Quote Originally Posted by JamesWales View Post
I'm quite interested in these opinions actually. I remember Jimll Fix It, I guess it ended when I was maybe 10 or so and it was an iconic programme that I enjoyed - who wouldn't?

For most of my life he was a creepy older guy who Iike most people I found very weird, but I suppose in an eccentric way. In my twenties, I don't recall it being common knowledge that he was beset by rumours. The most common opinion was just that he was weird, and I obviously didn't spend much time thinking about it either, he was just an old celebrity.

That seemed to change a bit after the famous (and excellent) Louis Theroux interviews, but again he just seemed weird more than anything.

I remember him dying and randomly I was on the phone to a call centre in Leeds and the girl said the city was in mourning etc, albeit in a bit of a jokey way.

Do you think it was common knowledge that he had been committing the crimes we now know he did? I'm genuinely interested to know what people who were adults at the time felt
I’ve mentioned before on here that my thinking on Savile was influenced by something an uncle of mine said to me in the seventies when I would have been around twenty (I didn’t like him before that mind because I always thought he came over as having little interest in or knowledge of the music which was the basis of him becoming a celebrity in the first place). My uncle was in the Merchant Navy and spent some time around the Liverpool/Manchester area around the late fifties and early sixties and although I don’t think he knew him that well, came across Savile a few times.

He was visiting us one day and I remember there was just me and him watching telly in the house at the time when Savile appeared on there, he said straight away “he’s a bad, bad man”, I pressed him for more, but he left it at that, apart from saying he’d heard some awful things about him when he was younger. If I had to guess, I’d say he was talking more about things like him having that young man beaten up at his night club that appeared at the start of the episode, rather than the sex stuff, but I may be wrong.

My uncle was never one to engage in gossip and I never heard him talk about anyone else in the showbiz and sporting world (he got to meet a few fairly big stars in his life) in the same way.

Even without that though, I don’t think my opinion of Savile would have been too different - I agree he was weird, but I also found him dislikable and boring.