In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile

by Dan Davies

  For the second year in a row, Margaret Thatcher invited Savile to Chequers for New Year’s Day drinks and lunch.

  51. SOS – SAME OLD SHIT

  I asked Jimmy Savile whether he was sad that this was the last time he’d cruise on the QE2. ‘No, no, no. It’s all marvellous,’ he said before reminding me that he didn’t have feelings, because he was ‘odd’.

  He’d decided that he wanted a cup of tea so we headed back to the Lido restaurant where he grabbed a cup and saucer and helped himself to a small pile of crab sticks. We settled on a quiet table near the window. After all the performance of the last hour or so he said he wanted some peace.

  Between noisy slurps of his tea that stained the white crab flesh coagulating around his teeth, he asked me about the coverage of my Esquire story in the papers. I mentioned the double-page spread in the Daily Mail. ‘A dirty, greasy paper,’ he hissed before adding there were two people the tabloids wanted more than anyone else, ‘Me and Cliff.’

  We were soon on the move again, returning outside to sit in the sun at a table near the pool. Shore leave was nearly over and in the next hour we were set to leave Cadiz, bound for Southampton. The conversation was stop-start, thanks mainly to Savile barking ‘Morning!’ at each and every passer-by. An elderly English woman pointed out that it was now the afternoon, to which he replied: ‘Why tell the truth when you can get away with a lie?’ He shot me a glance and there was a flicker of a grin: ‘SOS. Same Old Shit.’

  A young woman with Down’s syndrome seemed keen to attract his attention from a neighbouring table. Savile got up and went over to where she was sitting. He told her to budge up so he could sit down next to her. He took her hand and the young woman lit up. ‘I’ve heard you’ve got another fella on board,’ Savile deadpanned. She laughed and held his hand tighter. He then turned to the young woman’s mother. ‘She’s two-timing me, I knew it.’

  I had not before seen how he behaved in the company of the people he had so famously spent much of his life and his fortune helping – the mentally and physically disabled, young offenders, the sick, the old and the vulnerable. He seemed warm and genuine, and the young woman’s parents were delighted.

  Before long we were on the move again. This time, we headed towards his cabin, which even from outside was identifiable by its stale smell of cigars. Savile fished the key out of his tracksuit pocket and unlocked the door. There was no suitcase, just a small rucksack on a chair next to the bed. He explained he had a suit in the wardrobe for formal evenings and otherwise he would make do with one tracksuit, two T-shirts, one pair of shorts, two pairs of pants and two pairs of socks which would be worn and then washed in the sink, allowed to dry overnight and then worn again. Next to the television were two boxes of cigars and a couple of bottles of duty-free whiskey.

  I produced a copy of Esquire from my bag and he sank into one of the two armchairs, plucked a cigar from one of the boxes and lit up. He soon found the feature, adorned with a full-page portrait photograph that had been taken outside the grand pillars of the Athenaeum Club. He looked unfamiliar in the picture, wearing a dark suit, red tie and his knight of the realm medal attached to a gold chain around his neck.

  After a brief scan of the pages, he chuckled to himself and put the magazine down. He didn’t want to talk, and turned on the television instead, selecting ‘Bridge Cam’ from the menu of channels. It was what it said: a camera mounted on the bridge of the ship which, for now, was showing an unchanging view of the port of Cadiz. The pictures were accompanied by classical music that, said Savile, was ‘perfect’.

  I asked him about the day the picture was taken. He had come to London to collect a medal from Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street in recognition of his efforts as a Bevin Boy miner in the final months of World War II. He didn’t want to talk about the event and immediately changed the subject, asking me about ‘the state of my romance’. I described the glorified shed I had moved into. ‘Well, there you go,’ he replied, eyes still fixed on the unchanging picture on the television. ‘Remember, this is all about R & R. Sunshine. Food. Good kip. A bit of fun.’

