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The Independent republishes this interview from 1990.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/it-was-a-relief-when-i-got-the-knighthoodbecause-it-gotme-off-the-hook-an-exclusive-interview-with-jimmy-savile-from-1990-has-a-new-meaning-9571057.html
There has been a persistent rumour about him for years, and journalists have often told me as a fact: “Jimmy Savile? Of course, you know he’s into little girls.” But if they know it, why haven’t they published it? The Sun or the News of the World would hardly refuse the chance of featuring a Jimmy Savile sex scandal. It is very, very hard to prove a negative, but the fact that the tabloids have never come up with a scintilla of evidence against Jimmy Savile is as near proof as you can ever get.
...
“Now what the tabloids don’t realise is that the young girls in question don’t gather round me because of me – it’s because I know the people they love, the stars, because they know I saw Bros last week or Wet Wet Wet. Now you, watching from afar, might say ‘Look at those young girls throwing themselves at him’, whereas in actual fact it’s exactly the opposite. I am of no interest to them, except in a purely platonic way.
“A lot of disc jockeys make the mistake of thinking that they’re sex symbols and then they get a rude awakening. But I always realised that I was a service industry. Like, because I knew Cliff [Richard] before he’d even made a record, all the Cliff fans would bust a gut to meet me, so that I could tell them stories about their idol. But if I’d said, ‘Come round, so that I can tell you stories about me’ or ‘Come round, so that you can fall into my arms’ they’d have said: ‘What! On yer bike!’ But because reporters don’t understand the nuances of all that, they say, ‘A-ha.’”
This seems a perfectly credible explanation of why rumour links him to young girls.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/it-was-a-relief-when-i-got-the-knighthoodbecause-it-gotme-off-the-hook-an-exclusive-interview-with-jimmy-savile-from-1990-has-a-new-meaning-9571057.html
There has been a persistent rumour about him for years, and journalists have often told me as a fact: “Jimmy Savile? Of course, you know he’s into little girls.” But if they know it, why haven’t they published it? The Sun or the News of the World would hardly refuse the chance of featuring a Jimmy Savile sex scandal. It is very, very hard to prove a negative, but the fact that the tabloids have never come up with a scintilla of evidence against Jimmy Savile is as near proof as you can ever get.
...
“Now what the tabloids don’t realise is that the young girls in question don’t gather round me because of me – it’s because I know the people they love, the stars, because they know I saw Bros last week or Wet Wet Wet. Now you, watching from afar, might say ‘Look at those young girls throwing themselves at him’, whereas in actual fact it’s exactly the opposite. I am of no interest to them, except in a purely platonic way.
“A lot of disc jockeys make the mistake of thinking that they’re sex symbols and then they get a rude awakening. But I always realised that I was a service industry. Like, because I knew Cliff [Richard] before he’d even made a record, all the Cliff fans would bust a gut to meet me, so that I could tell them stories about their idol. But if I’d said, ‘Come round, so that I can tell you stories about me’ or ‘Come round, so that you can fall into my arms’ they’d have said: ‘What! On yer bike!’ But because reporters don’t understand the nuances of all that, they say, ‘A-ha.’”
This seems a perfectly credible explanation of why rumour links him to young girls.
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The new postscript to the interview adds some context. It includes this part.
The rumours I’d heard When this article was first published in The Independent on Sunday in 1990, many readers complained. How dared I ask Sir Jimmy Savile if he liked little girls? He was newly knighted. He was a friend of the Royal Family. He had raised millions for charity. But when I was preparing for the interview, I was struck by how many people – mainly journalists, but also friends, taxi drivers, ordinary members of the public – said in almost identical words: “You know he likes little girls?” None of them could ever produce any evidence, or the names of girls he might have abused, but I felt the rumour was so widespread that it had to be tackled. My first Fleet Street editor, Sir John Junor at the Sunday Express, had taught me that you could not be sued for libel if you framed something as a question and then made sure to print the interviewee’s answer in full – which is what I did with Jimmy Savile. Of course, I didn’t know that he liked little girls – all I knew was that it was a very widespread rumour that had not yet appeared in print. I thought perhaps it would stir up some responses from his victims, but it didn’t as far as I know, nor any response from Savile himself. But I was quite proud of at least floating the idea. When a short extract of the article was reprinted after Savile’s death, I then got another wave of flak from readers, but this time saying that if I knew Savile was a paedophile, why hadn’t I exposed him? Why was I so pusillanimous? But, of course, I didn’t “know” that he was a paedophile, I only knew the rumours. |