Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman was another DJ who became a big radio personality based on DJ-ing, doing endorsements and ribbon-cutting, based on his fast talk persona and catchphrases (although we should note that Freeman was never accused of the sort of stuff Saville was doing). He was even parodied as ‘Smashie and Nicey’ by a later generation of comedians. Unlike Saville, Freeman was essentially harmless.
If you want an example of an American DJ who eventually reached a nationwide TV audience and had an insatiable sexual addiction, look no further than Bob Crane.
I suspect that the same imperative that drives disadvantaged boys into gangs drives disadvantaged girls into the arms of men who will exploit them.
It’s a relatively recent advance that has changed the treatment of 'trafficked" women from criminal to victim. The same thinking has applied to vulnerable teenagers.
Except PeeWee was actually funny, and his material had real content and significance instead of just empty, creepy obnoxiousness.
Saviles persona on TV was in light entertainment shows rtsp we’re family viewing. ‘Jim will Fix it’ captivated youngsters who were encouraged to write letters to the show expressing some wish to be granted by Jim. As a piece of light entertainment, it worked well, it was hugely popular. His character was a weirdly eccentric character who could grant wishes. Kids like amusing odd balls and parents thought it was cute to see some dorky kids face light up with astonishment and surprise when they suddenly became the centre of attention in some BBC financed stunt.
The show was well conceive and Savile had talent as an entertainer. His zany persona never faltered. He was one of the most recognisable characters on national TV.
This, I think, is another factor with these cases. The abuser is often talented in some way. In this case it was light entertainment, others are talent scouts, coaches, priests, movie producers. They are successful and famous. Their talents are valued. If they were just talentless weirdos they would not have gotten away with it for so long.
But Crane was never as beloved as Savile was in the UK and his career had pretty much bottomed out by the time he was murdered. Also, to the best of my knowledge, nobody accused Crane of going after women who were below driving age.
And he wasn’t a bleach blonde either. But he’s as close as your going to get for an American DJ.
Paul Reubens was arrested for masturbating in an X-rated movie theater, ca. 1990. There is a BIG difference between that, and raping a child.
You don’t have famous TV presenters and DJs where you live? Like him or loathe him, he was a very talented and charismatic presenter if a bit bloody weird - which was part of his schtick.
No, really? Gosh, you’re so smart. I mentioned Herman in response to the comment about Soupy Sales’ shtick, with no reference to any child abuse OR his self-flagellation.
And Reubens only abused himself.
I haven’t watched the Netflix series yet because frankly there’s enough new horribleness to see on television these days, but I have been having conversations with various people on the subject of Savile and what they thought of him before the true extent of his crimes was revealed.
I moved to the UK in the mid-90s and first encountered the man while watching TOTP in student accommodations. There he was on the screen in all his creepy shellsuited glory, and I asked one of the British students who he was. “That’s Jimmy Savile. I love him - he used to have a children’s TV show.” And I boggled “YOU LET THAT GUY NEAR CHILDREN?!?”
Weirdly, the conversations seem to break two ways: the people who grew up with him on their tellys being Mr Fix-It just seemed to accept him as a funny eccentric entertainer, but everyone who first encountered him as an adult (due to moving to the UK as I did) immediately got the strong “perverted uncle” vibe off him. There’s probably a lesson there about what you can train the population to accept, but I haven’t got the energy to explore it.
(FTR, the same didn’t apply to Rolf Harris. I was completely blindsided by that revelation.)
A test case might be if you saw The Benny Hill Show before watching Hill play the kindly toy maker in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Of course, the chronology is backwards. I’m not sure anybody would have given him a kid’s show after his stint of chasing half naked women around to the tune of Yakity Sax.
The parallels between Boris and the Donald have baffled many, but the Donald at least did not… oh, wait!
I agree very much with your analysis and wonder what will happen when the Donald finally bites the dust.
To be fair, Hill was doing risqué jokes on the radio long before he got to do them on television. And by most accounts, he was a very nice person in reality.
I’ll also mention Pui Fan Lee, who had a supporting role as a lesbian with a very brief topless scene in the extremely sex-focused miniseries Metrosexuality at the same time she was appearing as Po in Teletubbies. She has continued to do children’s television and other film and television roles. Sometimes it doesn’t matter.
Which has nothing to do with Savile, who was a sex maniac in real life rather than just playing one on television.
People often accuse Benny Hill of doing this However I’ve not seen any actual examples of it.
In all the ones I’ve seen, Hill is the one running away, with other people chasing after him. Sometimes - not always - this happens after accidentally ripping off a woman’s dress. This is presented as being a bad thing to do, and makes people angry at him, albeit comically.
