of course, Savile was on the magic box for years when he was allegedly raping children and feeling up the sick, troubled and incacerated. That might have caused the victims more reason to weep than a brief showing of the Beeb and NHS’s powerful and influential pervert on a broadcast filler.
But what this spisode shows is how the BBC has lost confidence. The accusation that Savile was part of a paedophile ring and got away with because the BBC was in on his depravity now requires the Beeb to prove its innocence. That’s impossible. We should take it on good faith. But the story won’t let us.
Savile’s stench lingers and infects.
In the absence of any proof of a culture of paedophila at the BBC, the corporation scrambles around to look like its in the clear. But it can never do enough. It just ends up looking desperate and sad as shows are re-edited to keep the past in the bad old days.
And what the lawyer says makes us wonder: haven’t some of the victims learned to cope? Is Savile still in control of their existences? Terrible to think that Savile, a repulsive individual, still has such a hold. What can the BBC do to make that right?
As recently as 2007, Surrey police spoke to Savile about allegations that he abused young girls at Duncroft Approved School in Staines. He was under caution. Nothing happened. The Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to take the case further. It was only after the perverted Savile was well and ruly dead that he was covered in more mud. And this time it stuck.
Tragic that it has also stuck to the BBC and everyone who works there…
Posted: 22nd, September 2014 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