  He seemed happy to sit there in silence, other than for the gentle strains of classical music coming from the telly. I wasn’t sure what to do so I asked him if he really loved the music during his early days as the world’s first dancehall disc jockey, or whether in fact it was the power that he enjoyed, the power to make people dance. ‘No,’ he corrected. ‘It wasn’t about the music or the power, it was about opportunity.’

  There would be plenty of time to talk, he said. Savile picked up the phone and called the bridge to ask if the captain would permit us to come up and watch us sail away from the best seat in the house. ‘You will ask him though, won’t you, Deborah?’ he enquired of the captain’s secretary. ‘You know what a stickler for protocol I am.’

  Permission granted, we headed off again, along the length of the ship and up to the bridge where we met Deborah, who made a fuss of him. Captain Perkins was a large, plump man in white uniform. Savile had the copy of Esquire under his arm and though he had still not read the piece, he proudly showed off the picture. The captain then told a rather awkward story about the Radio 1 road show coming to his home town when he was a kid and Jimmy requesting two young virgins to spend the night with him. Savile’s face betrayed nothing. He closed the magazine, bowed slightly and shook the captain’s hand, thanking him for his kindness in allowing us to be on the bridge at this important time.

  We moved outside to observe the sudden buzz of activity as the massive mooring chains were pulled aboard while a small flotilla of pilot boats mustered to guide out us out of the harbour. It was a clear, bright evening, one that held the promise of a memorable sunset, and Captain Perkins had us set on a westerly course across the Bay of Cadiz.

  Jimmy Savile looked straight ahead and muttered to no one in particular that Perkins had his facts wrong about the road show. He said he could not be bothered correcting all the inaccuracies he heard about himself. ‘They think it’s true, and that’s all that counts,’ he said. ‘But in actual fact it’s all a load of old bollocks.’

  Once beyond the harbour, the wind freshened. I walked Savile back to his cabin where he slumped in his chair and yawned. I suggested leaving him so that he could read the article in peace. He knew I was intrigued by him, but the Esquire story was no hagiography. I had again referred to how he liked to brag and posited the possibility that he could be a fantasist. The smooth passage of the next few hundred nautical miles depended not on his reaction to these opinions – he had heard far worse in his time – but to my admission that he scared me as a child. I decided to tell him before he read it for himself.

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ he muttered. A low, menacing laugh vibrated quietly behind his cigar.

  52. I AM THE BOSS – IT’S AS SIMPLE AS THAT

  After nineteen years of service, Jimmy Savile was axed from Radio 1. Controller Johnny Beerling, who wanted to reshape the network to appeal to the younger end of the market, recalled he had come to an agreement with Savile in the first half of 1987, although the news was not released until later. ‘I knew if word got out the press would have a field day so it was important to keep it confidential until I had secured a replacement,’ said Beerling.1

  Savile wanted to control the news of his departure in the same way he controlled every aspect of his existence. He initially suggested that his exit should be dressed up as his own magnanimous decision to move aside in order to give a younger man his opportunity, in keeping with Radio 1’s latest social action campaign on youth unemployment. The news leaked before that, though, and Beerling was forced to grovel, telling the press, ‘it is unthinkable that we would want Mr Savile to go’.2

  Sure enough though, in September Jimmy Savile was photographed with his replacement, 26-year-old DJ Nicky Campbell. As chairman of the Hands Across Britain campaign which highlighted the chronic level of unemployment in the country, Savile explained how it had been hi
s choice to step down: ‘I said to the Controller of Radio 1: “How about we find a new guy to give him the same sort of start in showbusiness that I had?”’ Beerling duly described it as a ‘noble gesture … just typical of him’.3

  A year later, another story broke, this one about Jimmy Savile’s latest, and most extraordinary, career move. Again, it came about after secret talks over a number of months with senior officials at the Department of Health.

