Chilling real story of Jimmy Savile's 'son' from prize winner to predator

10 October 2023 , 18:50

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Jimmy Savile did not actually have any children, but called one man 15 years his junior his 'adopted son' (Image: PA Archive/Press Association Images)

In the opening of BBC's new drama The Reckoning, viewers are introduced to a young man who eerily refers to Jimmy Savile actor Steve Coogan as 'father' in a dance hall scene, though it's believed the infamous broadcaster did not actually have any children at all. Ray Teret - who is played by actor Robert Emms - was actually a DJ, chauffeur and sinister accomplice of the former entertainer.

Fifteen years his junior, Teret would carry out jobs for Savile like picking up young girls and taking them back to their flat, as he's seen doing in the controversial series. He would tell people that he was Savile's 'adopted son', who he'd found crying in Manchester Piccadilly Station, and the pair were said to have become so close that Teret was nicknamed Savile's 'shadow' by many.

Ray Teret was a convicted rapist and abuser who groomed young girls with his fame (PA)

Teret met Savile after winning his singing contest and became his vile protégé in the sixties (PA)

Teret was born in Salisbury and started his career in the early sixties, working as a warehouse clerk, apprentice heating engineer and waiter. Teret won the Savile-run singing contest at the Palace Theatre in Manchester and earned a £5 cash prize. He soon became Savile's protégé and was offered a job at his disco club in Higher Broughton. As The Reckoning suggests, Teret and Savile worked together to abuse young and underage girls, and shared a flat on Great Clowes Street in Broughton.

As well as DJing alongside him, Teret was Savile's dogsbody and personal driver, and was often made to do his dirty work. Their relationship stalled when Savile began working for the BBC on shows such as Top of the Pops. Teret claimed he cut ties with Savile from the mid-sixties to the end of the seventies, when he joined Radio Caroline North and became well-known regionally as 'Ugli'. He said Savile never phoned him during that period, and denied a photograph of the pair of them on holiday.

Teret was found not guilty of aiding Savile in the rape of a 15-year-old girl - but found guilty of raping her himself (Nick Razzell)

It later emerged that Teret, like Savile, was a dangerous rapist and predator, who used his fame to groom young girls and ply them with alcohol and cigarettes. In 2014, the 73-year-old was convicted of seven counts of rape and 11 counts of sexual assault which he carried out during the sixties and seventies on girls between 12 and 15. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison at HMP Manchester and died behind bars seven years later, aged 80, of colon cancer.

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During his trial, Teret was cleared of some charges, including aiding and abetting Savile in the rape of a 15-year-old girl in the early 1960s, but he was found guilty of raping her himself. Detective Sergeant Carol Barlow, from Greater Manchester Police, said: "Ray Teret is a devious, manipulative sexual predator. He abused his celebrity status in the worst way imaginable. The girls he preyed upon were naïve and inexperienced and in awe of who he was."

Teret claimed he had no interest in underage girls, despite a previous conviction of having sex with a 15-year-old in 1999, which he said was a miscarriage of justice. One victim, who was raped by Teret at the age of 12, said he had 'wrecked' her life. She told BBC News at the time: "He knew I was a kid, he could see I was a kid. I've had to live with what he has done all my life." An abuse lawyer who represented a number of Savile's victims described Teret as a 'sex offender in the same mould' as the older DJ.

Nia Dalton