JIMMY SAVILE:FEW CELEBRITIES relished being in the public eye as keenly as Sir Jimmy Savile, who has died aged 84. He was as well known for his work for charity, particularly at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, as for his broadcasting – Jim'll Fix Itand Top of the Popson BBC television, and disc jockeying on radio.
A shrewd promoter of his own image, he was never spotted without his trademark fat cigar, garish tracksuit and trainers, and ostentatious jewellery. He had also developed his own patter, a sort of do-it-yourself Yorkshire esperanto that enabled him to greet the sick, the press or strangers with equal fluency.
Savile attributed his cigar habit to an incident from his childhood in his native Leeds. “I began smoking cigars when I was seven,” he recalled. “My dad, Vince, who was a bookmaker’s clerk, gave me a drag on one at Christmas, thinking it would put me off them forever, but it had the opposite effect.” It was a memorable moment in a childhood that was poor and difficult. He was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, and later claimed his mother “clothed, fed and accommodated nine people on £3.50 a week”.
When Savile had found his professional feet and began to exploit his powerful instinct for making money, he lavished attention on his mother. She was a flinty, unsentimental character, but he always called her “the Duchess” and treated her with a respect that verged on superstitious awe. After she died, he kept her clothes hanging in a wardrobe, and had them cleaned once a year.
Psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare suspected that Savile’s emotionally starved childhood had left psychological scars that fuelled his public flamboyance and urge to do good works, but Savile was always contemptuous of any attempts to probe into his psychological make-up.
Behind the professional good samaritan there was a man of ruthless willpower, intelligent enough to become a member of Mensa.
He first dabbled with show business while at school, earning five shillings a week as a drummer. During the second World War, he hoped to join the RAF, but instead found himself sent down the coalmines under the Emergency Powers Act. Curiously, he found the back-breaking work enjoyable, but his mining career was cut short when he was blown up in a “short-firer’s explosion”, intended to bring down part of the coal face. He suffered a serious spinal injury which forced him to walk with the aid of sticks, and to wear a steel corset to make him stand straight. He was in constant pain.
However, his condition improved, and within three years he could walk without sticks. The episode doubtless explains why Savile would later be particularly keen to support Stoke Mandeville’s National Spinal Injuries Centre, for which he raised an estimated £12 million, out of a total £30 million for a range of causes.
It was one of Savile’s most remarkable achievements that he could recover from a potentially disabling injury to participate in countless marathons and bicycle races, usually for charity.
He took part in a number of sponsored walks in aid of the Central Remedial Clinic in Ireland in the early 1970s. Speaking on RTÉ radio's the John Murray Showin April this year, he described the walks as "great, great, great". In the same interview he said his mother was Irish.
“Her maiden name was Kelly. And one time when I was raising the money for the Central Remedial Clinic with Lady Goulding, I took the Duchess over and it was quite emotional for her. It was emotional for Ireland and it didn’t do me any harm either.” He said then he would like to come back to Dublin “for a day”.
Savile became a ubiquitous public figure via his media work, or for promoting car seatbelts via the “clunk click, every trip” public information campaign, or, also in the 1970s, for plugging British Rail in their “let the train take the strain” commercials.
He was a professional wrestler for a time, and he was involved in running nightclubs, for which his Flash Harry appearance and louder-than-life demeanour must have been perfect.
In 1948 he had amplified a wind-up gramophone at a dance in Leeds, and he took pride in having pioneered the use of two turntables and a fader to provide a non-stop stream of music. His drive and bravado in the dance-hall world took him into broadcasting, first for Radio Luxembourg, and then for the "pirate" Radio Caroline. On January 1st, 1964, he introduced the first Top of the Popsprogramme, from a converted church in Manchester, and he returned for the last broadcast, in 2006.
Soon after the inauguration of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, he was recruited by the BBC; his weekly show ran for two decades from 1969. Countless supplicants who appeared on Jim'll Fix Itbetween 1975 and 1994 were brought face to face with pop stars or sporting heroes or to fly with the Red Arrows.
In 1988, he was appointed chairman of a taskforce set up to advise on governing Broadmoor. His annual income was said to be about £250,000, from his media work and public appearances, but he paid 90 per cent of it into two charitable trusts. He said he only needed enough money to guarantee his personal independence.
But it is as a charity fundraiser that he will be remembered. His efforts won him a broad spectrum of admirers and recognition in the shape of an OBE (1971), a knighthood (1990) and even a knighthood from the papacy (1982).
James Wilson Vincent Savile: born October 31st, 1926; died October 29th, 2011