  Alan Franey knew Jimmy Savile from the ten years he spent working as an administrator at Leeds General Infirmary. He had gone on to become deputy secretary at the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control, which was the job he held when in 1987 he was approached about a ‘six-week secondment period to Broadmoor Hospital as part of a task-force’.

  Franey was invited to a meeting at the Athenaeum Club that was attended by a number of Health Service officials and Jimmy Savile, whom he had become friendly with through the LGI and then via Savile’s informal Leeds running club. It was at this meeting at the Athenaeum that Franey was ‘persuaded that a move to Broadmoor … would be a very good career step’.4

  Franey has acknowledged that he would have not have been interviewed for the post unless Jimmy Savile had put his name forward.5 He maintains his subsequent appointments as Broadmoor’s General Manager and Chief Executive were on his ‘own merits’, and that he heard no allegations made against Jimmy Savile while he was in charge.6

  In late August 1988, the Department of Health announced that the management board of Broadmoor special hospital, with which it shared the responsibility of running the 520-bed high-security facility in Berkshire, had been suspended. It was to be replaced with a six-man task force, which would take over the running of the hospital until a new general manager was appointed. The change was part of a wider restructuring programme in management, operation and policy at the special hospitals (the others being Park Lane and Moss Side in Liverpool and Rampton in Nottinghamshire). The most eye-catching aspect of this change was that a member of the new Broadmoor task force was none other than Jimmy Savile.

  At the time, Broadmoor, which by now housed Peter Sutcliffe and gangland boss Ronnie Kray, was at the centre of a damaging industrial dispute with the Prison Officers’ Association, the union to which the bulk of the hospital’s nursing staff had been affiliated since the 1940s. A daytime overtime ban resulted in patients being left in seclusion for long periods, and there was also dissatisfaction over the shortage of staff housing. ‘This has nothing to do with the dispute, which is nothing that can’t be solved,’ insisted Savile of his appointment to the new task force. ‘In any family there is a fall-out here and there.’7

  Although the Department of Health wanted to adopt a low-key approach to the upheavals at the hospital, the news was leaked by the mental health charity MIND. It believed the changes were being made in secret to pre-empt the publication of a highly critical special report by the Hospital Advisory Service on the state of the special hospitals. The report, which had already been submitted to the Department of Health, was thought to find serious fault with Broadmoor’s management, its nurses and the lack of care that had led to many patients becoming institutionalised.

  Although the Department of Health denied the allegation, and remained reluctant to confirm the composition of the task force, the make-up of the six-man team was revealed. Dr Louis Warnants of the Department of Health would take over temporarily as Broadmoor’s medical director, Dr John Tait would take over the role of Chief Nursing Officer, and Professor Michael Morgan would become the hospital’s administrator. They would be joined by senior civil servant Clifford Graham; an assistant secretary at the Department of Health Dr Donald Dick; and Jimmy Savile, Broadmoor’s honorary assistant entertainments officer for the past 20 years. ‘It is logical … that I should be on the task force,’ said Savile, ‘because I know my way round the hospital.’8

  A few days later, Savile outlined how he would approach this latest challenge within the Health Service. Describing the task force as ‘an advisory body with teeth’, he restated his knack of getting things done. ‘Others have the knack of talking, or sitting on committees,’ he said. ‘But I make things happen.’9

  Savile went on to reveal his manifesto for change: the introduction of smaller wards, private rooms instead of the Victorian-style dormitories, individual therapy for patients and a flexible timetable. As for his methods: ‘I will adopt the long, steady, undramatic role which avoids the whizz-kid approach. My main objective is the curing of every single patient in the hospital so that they can be released into the community.’ He then added, ‘Curing for me means the containment or stabilisation of the patient: trying to make sure he won’t commit the same offence again.’ Jimmy Savile was given a new office close to Broadmoor’s red brick perimeter wall.

