Six years before his death, when the extent of his crimes started to emerge, writer Simon Donohue travelled to Jimmy Savile's Leeds penthouse
The horrific crimes of Jimmy Savile are back in the spotlight as the drama about him starring Steve Coogan airs on BBC One. It is an unsettling watch as calls upon the viewer to question just how Savile was able to operate as he did for so long, sexually abusing hundreds of vulnerable people, many of them children.
In the days before social media made pretty much anyone so easily accessible, a journalist's contact book was an invaluable tool. Any opportunity to add names and numbers was grasped. I’d worked on a 'family friendly' Sunday tabloid while in my first couple of years as a reporter and it was at the Northern News and Echo that I picked up the habit of collecting contacts.
I made the call. The phone was answered and it was Savile - the contact was still live. Would he give me an interview? 'Yes, come to my place tomorrow,' said Savile, or at least something similarly surprising. Savile was nothing more sinister in the mainstream media than a fading star in a shell suit. There was nothing specific I wanted to know.
Like many journalists, I'd leave the more difficult questions until the end of the interview, meaning I'd already have most of what I needed should things turn sour. Savile lived in a penthouse apartment at the top of a fairly nondescript tower overlooking Roundhay Park in Leeds. And then we sat and talked. He puffed away on the first of several Romero Y Julieta Cuban cigars as I attempted to gather insight for my article.
But one of the things that fascinated me most was his relationships. Had he never wanted to settle down or marry? This was where his responses became more guarded and well-rehearsed.
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