Benny Hill’s act was built on a mixture of music hall slapstick and ‘saucy postcard’ humour that originated after labour law reforms gave workers the entitlement to a paid holiday. For working class factory workers, a holiday at a seaside resort was a chance to let off a little steam and have some fun. The postcards were jokes that were silly and crass and often sexually suggestive. Lots of red faced newly weds, men escaping the gaze of disapproving spouses and having their heads turned to admire pneumatically proportioned ladies. This was British working class culture in the 1970s and it found an expression in the huge appetite for light entertainment on TV. His manic silly schoolboy humour was a hit around the world. There is nothing quite as therapeutic as good belly laugh.
That culture has long gone now. It faded away in the 1980s and looking back, some of the material was toe-curlingly embarrassing. A popular genre on Youtube is of millennials reacting to examples of what was thought acceptable to be broadcast on primetime TV in the 1970s.
The sexism and stereotypes would upset too many sensitive souls these days and comedians have to work a lot harder to come up with appropriate material. The seaside resorts of the UK have long since gone into decline. Eclipsed by the rise cheap flights and package holidays to sunny Spain.
Despite Benny Hill’s sexually suggestive material, there seems to be little serious scandal attached to his name. He was not one of the monsters.
Hill was well-known in the business for being kind and considerate to his fellow artistes, and while some might say that should be taken as a given, it’s far from being the normal in showbiz. Many of his stock company of players would turn down other offers to work with him again.
John Oliver has talked about how much he loved Jimmy Savile as a kid. One thing I’d like to ask Dopers from the UK, was there a class element in his fandom? Were working class people more likely to admire him and if so, could that dynamic allowed him to carry on his predations? Would upper classes be more willing to write off his victims as damaged and not particularly care?
I watched the second part of the Jimmy Savile Netflix documentary last night.
It covered the latter part of his long career and covered how the creepy nature of his character steadily developed. Serious interviewers who probed for a reaction to suggestions that he had a fondness of young girls. His frequent jokes and sly references to impropriety. But his mask never slipped. Deflecting direct questions with zany, wise cracking quips. We are introduced to the journalists who were duped and those that knew there was a story here.
The saddest part was an account of one of his victims. Not one of the worldly bad girls from the ‘reform’ school who hankered after the attention of someone famous and willing to trade favours. But a far more innocent victim who had not yet reached puberty. The account by a woman, now in her fifties, of what Savile did to her made for very uncomfortable viewing.
Saviles death, his huge Catholic funeral, and the wave of respect and the eulogies to this great man of the people who did so much good work for charitable causes was the catalyst for a backlash.
Once dead and buried, the newly emerging social media sites started to hum with condemnation from victims. Journalists felt free to investigate and the dam broke.
Netflix gave it a steadily rising tension and captured the reaction of some of his defenders whose protests that these were groupies trying to make money gradually went silent after case after case came to light.
I would say that this emotional treatment tended to obscure some of the important questions about how he got away with it for so long. It revealed the police were woeful in their treatment of accusations from his victims who they thought could not be relied upon to give evidence in court. They never told the victims that they were not alone. Their resolve predictably crumbled.
But there was also collusion. Savile had many friends in the police. He had friends across the Establishment and he had dealt with several other accusations in the past and won legal battles.
In a curious correspondence with a certain character in the US, he knew how to use the law to his own advantage. In the UK the libel laws are very strong. Celebrities and businessmen…and most recently Oligarchs use them very effectively to target anyone who threatens them.
They employ the best lawyers in the country who are experts at ruthlessly taking apart witnesses in a court room and undermining their case. There is no constitutional right to freedom of expression in the UK. Libel law is privilege of the rich man. We had a few hints from the son of one the leading lawyers in this field. Lord George Carmen QC who knew a lot about Savile.
I was hoping Netflix would cover these establishment connections in more detail, but the treatment was cursory. They did not even cover the attempts by the BBC to kill the exposure story by one of their documentary teams. Savile, even after death, still had friends in high places who preferred his memory to be a revered ‘national treasure’.
I guess this is the problem with focusing on such a high profile individual like Savile. There is a LOT of material, he was rarely off the TV. The guy was everywhere and this was part of his modus operandi. He was constantly looking for opportunities to abuse victims and he found them in hospitals.
There are rumours that Savile got up to some even darker misdeeds. The documentary hinted that Savile was also a necrophile. But it did not expand on this.
I think the amount of material there was in the Savile scandal was too much for a two part documentary and it focused on the ‘human interest’ aspect, rather than examining all the institutional weaknesses and establishment networks that allowed him to operate. I guess that is too much of a labyrinth.
As was I. I loved Cartoon time 