Jimmy Savile and Peter Sutcliffe - possibly the creepiest picture I have ever seen

Hat-tip: Telegraph blogs (read full article here)

Apparently, the albino sex pervert befriended the psychopathic sex-killer on visits to Broadmoor - where, it's becoming increasingly apparent, Savile himself belonged. A case of like attracting like, one presumes.

The pity, of course, is that Frank Bruno (who was there to open a gym) didn't take the opportunity of laying into these vile monsters when he had the chance - he wasn't the greatest boxer of his era, let's face it, but two good punches would have done the job. But as Frank was there on a duty call, and he wouldn't have had a clue about Savile's extra-curricular activities, one can hardly blame him.

How prescient Chris Morris's 1994 fake radio announcement of Savile's death (Savile threatened to sue) now seems:

He knows a raving creep when he sees one, Chris Morris.

Like most of us, I've been trying to figure out how Savile was allowed to get away with it (even allowing for the fact that he was evidently an exceptionally cunning criminal). How exactly did the police, the press, the NHS and the BBC manage allow a predatory paedophile who was constantly in the public eye - and who many, many people evidently knew to be a predatory paedophile - manage to run riot for decades? The only one of these areas I've had any experience of is the BBC, so I'll confine my remarks to them.

When I worked, briefly, for the BBC's Television department nearly a decade ago, I was startled by the nauseatingly oleaginous attitude to "stars". There was a habit amongst senior executives of referring to "talent" by their christian names, invariably employing the soft, honeyed tone normally reserved for a favourite child. Because all news and current affairs presenters came from the same pool as production staff, "stars" there were treated with grudging respect at best, mixed with a healthy dollop of disdain - they tended to be viewed as jammy sods who were being paid wildly over the odds for doing a job that was much easier than the one they used to do (i.e. reporting on crimes, industrial disputes or foreign wars) or the ones most of us were still doing. (To be fair to them, most presenters felt the same way about themselves.)  

Contrariwise, for TV folk, actors and presenters were members of a different, superior race, whose talent - no matter how slight - allowed them to behave like spoiled brats whose every whim had to be humoured. Personally, I thought some of them needed a quick smack and to be sent to bed without supper (or alcohol, or drugs). The reason why Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand ended up outraging the nation behaving like cruel, smutty little children with the collusion of production staff is that they were endlessly indulged - financially and otherwise - by the very people whose duty it was to control them: control was out - fan-worship was in. 

I'm assuming (I hope) that all that nonsense has stopped and that on-screen talent paid small fortunes from our licence fees are now expected to behave like responsible adults. 

I can't now remember exactly when I first heard the rumours about Savile's vile proclivities. Probably while I was working at Radio 2 in  the mid-1980s (where, I'm surprised to discover, Savile never worked - he was still employed by Radio 1 at the time). I expect one of the programme producers told me. I seem to remember that Savile's caravan was mentioned as the scene of assaults on underage girls. If someone as junior and unimportant and new to the BBC as I was at that time knew about it, then thousands of other employees must have heard the same rumours, and dozens must have had more direct knowledge of what was going on. And if several of those in the know weren't senior executives who were in a position to do something about it, then I''m the current Chairman of the BBC Trust.

Shameful.