Jimmy Savile admitted getting knighthood was 'a relief because it got me off the hook'
In light of the new Louis Theroux documentary on the disgraced broadcaster, this compelling and disquieting interview by the celebrated journalist Lynn Barber takes on new meaning. It was first published in 1990 in The Independent on Sunday
LYNN BARBER
Sunday 2 October 2016
Snip...
Still, I was nervous when I told him: “What people say is that you like little girls.” He reacted with a flurry of funny-voice Jimmy Savile patter, which is what he does when he’s getting his bearings: “Ah now. Sure. Now then. Now then. First of all, I happen to be in the pop business, which is teenagers – that’s No 1. So when I go anywhere it’s the young ones that come round me.
“Now what the tabloids don’t realise is that the young girls in question don’t gather round me because of me – it’s because I know the people they love, the stars, because they know I saw Bros last week or Wet Wet Wet. Now you, watching from afar, might say ‘Look at those young girls throwing themselves at him’, whereas in actual fact it’s exactly the opposite. I am of no interest to them, except in a purely platonic way.
“A lot of disc jockeys make the mistake of thinking that they’re sex symbols and then they get a rude awakening. But I always realised that I was a service industry. Like, because I knew Cliff [Richard] before he’d even made a record, all the Cliff fans would bust a gut to meet me, so that I could tell them stories about their idol. But if I’d said, ‘Come round, so that I can tell you stories about me’ or ‘Come round, so that you can fall into my arms’ they’d have said: ‘What! On yer bike!’ But because reporters don’t understand the nuances of all that, they say, ‘A-ha.’”
Continues...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/it-was-a-relief-when-i-got-the-knighthood-because-it-got-me-off-the-hook-an-exclusive-interview-with-9571057.html
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