Four places where you can still see Jimmy Savile on the BBC
JIMMY Savile has not been purged from the BBC. Sure, the BBC wiped Savile from its Desert Island Discs database. But Savile still features on the BBC. He’s part of the BBC news feature on the London Marathon (see above).
When he appeared as a character on the children’s Tweenies show – Max Tweenie was dressed as the BBC and the NHS’s in-house pervert – the Sun was outraged. The BBC was aghast. It would never happen again. But now blogjam has spotted Savile elsewhere on the Beeb. On the Top of The Pops 2 site, you can send a pal a Jimmy Savile postcard. “Sir Jim’ll”… (molest your kids)…
You can read an interview with Savile on the same pages. Highlights are:
Was TOTP part of the ‘Swinging Sixties’?
Jimmy: TOTP epitomised what was going on for younger people at the time. It was simple insofar as most things were safe: sex was safe, a girl walking home late at night was safe. Booze hadn’t raised its head to the extent that it has today. Drugs were practically non-existent. It was such a time of freedom and emancipation for young people. Everything was wonderful and you could say that everything was safe and TOTP mirrored that. I made a big fuss of the audience, I made sure the audience got just as much camera coverage as the groups did, because I considered the audience, if anything, more important than the groups. You could see from their abandon that it was a perfectly natural demonstration of trouble-free joy.
Did TOTP benefit from coming to swinging London?
Jimmy: I don’t think TOTP gained anything by coming down to London from its base in Manchester. Nobody is important in London, nobody is rich, because London eats everybody! When it was in Manchester it was a recognisable entity, people worshipped TOTP. If they’d left it where it was, it would have still had that marvellous fresh flavour. You can’t take something into London and have that same freshness.
As it went through the 70’s TOTP was criticised for sexism – what is your view?
Jimmy: In the 70s, 80s and 90s there came something called Political Correctness. Now Political Correctness, apart from being a load of crap, is something that gives lesser people a tub to thump, people who are nothing. They would come and say you are doing this and that. Why didn’t they ask Pan’s People if they minded dancing in provocative gear? They enjoyed it. Queen Cleopatra wore gear like that – I mean, do me a favour! Political correctness has ruined more people, jobs, and atmospheres than anything else in today’s society.
Did the punk bands behave themselves?
Jimmy: Everybody behaved on TOTP. If they misbehaved, they ran the chance of not having their next record played. That was professional death so everybody behaved.
And will the BBC ever rerun the Grumbleweeds Radio Show? The Grumbleweeds once performed on the Childrens Royal Variety Show. Savile was there:
Posted: 2nd, June 2013 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
