He was actually Dutch by origin. The first Dutch entertainer to make it big in Germany. Followed by Linda de Mol (traumhochzeit).
In Holland it used to be the same. Everyone knew the big tv personalities, no question. And I recognise the schoolyard story.
Of course I knew this. We all loved his slight Dutch accent.
yes. We made fun of that back home, but admired him nonetheless.
Nitpick: the first Dutch entertainer after the war, but before Carrell there was Johannes Heesters who had made a career in Nazi Germany. Unsurprisingly, from all I’ve heard, Heesters (who died at age 108 in 2011 and was the oldest active actor of the world for a while) was not as popular in the Netherlands as Rudi Carrell, to say the least…
You are, of course , absolutely right.
Darn it, I got confused about the thread, I thought it was Jimny Saville and here you are describing our former El Jefe…
It is the huge influence of TV when the channels were few and in the same time zone. That world has long gone now. We get a glimpse of the shared experience that the TV schedules brought with shows like Gogglebox, which quaintly re-creates families and friends sitting together watching TV. That is the way it used to be…kinda…they omit the huge arguments that used to take place over which channel to watch when there was a clash of tastes.
I am sure the world of TV production still has its fair share of monsters. A regular influx of youngsters into the business competing for jobs as unpaid interns is a recipe for exploitation. Just like Hollywood.
If that’s a slight Dutch accent, I’d love to hear what you consider to be a thick one. I’m not even a native speaker and yet I nailed him as a Dutchman before he’d sung the first five words of that song.
You’re right, his accent was rather pronounced. But his grammar and vocabulary were almost impeccable.
And that is exactly which drew our admiration, given how difficult German is for a non-native speaker
This would be why Derrick was so popular (also in South Africa)
Also in SA? I knew that Italy and Japan loved “Derrick”, but I’ve never understood why, for me it was the most boring crime series I knew.
Yes, it was huge here. But then, we had very limited TV choices - at the time, just one TV channel - as well as the various bans on selling TV shows to Apartheid South Africa.
It was dubbed into Afrikaans (as was the British show The Sweeney)
Derrick was very popular with us as well. As was Tatort. We didn’t dub them, though. We had subtitles.
I would say the most appropriate analogue to Saville and his level of fame would be Dick Clark, Ryan Seacrest, and perhaps Steve Harvey. They all started in radio (maybe Harvey didn’t) and presented multiple shows, appeal to a broad range of ages, and most people in the US know who they are.
Except none of them have raised tons of money for charity in nearly the same way. There simply isn’t an equivalent.
Saville also became a trusted advisor to Royalty the Prime Minister at the time because he seemed to be a working class hero. The Monarchy was worried about their popularity with the working classes and for Margaret Thatcher, she wanted that working class vote. They sought his advice and this won him influence from the top the British establishment and, no doubt, opened the doors to the hospitals where he preyed on the vulnerable victims.
Seeking a virtuous image through charitable works is quite powerful in British culture, as is any sort of notable public service. His work as a porter in hospitals, entertaining the staff and patients made him highly regarded by the public.
The UK went through something of a moral panic following the Savile scandal. There was also a janitor who murdered school children, the Soham murders case. Parents became very paranoid.
Politicians responded by passing laws requiring anyone working with children or vulnerable adults have a police check and a sexual offenders register was created. There are also ‘safeguarding’ responsibility provisions in many contracts.
The Netflix documentary really did not cover any of this. It focused on his public personality and scoured the video archives to find questionable remarks he made and interviewed people who interviewed him. I would rather have liked to see some interviews with the senior people who allowed him access to hospitals and clearly ignored warnings from staff about what they had seen and heard of his behaviour. But then scandals in hospitals are nothing new, the body count usually has to be quite high for surgeons and consultants to be challenged. Lots of institutions have blind spots and weaknesses, in the UK, there is a tendency to protect those at the top. Will the BBC reveal which executive tried to get the Panorama expose documentary cancelled? I doubt it.
The BBC will soon broadcast a four part docu-drama about Savile, played by Steve Coogan. There has been a lot of criticism about the BBC doing this since they were clearly an important part of the story. Should be interesting.
Does the Netflix series mention the Johnny Rotten BBC interview from 1978, where he calls out the BBC for covering up for Saville and bets they won’t air the interview?(They didn’t, but surprisingly the footage still exists)
I’m not sure I agree with that. The Soham murders were nine years before Savile died, and although some parents did become worried about whether the staff at their kids’ schools had been at least checked out (which wouldn’t weed out everyone, but would have weeded out Huntley, because an enhanced DBS - the one introduced after Huntley’s conviction and then called the CRB check - can include relevant, and substantial, accusations as well as convictions) it was partly because there were also a lot of discoveries about priests and care home workers having abused their charges in the past.
Savile’s crimes instigated the setting up of Operation Yewtree, investigating accusations against media figures (they were often connected, hence it being one operation). But it was generally adult women making accusations about what had happened to them as teenagers and young women. Nothing to do with parental panic.
I’m not sure why the Netflix documentary should have mentioned a completely unconnected double murder several years earlier by someone not connected to Savile.
Overall, the Netflix series prefers to focus on frustrated journalists, who had an inkling of Savile’s crimes without ever getting a strong enough source to go to print, versus the many people who had a good enough idea of what Savile was up to to either a) deliberately turn a blind eye or b) do what they could to keep him away from potential victims, even if he couldn’t actually be arrested and prosecuted. In the latter category, for instance, Sir Roger Jones, then-director of Children in Need, made sure Savile had no association with the charity. I wish the doc had highlighted stories like that.