16 October 2023 , 18:15
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Jimmy Savile managed to fool the nation with his eccentric TV persona and endless fundraising. But behind closed doors, the disgraced DJ used his good deeds to hide in plain sight and got away with sexually abusing hundreds of victims for more than 50 years.
It wasn't until after his death in 2011 that his sickening crimes came to light, and he was finally uncovered as a vile paedophile and rapist. But one of those who had questioned the rumours swirling about Savile at the height of his career was documentary maker Louis Theroux.
He famously followed the Jim'll Fix It star for several months as part of his When Louis Met... series in 2000. He interviewed the presenter, whom he had previously described as his childhood hero, at his homes in Leeds, Scarborough and Glencoe. When he was alive, the entertainer, who died aged 84, faced multiple allegations of sexual offences, however, they were all dismissed. He even made disturbing jokes about the rumours in live interviews.
Louis followed the entertainer for several months for the documentary (BBC)
The documentary maker asked about the speculation at the time (BBC TWO)The documentary showed Theroux asking Jimmy directly about the speculation around whether he was in fact a paedophile. Savile gave a chilling reply, putting the blame on society. "[We] live in a very funny world," he said.
"And it's easier for me, as a single man, to say 'I don't like children' because that puts a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt.... How do they know whether I am [a paedophile] or not? How does anybody know whether I am? Nobody knows whether I am or not." Brazenly lying, he added: "I know I'm not."
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Elsewhere in the documentary, Jimmy showed Theroux around his home in Scarborough as he opened up about the loss of his mother Agnes in 1972 and revealed that he kept her corpse for a number of days. Before her death, he had wanted to keep a close eye on her and bought Agnes a flat on Scarborough's Esplanade.
Savile routinely stayed with her at the flat until she died, and it is where he continued to live following her passing. Savile admitted to spending five days with her corpse in an open coffin. The documentary maker was shown the wardrobe which still had all of her clothes in it. "My cleaner takes them out and gets them freshened up about once a year," Savile told him. "These make better souvenirs than photographs," he added.
Savile opened up about keeping his mum's corpse in the flat (BBC TWO)Although deceased, he continued to greet his late mother when he entered the flat. "When I come in, I always go...When I'm coming through the door, I go, 'All right, darling?'... as I walk past the door," he said. "It's a friendly thing, it's not morbid." Savile also claimed that the pair "never argued."
Immediately after his death, the BBC's Newsnight began an investigation into reports that he was a sexual abuser. The full extent of his crimes was later revealed in a 2013 report, which recorded 214 criminal offences committed by the star, some of which took place at hospitals, including Great Ormond Street in London and Wheatfields Hospice in Leeds.
His offending is thought to have started in the mid-1940s, when Savile was in his late teens or early twenties, and lasted until 2009, two years before his death. A 2016 report into his abuse found staff at the BBC missed numerous opportunities to stop Savile.
In 2020, Theroux, who created a second documentary in 2016 interviewing some of Savile's victims, said he was "still proud" of the first documentary but wished he could have exposed Savile. He had previously described the encounter as "the strangest and most upsetting event I've ever been involved in".
Reflecting on the film following the allegations coming to light, Louis, now 53, said: "I've watched it since the revelations came out and I'm struck by how much is there. It's very far from soft journalism." He added: "We all knew he was doing some act. He would more or less invite people to believe he had secrets."
The Reckoning returns to BBC One on Monday at 9pm