The Jimmy Savile situation - Another Jimmy In Cuffs. Who Next, Jimmy Hill?

[MinaHarker]

it does seem DLT has been accused of indecent assault still if found quilty a series enough crime to end his radio presenting career.

His comments about it are utterly disgusting.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Which comments? I've looked at one article on the BBC News site with some quotes from him, but I don't see anything there that is remotely disgusting.

[MinaHarker]

He claims it's not his fault as "us guys who are a bit older are tactile" and that "in the old days it was called 'putting your arm around somebody and giving them a cuddle'" (referring to the allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman).

[Matthew T]

They should just skip to the late 80s with the TOTP repeats, unless Jacki Brambles and Simon Mayo have any skeletons in their closets.

[Andrew Curnow]

I must admit that although I was never a big DLT fan, I have to agree when the BBC report says:

...He also denied all the unspecified allegations against him, but said he would not be able to do anything to prove or disprove them.

"It's just too easy to make allegations. I'm an easy target," he added. "Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"...

Also, he's inevitably (it seems to me) being tarred with the Savile brush here, and although it's not child-related, in all the media furore that rather important detail is most likely going to be lost.

[Si Hunt]

I think its astonishingly unfair that the Police can arrest people accused of adult assault under a "... And others" label associated with a child abuser!!

I hope if I ever steal an apple I'm not unlucky enough to have my "case" associated with a murderers by the police.

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I'm a bit confused as to what this Operation Kneejerk that the Met are running actually is. They say the crimes they're investigating fall into 3 categories: 1) Cases involving Savile alone. 2) Cases involving Savile + others. 3) Cases involving just others, and not Savile.

DLT's been arrested on a case from the third category. On what planet does it make sense that that third category can even count as part of the same investigation?

[Nyder]

I thought he gave a very eloquent interview to the media after his arrest, explaining that it had nothing to do with the Savile probe. I wish they'd stop calling it "the Savile probe" though. I'm sure we've all had quite enough lurid stories of his probe already.

Getting back to DLT - as has been said before - how on earth do you prove the claims against him?

[Nyder]

.....and some of the headlines yesterday. Honestly. "TRAVIS FACES SEX QUIZ" screamed one tabloid. Made him sound like he was in a gameshow.

[Andrew Curnow]

It's starting to become a frightening witch-hunt - I'm certain if I anonymously rang up a newspaper today, claiming I'd been abused by... well, frankly any celebrity name, then there'd be at least a report and possibly a 'police have questioned [insert name here]' based on literally nothing more than my say-so.

Now (he added quickly) I'm not suggesting that whoever has reported DLT is making it up; but what I'm saying is that not only has he lost any right to anonymity you might normally expect somebody to have, but the reporting almost seems to have taken his guilt as a foregone conclusion. Is it too naive of me to have wished that his radio station employers might have said, "Na we think it's rubbish, he can carry on broadcasting, we'll worry about firing him if he turns out to be guilty" rather than, it seems to me, assuming the worst and suspending him immediately.

[Larry]

I think its astonishingly unfair that the Police can arrest people accused of adult assault under a "... And others" label associated with a child abuser!!

I hope if I ever steal an apple I'm not unlucky enough to have my "case" associated with a murderers by the police.

Si.

I think what's more unfair about sex crimes is that the alledged victim can accuse some body while keeping their anonymity yet the person they have accused gets publicaly named and shamed before the police even have any firm evidence against them. Regardles of whether DLT is guilty of carrying out any indecent assaults surely he like any other peson accused of sex crimes deseves to be given the same anonymity untill he can be proved guilty.

[MinaHarker]

It's starting to become a frightening witch-hunt - I'm certain if I anonymously rang up a newspaper today, claiming I'd been abused by... well, frankly any celebrity name, then there'd be at least a report and possibly a 'police have questioned [insert name here]' based on literally nothing more than my say-so.

Now (he added quickly) I'm not suggesting that whoever has reported DLT is making it up; but what I'm saying is that not only has he lost any right to anonymity you might normally expect somebody to have, but the reporting almost seems to have taken his guilt as a foregone conclusion. Is it too naive of me to have wished that his radio station employers might have said, "Na we think it's rubbish, he can carry on broadcasting, we'll worry about firing him if he turns out to be guilty" rather than, it seems to me, assuming the worst and suspending him immediately.

It's entirely normal in most jobs that allegations of serious misconduct directly result in suspension while those allegations are investigated.

[Stuart Wallis]

Without meaning to sound cynical, the point here is that DLT's employees have to cover their backs - if he's guilty, then he's as good as gone; otherwise, they would have been facing a potential unfair dismissal case if they'd just dropped him.

[Jason Thompson]

One thing I have always maintained, and this case highlights it even more so, is that there should never be news reports that someone has been arrested or charged with a crime. The accused should have the right to anonymity until and unless convicted. The tabloids and TV news plaster names and faces all over the place, and then when the accused person is acquitted they bury the fact somewhere.

Whether or not DLT is guilty, the accusation has been made.

Even back in 1978, the first episode of Blake's 7 recognised this, with Blake telling his defending counsel that even if he could prove him innocent the charges of child molesting had been made, and so to some he would always be a child molester regardless of the facts. Despite this, the media can run and run with stories of 'so-and-so has been arrested and accused of such-and-such', and worse they often phrase their reports as if the person concerned has already been found guilty.

[Dino]

Bill Oddie in "There goes the knighthood!" shock!

Veteran BBC presenter Bill Oddie has backed claims disgraced Jimmy Savile’s abuse was covered up – because he was friends with Prince Charles.
The Springwatch star, who appeared on TOTP with the Goodies when Savile presented it during the 1970s, said there was a “running sick joke” at the BBC about Savile being a paedophile.
He suggested there might have been some sort of “censorship committee” preventing the truth being released because of Savile’s royal connections.