  While Jimmy Savile was talking like he was the man in charge, the Department of Health moved quickly to assert that its undersecretary Clifford Graham was in fact chairman of the new task force. This had no effect whatsoever. ‘He is chairman of the special health board,’ Savile corrected, ‘and I am the chairman of the task force. We work together.’10

  An entire government department and a senior civil servant were never going to be enough to derail Jimmy Savile. ‘I have lived here for 20 years,’ he announced, ‘by seniority I must know more than anybody else. Because I live here I call myself the chairman of the task force. Technically, I could be anything. I live here, I am the boss; it’s as simple as that. That’s why the Department of Health would not dream of telling me what to do, they say, OK Jim, it’s all yours.’

  Savile did concede that certain civil servants would ‘be going potty’11 about the fact he had been handed the responsibility for rescuing the 125-year-old hospital from administrative meltdown, but claimed that he didn’t care one jot. His rapport with the prime minister and with Edwina Currie, the junior health minister who ratified his appointment, was such that he felt confident enough to make a public promise: ‘I can’t fail.’

  *

  So how did Jimmy Savile come to be appointed to such an important job at a secure facility that had become demonised by the press for the killers, rapists and psychopaths it housed? And what was the nature of Jimmy Savile’s role at Broadmoor in the years before he came to describe himself as ‘the boss’?

  Broadmoor occupies an area of 53 acres on a high ridge offering panoramic views across the Berkshire countryside. Its series of high red brick blocks with narrow arched windows were designed by Sir Joshua Jebb and overlook terraced gardens and administrative buildings and, beyond an internal wall, staff houses, a social club and games field. Block 6 was where the most disturbed and dangerous patients were detained, many of them having recently arrived from court and facing up to the consequences of their crimes. Other blocks were home to older patients, those with behavioural disorders or men who were deemed to pose a reduced risk. Women were housed separately.

  In 1949, Broadmoor was taken over by the Department of Health. It was run by the Board of Control, while admissions and discharges continued to come under the jurisdiction of the Home Office. Ten years later, it was reclassified as a special hospital under the new Mental Health Act, and designated for individuals in need of ‘treatment under conditions of special security on account of their dangerous, violent or criminal propensities’.

  The novelist Patrick McGrath lived at Broadmoor from the age of seven when his father, the Glaswegian forensic psychiatrist Dr Pat McGrath, was appointed as the medical superintendent at Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum, as it was then known. In 1957, the family moved into a red brick villa a few yards from the main gate, and McGrath says his father was already acutely aware of what he had inherited: an overcrowded, failing institution, one in which some patients were forced to sleep in corridors, a staff who saw themselves as prison wardens, and only two psychiatrists – Dr McGrath and one other – to attend to the 800 mentally ill men and women in their care.

  Pat McGrath was an able and fearl
ess administrator, one who bridled whenever Broadmoor was incorrectly referred to as a prison. He was forced to wrestle with the complex problems caused by the inertia in Whitehall, his masters at the Department of Health and the Home Office, and the vested interests of an entrenched old guard at the hospital, many of whom were members of families in which jobs, and houses, had been handed down over generations.

  As members of the Prison Officers’ Union, nurses dressed like warders in their uniforms and peaked caps. The emphasis at Broadmoor was on security, and the philosophy was custodial rather than therapeutic. As one study of the special hospitals remarked: ‘As a union, in the short term, [the Prison Officers’ Union] delivered; but simultaneously and almost inevitably they transmitted through their organisation the prevailing attitude of the prisons: detention, restraint, toughness, a “macho” culture where the biggest and most violent patient (or prisoner) would be brought into submission.’12

  Dr Pat McGrath discovered that he was on a hiding to nothing. A combination of the stigma attached to mental illness, the widely held reluctance to entertain notions of rehabilitation, and an old boys’ network among a staff that enjoyed higher pay than other nurses and promotions based on service rather than merit, created a culture in which doctors and other professionals were viewed with suspicion, or characterised as ‘soft’. Procedures were painfully slow due to the duplication involved in reporting to two government departments, while the prospect of negative press coverage remained a constant deterrent to change.