The global success of Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story has brought the BBC figure’s crimes to the attention of the world. The spotlight is now on how he groomed a whole society
Around the age of 11, I came close to being on Jim’ll Fix It. I was keen on cricket and my dad wrote to the Saturday-evening TV show asking if I could spend a day practising with the world-beating West Indies team, who were touring England at the time. The producers were apparently keen on the idea but in the end, the West Indies’ busy schedule prevented Jim from Fixing It for me.
This would almost certainly have been a treasured childhood memory. But now, it feels more like a narrow escape. Watching Netflix’s Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, it’s impossible not to reflect upon the meaning of Savile, his place in recent British culture, and the impact – ostensibly benign then suddenly, corrosively toxic – that he had on so many lives.