The Prince of Wales and Sir Jimmy Savile in Glencoe in July 1999
The presenter also backed claims made by other former BBC presenters that Savile’s antics were well known at the time.
He said: “The idea that youngsters were prey – everybody knew that.
“I was not surprised at all. And the surprise is in a sense that that didn’t happen years ago.
“The establishment or who ever it is decided to keep it all quiet and decided to give him a knighthood. He was, to a certain amount, a friend of royalty.”

The pair of friends chat happily during the charity trip, where Savile kept a holiday cottage
He added: “I do not know why it took so long to come to light. That is what I am curious about.
“Whether there is somewhere in Britain, some sort of censorship committee that we don’t know about that suppresses these thing and somebody gets together in a room and says ‘come on he was a friend of Prince Charles, it would look awfully bad on Prince Charles if we said he was a bit of a perv’.
“And someone decides ‘yes you are right, we will keep it quiet, nobody will ever find out.’
“I don’t know who that would be.”
Speaking after a question and answer session with students of Cambridge University’s historic debating society – The Union Society – on Tuesday, Oddie said Savile’s reputation was “just taken for granted.”

The Prince of Wales is shown round the holiday cottage, which Savile had hoped would be turned into a retreat for disabled children

He said: “There was just this running sick joke that Jimmy Savile pestered the young youths of both sexes.
“It was just taken for granted. It doesn’t mean anyone thought they must do something about it – and it probably wasn’t realised how serious it was – it certainly wasn’t realised to the extent of the hospital – which is horrendous.
“When this came out it was not a surprise at all. The surprise is that it did not come out a lot earlier and the puzzlement is or the question is was it covered up or did people just chose to ignore it or was there an order and if so from whom, by whom and with whom saying we are not going to allow this to get published.
“It does make you think who would you look at. Would you look at the BBC, the police, would you look at the NHS hospital people? Did they all know and didn’t say?”


Oddie revealed there was a “naive groupies scene” at the time.
He said: “This is not a mitigating circumstance obviously, but the only thing I will say is that that was a time in history in television and radio and live shows where there was a sort of naive groupies scene.
“I do not think the girls were incredibly promiscuous, certainly not the younger ones.
“There were people who hung around after gigs and tried to get to the stars – or the disk jockeys.
“You haven’t half got a booby prize if you went for Cliff Richard and ended up with Jimmy Savile.”
He added: “The thing that you could not ignore was that it was the era of the sort of groupies.
“Not the heavy groupy, but it was an extension of those shots of the Beatles in the 60s where there is hundreds of girls crying and screaming and god knows what – well that was pretty rife.
“My wife was saying the other day about a friend of hers from way back when they went to see the Monkeys and the girl said ‘I am going to try and get in the dressing room’ and my wife said ‘he will only want one thing you know’ and she said ‘yes, I know. that is what I am going for’.
“But that is not quite the same thing as a paedophile – that was just rock bands and includes other people I am sure and is due to availability and other things. The 70s was like that.”
Oddie, who started on BBC radio with his show I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, reiterated claims that former director general of the BBC Mark Thompson must have known what was going on with Savile.
He said: “It is so extraordinary that there is any sort of mystery – when the ex head of the BBC Mark Thompson the other day said ‘I don’t know anything about it’.
“You worked at the BBC and you don’t know anything about it – don’t be ridiculous.
“That is absolute nonsense.”
Oddie claimed Savile “bribed his way out” of getting found out for molesting children in hospital because he was a large donor.
He said: “Anyone of that era knew something – he had a reputation for being a groper.
“The most awful aspect is the idea of molesting kids in hospital – that is just unbelievable. He was sort of bribing his way out of it by giving millions of pounds to the hospital – that is staggering.”
As well as Savile’s contact with children at the BBC, his interaction with sick youngsters at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, in Sussex, and Leeds General Infirmary, is also being investigated.

http://the-tap.blogspot.co.uk/2012/1...ile-as-he.html

So there goes the BBC repeating The Goodies ever again then...

[MinaHarker]

What a truly appalling state of affairs.

[Perry Vale]

The Springwatch star, who appeared on TOTP with the Goodies when Savile presented it during the 1970s, said there was a “running sick joke” at the BBC about Savile being a paedophile.

That's odd.

I was watching an interview with him on Youtube earlier, talking about Saville, where he says Saville was known to everyone to be a "groper", but nothing about being a paedophile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6EqlWhf8z8

The only person worth listening to on the subject really is David Icke.

[Rob McCow]

Oddie revealed there was a “naive groupies scene” at the time.

WOOOOAAHHHH!!!!

Because nobody knew that before.

[Larry]

and so it goes on Stuart Hall, he of It's A Knockout fame has been arrested and questioned over allegations of rape.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20605267

[SiHart]

And now Max Clifford has been arrested for historic sexual offences... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20627765

[Dirk Gently]

A veritable can of BBC worms has been opened. I wonder if other channels are looking in to their histories.

[Stuart Wallis]

Many more of these investigations and we may start wondering who you wouldn't sully the ten-foot bargepole over.

[Larry]

And now Max Clifford has been arrested for historic sexual offences... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20627765

you just wonder who's going to be next .It's got to a point that you watch anybody on tv or listen to them on the radio who were big names at the BBC during the 1970's and you're wondering if they are hiding any secrets.

[SiHart]

The initial findings have been published today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20981611

[Stuart Wallis]

Some 214 crimes were recorded across 28 police force areas, including 34 of rape or penetration, the report said.

The CPS apologised for missing the opportunity to prosecute Savile in 2009, while he was still alive.

Not even laughable. What were they thinking of instead then?