Jimmy Savile used sinister tactics to lure me into ‘inner circle’… I cut ties when he invited me out with serial killer
OF all my dealings with Jimmy Savile, it was my final meeting with him that lives long in the memory.
It would be my last visit to his flat overlooking Roundhay Park in Leeds. With good reason.
Savile went into another room and emerged with a portrait of himself. He covered over the signature of the artist and asked me to guess who might have created what was before me. It was dreadful.
With a broad smile on his face, Savile revealed the name Peter Sutcliffe in the bottom right hand corner.
Savile was clearly very proud of this painting. Then came part two of the double whammy. “Tomorrow morning I’m off to Broadmoor for breakfast with Peter and Ronnie Kray. Come along for the ride, Vernon.”
In the 70s and 80s Savile was Broadmoor Hospital’s honorary entertainments manager, with staff claiming he “had the run of the place” and even took ‘trusted’ patients out for day trips in his Rolls-Royce.
I had to remind Savile that in my career as a television producer I had worked on the coverage of the Yorkshire Ripper capture. That I had seen evidence of what he did to his victims.
Savile’s response was to tell me that Sutcliffe was “misunderstood”. That the newspapers had “exaggerated” the detail of the Yorkshire Ripper murders.
The notion of dining with Peter Sutcliffe sickened me. Working on the regional news programme in 1980, I well recall the details of his final murder of Jacqueline Hill.
Having contributed to coverage of his Old Bailey trial and a subsequent documentary, I was fully aware that Sutcliffe was not “misunderstood”.
I declined the offer of a chauffeur-driven trip to have breakfast with two murderers. I left the Roundhay Park flat that day knowing that I would not be back.
Did Savile know I would not see him again? Probably. Would he have given it more than a minute of thought? No.
My partner was relieved to hear that I would be cutting all ties with the man who police would later call “the most prolific paedophile in the UK”.
In her youth she would attend the Mecca dance hall in Leeds – one of the early venues where Savile was the DJ.
Girls would be seen disappearing behind the stage and the curtain drawn. She recalls how the young women of West Yorkshire found Savile to be creepy.
‘Inner circle’
My final encounter with Savile came after many years working with him during his occasional appearances on programmes produced by Yorkshire Television, his local broadcaster.
That invitation to join him for one of his regular meetings with the two most famous inmates at Broadmoor confirmed to me that Savile had been testing me all along.
He wanted to see if I could be trusted to be part of his inner circle – something I most definitely had no wish to be.
Savile had been testing me all along. He wanted to see if I could be trusted to be part of his inner circle – something I most definitely had no wish to be
Vernon Grant
The crowd who would meet at the popular Italian restaurant that was close to his flat. A coterie that included a Leeds hairdresser and a retired senior policeman.
The majority of my meetings with Savile took place when I was working on Light Entertainment shows, but he knew my background was in regional TV news.
How far could I be trusted? With every visit to that flat he would push the boundaries.
In 1988 I worked on the first ITV Telethon. He co-hosted the Yorkshire Television output for the ITV network.
The audience was largely made up of young people of both sexes, some sitting in close proximity to him.
In the TV gallery I was staggered at how a man of his advancing years was so good in reacting to direction in his earpiece on a multi camera live broadcast when, inevitably, some links to outside broadcasts went down.
No hitch threw him. He had plenty of live TV experience, of course, and he could ad lib to fill many minutes of airtime.
I wasn’t looking to see if his hands were wandering. Why would I? I spoke as I found and I’d never seen him up to no good.
But then I wouldn’t. What we all know now is that Savile was a very clever individual. I am not aware of my bosses at Yorkshire Television being on the receiving end of any complaints about his behaviour.
As documentaries and dramas made after his death have focused on, it appears clear that BBC bosses did receive complaints from concerned parents and even from people working on programmes featuring Savile.
‘Uncomfortable viewing’
The recent drama The Reckoning made for uncomfortable viewing.
Watching it – and finding it even more unsettling than the ITV documentary that revealed the crimes of Savile – I recalled the time I produced a television show that featured actor Steve Coogan, who portrayed him in the drama, and Jimmy Savile as guests.
The date was November 11, 1988. The location, a studio at Radio Aire in Leeds, next door to the Kirkstall Road home of Yorkshire Television.
In the Light Entertainment department at YTV we were in the early months of producing The James Whale Radio Show for the majority of the ITV network.
Sat in the studio was the former Leeds United and England footballer Norman ‘bites your legs’ Hunter. To his left, a young stand-up comic by the name of Steve Coogan, and to his right, the unmistakable figure of Jimmy Savile.
The controversial presenter encouraged Steve to offer up a brief impersonation of Savile. He did it so very well. It came as no surprise to me, therefore, that he got the voice right in the drama series.
If you only listened to the audio of Coogan speaking as Savile in The Reckoning you could be forgiven for thinking the DJ had come back to life. Perish the thought.
The inclusion of first hand testimony from some of his victims which topped and tailed each episode of the drama was welcome, as painful as it was to hear.
Of course, were he able to, Savile would deny all the allegations, as he managed to do for several decades and also during an earlier tense TV encounter with Louis Theroux.
I was among those who initially found the extent of his crimes hard to accept. But that was before the ITV documentary that shocked the nation in October 2012.
It was transmitted one year after he was found dead in that Leeds flat. Police said “the nation had been groomed by Savile”.
That documentary was largely based on the earlier exhaustive investigative journalism by BBC employees Meirion Jones and the late Liz MacKean.
Their employers chose to bury the December 2011 edition of Newsnight that would have revealed that Savile was a serial offender.
Meirion and Liz had gained the trust of some of his victims and they had spoken on camera about what he did to them.
Some of his sexual assaults were committed on BBC premises. Instead of that special edition of Newsnight, the BBC chose to broadcast a tribute show to the deceased Savile.
It remains a truly appalling decision by the corporation.
From time to time during the last dozen years I have reflected on the time I spent in the company of Savile.
Years after I left Yorkshire Television I wrote to its new managing director, Bruce Gyngell. I suggested it might be time for Savile to host a new show for the ITV network.
Gyngell wrote back to me saying: “I think Savile was right to retire when he did.”
Savile didn’t retire from television. It retired him. I showed him the letter. He smiled, seemed less annoyed by the curt reply than I was, but he made a note of Gyngell’s name.
That same day, in the company of Savile, I walked my dog up a hill in Roundhay Park. He said it didn’t matter if he ever worked in television again as by the time we got back to the bottom of the hill, he would be many pounds richer.
His TV career would fall to earth before earth was thrown on his coffin. He got to his grave before the appalling extent of his several decades of sexual assaults, including rape, were revealed.
During a recent tidy of documents in my office I found a letter to me that he had written when I moved to London for another job.
He wishes me well in my new career and signs it ‘the Mel Gibson lookalike’.
I was far from alone in being fooled by Savile. Along with his victims, I watched The Reckoning wishing we could all turn back time and never spend a second in his company.
One definition of the day of reckoning is “a day or time in the future when people will be forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now”.
For many, 12 years after Savile’s death, that time has arrived.