Entertainment Swindon

With on-screen behaviour, revelations and accusations in recent weeks about Dan Wootton, Laurence Fox and Russel Brand, the horrific story of Jimmy Savile and how he was allowed to become the UK’s most prolific paedophile is still relevant today, BUT should the BBC have made such a programme?

As a child growing up in the 70s & 80s, I remember sitting down with the family around the box to watch Jimmy Savile of iconic programmes like Top of The Pops & Jim’ll Fix It… I even remember writing a letter to Savile wanting him to fix it to me to ride in a Formula 1 race car. I didn’t get my dream, but Im extremely thankful for not being selected as knowing now what we know now about Savile, no one would have wanted to go within 100miles of the sick individual.

So why resurrect Jimmy Savile’s name and put him back on our screens and in our heads again? Even if Savile was being played by Steve Coogan.

I watched the four part BBC drama starring Coogan over the last couple of days and although like many watching it sick to their stomachs I felt the need to watch it to the end. My first thoughts was that the BBC should not have been the broadcaster that should of aired such a programme, it was obvious from the start that the BBC was using this dramatisation to deflect their culpability and show Savile as a mastermind of deception and abuse of power to serve his disgusting needs to abuse children. Yes, Savile was all this, he was obviously very clever at hiding what he did, manipulating situations to deflect accusations that were made against him and his abuse of power from his fame… BUT! Savile would ever have been the prolific child abuser if it wasn’t for the BBC turning their heads, looking the other way, at the same time knowing what Savile was doing so the BBC could profit and gain from Savile’s fame and success, enabling Savile to continue to serve his sick need to sexually abuse children.

The BBC have again been brought into the public eye for yet again turning a blind eye towards preditorial behaviour with Russell Brand during his time at BBC Radio. So yes it was right to make a programme about Savile, but the BBC should never have had their grubby hands on this and most certainly never should have been made into a drama. Reckoning should have been produced and aired by a broadcaster independent and with no ties to Savile to give impartiality, and should have been made a documentary instead of a drama that only serves as entertainment, which just softens the seriousness of how Savile managed for decades to be a sexual predator of children in plain sight.

The BBC gave Savile a platform to become a national treasure, loved by all, even those of position, power and influence such as Margaret Thatcher, Prince Charles and even the Pope. Who wouldn’t trust their kids with a man like Savile that we saw on the screens of our TVs!

Using the basis of Dan Davies interviews with Savile was a great idea for the backbone of the drama, but could have been so much more poignant as a documentary series.

Numerous press outlets such as Telegraph, Evening Standard & Guardian have praised the dramatisation by the BBC, but many media personalities such as ITV’s Loose Women’s panelist Janet Street Porter, who worked on several shows with Savile at the BBC, when ask by fellow panelist Ruth Langsford, Porter said “I could barely watch it”. Porter went of to say “The idea that he re-appeared in my living room, that portrail actually made my flesh creep and I felt sick actually”

The only positive I can give of this unwanted drama was that Steve Coogan showed just how great an actor he is in his portrayal of Savile, at times you would actually think you were actually watching the real Jimmy Savile, Coogan had the voice and mannerisms of Savile down to a tee!

It was scary how realistic Coogan was able to portray himself in the character of Savile. Is it worth watching? I have to say yes, but with a heavy heart. This dramatisation was nothing but a platform for the BBC to try and make them seem almost as much a victim as the children Savile abused, to make them seem like they had been cleverly deceived by Savile. But the public DO know the truth, the BBC were complicit in allowing Savile to reign his terror on children.

This is yet another reason why it is time for Government to release the public from the shackles of the TV License, I for one haven’t watched a programme on the BBC for years, its time the BBC found other ways to survive just like Channel 4 which is another public broadcast channel surviving on adverts and selling the rights to its own programmes around the globe.

Although the BBC did not make this dramatisation, and was actually made by ITV Studios, and that ITV Studios stated they did have full editorial freedom, the episodes showed a lack of acknowledgement by the BBC that they knowingly did wrong. The only real acknowledgement came at the end where it showed the BBC after the death of Savile chose not to screen a Newsnight special about Savile and his victims in favour of a tribute to the life and achievements of Savile.

Question is, could this happen again? Well, yes, it already has… Russell Brand is another Savile, a predator using his power as a celebrity with those around him turning a blind eye, complicit in allowing the abuse of women at the BBC and Channel 4 to happen in plain sight just as Savile did with the children he abused. Then there is Dan Wootton, who has finally been sacked after he allowed fellow GB News presenter Laurence Fox to spout sexually offensive abuse towards a female journalist live on air and was then caught joking about it in txt messages between him and Fox. But even before that Wootton had been suspended from GB News after it was made public that he had been sending txt messages to women, promising payments for sexually explicit images.