And now Jim Davidson has been, err, nick-nicked.
I spoke to the guy in the pub today but I couldnt’ think of a tactful way to bring it up. Mostly we spoke about rabbits.
Can anyone think of a tactful way to ask if the complaint is anything to do with his daughters? Do you think that I should ask?
Okay, I’d recommend NOT bringing it up.
But if you did (which I bet you will!), say something like “I see he’s finally been arrested - he deserves it after trying it on with your Beth that time”
I asked and what happened with his daughter was a completely different incident, and fairly “mild” at that. So I am afraid I won’t be able to provide any useful information.
(Other than apparently Jim Davidson waited at the bar for an hour and a half after closing in ?80s? ?90s? for the daughter to appear while acting in forlorn and leery way)
Well, the NHS report was just released and in addition to what we thought we would hear, there, of course, is new information that has Savile stealing glass eyes from the deceased and using them as rings.
Oh, and the pedophilia and mortuary offenses are detailed as well.
In this case, all the bizarre rumours were actually true.
That he molested women and underage girls I can quite believe. He was a pretty creepy guy. I never understood why he was such a “star”, and as I think I mentioned upthread, I did actually once see him in Leeds General Infirmary behaving in a way that I thought was very insensitive to a child (though there was nothing sexual going on). I can certainly see how a guy who was, in effect, a professional extreme extrovert, might be liable to get sexually pushy with people he shouldn’t be getting sexual with at all (and also even why some of the people around him might have been inclined to write it off as just Jimmy being Jimmy).
However, this latest bunch of allegations just seem bizarre to me. We are getting into “shooting babies in space” territory here. I think some people, realizing, perhaps, that no-one has an interest in defending Savile any more, are just making whacky stuff up now. A pedophile he may have been (though, I suspect, not so much in the sense of someone who actually prefers children, but rather someone who just doesn’t care about his sexual “targets” might want, or about their ages), but who would even want to be getting into necrophilia in a hospital morgue when they are already getting tons of molesty type sex with live victims?
It’s bizarre, but it all seems to be true. Why he did it, who knows. He was a weird bloke. Why the government felt they should give him the keys to Broadmoor mental hospital/prison is also an unanswered question.
Yup. Only ever saw him on TV myself and always suspected him (I’m on record to that effect here on the board, long before he died), and I don’t doubt he was a paedophile and a nutcase, but this latest batch of allegations is just people saying he said something. So what - he was a fucking nutcase - it’s no surprise he made some weird ass claims.
This from the Zelo Street blog:-
*As the awful reality of what Jimmy Savile got away with at a number of hospitals over many years sinks in, and the realisation that nobody, young or old, male or female, or even living or dead, was safe from his activities, one former politician will be realising that, in the cause of personal ambition, she made a fateful and utterly wrong decision: step forward Edwina Currie.
The woman who put the lead into “Shagger” Major’s pencil can now add to her achievements over the years her confirmation of Savile as head of a taskforce at Broadmoor high security hospital aimed at improving its governance. Whether he accomplished this task, what the appointment also did was to allow Savile free rein to prey on yet more vulnerable people.
Ms Currie must have thought she had scored maximum brownie points when the former DJ was given the Broadmoor gig. It was 1988, Mrs T was still in her pomp and firmly established in 10 Downing Street, and she was giving a key role to someone who regularly spent Christmas with the Thatchers at Chequers. The PM would be pleased at her decision. What could possibly go wrong?
Moreover, as the deeply subversive Guardian noted today, Ms Currie “was also supportive of Savile’s promise to confront unionised prison officers about their working practices and issued a press release praising his work ending with the words ‘he is an amazing man and has my full confidence’”. Union bashing would also find great favour with the Tory leadership.
In regards to how the British government* ignored the victims claims for so long, it’s reminiscent of a documentary aired here in the States about the Hillsborough soccer disaster, where the official story was (as explained in the doc) ‘it was the victims fault for being a bunch of drunken soccer hooligans’.
Knowing just what I know (admittedly not very much) it seems to me that Saville understood this somehow - that if he targeted certain classes of people, the society he was in was predisposed to ignore their complaints.
*for want of a better term, knowing there is no singular entity that makes up governance in Britian.
That’s exactly it, power or celebrity - same difference really - counts for a lot everywhere, force of personality, reflected star-shine etc Those who have the ability to do something about it are disinclined to do so, and the victims are easily portrayed in unflattering ways by the abuser etc etc That sort of structure happens in families and other communities too.
Still, Bill Wyman and Jimmy Page must have had a few sleepless nights the past couple of years, both of them having well-documented encounters with under age girls. Mandy Smith, 13, and Lori Maddox, 14, respectively.
This is what I take from this latest ‘news’ - I’m not going to defend Savile, I’m no fan of his and it seems beyond all doubt now that he was a sexual predator, but how can we suddenly say all these latest allegations are true? For example, the glass eye thing seems to be purely based on a quote, is there any actual evidence for it happening or was it an off the wall comment that no-one took seriously at the time, but now is thought to be true just because of all the other allegations against him?
Anyway, this is hopefully the end of a sorry tale of crime and instituionalised cover up. It’s not the end for most victims, of course - very difficult for them to come to terms with it especially given they will never get a trial, but I don’t think anybody is served by further lurid revelations. Not that the whole thing should be forgotten - hopefully, lesssons have been learned.
Celebrities have always been able to get away with crimes that the average person would get locked up for. That’s why we have the term “celebrity justice,” after all. Jimmy Saville just seems to have been an unusually egregious case of it.