Defending Jimmy Savile

Why is Savile being crucified for most men's slightly groping, misplaced, but ultimately harmless affections? What's in a peck on the cheek, other than a potential tongue? Isn't a hand on the knee just a simpler way of saying 'me likey'?

Firstly, might I remind everyone his last name is spelled with one 'L', not two? I've seen Jimmy's surname misspelled in print several times, and that's an abuse glorious bookworms, like those who peruse the pages of The Huffington Post UK, should not tolerate.

Nor should the reader tolerate child abuse, unless it's an integral part of a fictional story, the way some of these allegations against Jimmy Savile seem to be. Yes, he was egomaniacal, and yes, he liked the attention of young women, which, even more than his banal jokes, made him an average comic. But a pedophile? Where's the proof? Where are the leather shorts? He did have a mullet, which puts him one lap dance closer to being a fiddler, so glam rockers beware!

And everyone else, really. Years ago, in the hallowed, and, if you believe rumours, rapacious halls of the BBC, a notoriously combative Australian lady leaned in and whispered we're all paedophiles, we all like youth and beauty, but some of us take it a step too far. If by 'a step too far', she meant Savile, I never asked. I was too busy rummaging through my own memories, wondering how I'd managed to slip through the net when black boys on skateboards make me perspire and stare. But I realised I'd never approach a black boy, because my face is my calling card and my nose job cost five grand.

What makes me even more nervous than a beating is a trial in absentia. Savile cannot face his accusers. They're all too old to hold his interest, and anyway he's dead. One wonders why, if the pain they allegedly withstood was so great, the suffering so unmanageable, they didn't indict Savile before he passed away? His 'victims' were, as we've all heard, terrified of his power. But everyone was afraid of Savile. He was creepy! Lude, lascivious, lecherous, these were the staples of TV presenters in the '70s. So why is Savile being crucified for most men's slightly groping, misplaced, but ultimately harmless affections? What's in a peck on the cheek, other than a potential tongue? Isn't a hand on the knee just a simpler way of saying 'me likey'?

The public's appetite for disgraced celebrities seems to end at the Royals. No one minds that Prince Harry was just recently spending taxpayer money in Vegas, manhandling women who were possibly petrified, surrounded brutally by hangers on and bodyguards. Even if these ladies were being paid to attend to Harry's every need, including, I might add, his ginger pubes, which, in my own case, would require more money than that pale c*nt can wrangle, they might have felt violated, exposed. Not only has Harry's mishandling of his office been praised, the Royals, a bevy of inbred, cowardly, bigoted, bloated, underachieving Germans, are more popular than ever.

One might surmise that Savile is being raked over the coals for his commonness. A Northerner, a Catholic, a coal miner, he was eventually knighted, and, somewhere along that uphill grind we call show, made enemies. His ostentatious cigar smoking sickened Oxbridge graduates at the Beeb, as he blew holes 'round their starched shirted, constipated snobbery. Savile might now be on trial for his lower class origins, for being popular, successful and a Eurovision supporter. But perhaps his only real crime was his unwillingness to cut his hair.

Perchance he was young at heart, and the only people he felt didn't judge him negatively were the little ones. Children offer unconditional love, he felt at home with them, and they are flirty. They always look back.

If Jimmy was inappropriate with kiddies, conceivably the pressure of fixing everything left him damaged. That kind of responsibility made Jesus gay, and Mohammed illiterate, but unlike them, Jimmy was human and couldn't live without a sensitive touch. Maybe we're all to blame for ignoring the man, and praising the idol.

I'm aware this is a careful subject, and to the victims, if they exist, might I offer these words of illumination: At least you were chosen. I spent twelve years in Catholic school, and those priests never came near me.

That is a crime I'll have to die with.

Close

What's Hot