Be Excellent To Each Other

Watching an episode of 'Drop the Dead Donkey' on 4od. It has a subplot involving 'Jim'll Fix It'.

There's a 'pure as Cliff Richard ' joke in it too.

Same episode ends with the usual topical voiceover as the credits roll. It's a few gags about John Major suing over reports he had an affair.

Yeah, those were innocent times.

Its been a very sloppy process, Cliff has said that he feels its out of order that he found out the Police were raiding his UK house via the News and wasn't told formally. It begs the question who did they serve the search warrant on?

With Rolf Harris he clearly had notice as for some time he used Super injunctions or similar to try and keep his name out of the press.

Cliff obviously doesn't understand how the Police work - the whole point of searching a property is to find evidence, and if they ring him up and let him know in advance that might compromise things a bit.

They'll have shown the warrant to anyone present at the property at the time, but they most definitely aren't required to track down the owner first, and if there's nobody there then they can just put the door through and have a look round.

I think he was a bit miffed that the BBC happened to be there when the Rozzers rolled up. There's some guidelines on this now, as previously, the fuzz would call hacks up before a raid to get them to come along and view their heroics before they sat together in a room and got all their stories straight for the official record. This went on until someone whose name now escapes me was double miffed when the police raided his house and the Sun had jounalists inside. But as the police have guidelines now they have another sheet of paper to ignore.

Yeah, it's not on to invite the press along for a laugh. No doubt there were a few favours or envelopes full of money being passed on.

I think it might be the only way that they feel they an publicise it to draw other potential information out. They weren't going to arrest him based on what they had but the rumours were rife.

Which seems to have happened, to some extent.

If the offence took place thirty years ago, what the fuck were they looking for?

A 35 year old?

This is what I said to the wife (sans swearing) but where else are they going to look?

Just checking, have we done the criminal record joke yet?

A Betamax video tape of evidence, sure they search his C64 for data as well

I've heard he's been under surveillance for a while. His house is wired for sound

DLT gets a three month suspended sentence.

Or "fuck all".

I was surprised at the suspended sentence, whilst he didn't have as many allegations as Rolf Harris and Max Clifford ( that he was found guilty of) I would have thought he would have done some time for this.

What did he actually do, though?

Didn't he grope someone? I've not heard him do anything more than that.

EDIT for further quote.

Up next is DJ Fox

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29431833

Glitter found guilty on a load of charges, one of which carries a maximum of life

Hopefully he will get it 3 weeks time when he is sentenced

16 years for Glitter

Judges hands were somewhat tied by the fact he had to use sentence guidelines from the time the offences happened, they were not as severe in the 70's as today.

Although why the rape of a child would not always carry life is beyond me.

Still hopefully a good 8 years before he is even considered for parole

This BBC Link was being shared on Facebook yesterday. There is to be a radio programme this evening, I'm hoping to remember to tune in. I believe there was something in The Times yesterday too, but didn't get chance to pick one up.

Are you in it?

I read the post you linked to on Facebook yesterday - is that the prison that you work in?

Yep, hence my question.

Nope, I did plan to actively avoid them while they were here (as queen of saying something stupid). But I was so busy when they were here, I only saw them briefly as I passed.

Mimi: Yes; that is where I work.

Ah, I did wonder that when I read it yesterday, but I wasn't aware that where you worked particularly catered for the detainment of prisoners who had committed a particular type of crime (though I know that you often worked with prisoners who had committed sexual assaults within the prison system).

Some of the things in that article had chimed with what a past friend had told me of her work - she is (or at least was) a solicitor who works with people charged with sexual assaults on adults and minors. I remember her saying at times she felt sorry for the person though actually despising what they'd done as it seemed part of their make-up and nature, whether by nurture or some other means, that many of them hated and despised but did not have the will power to deny, so would hate themselves for being that way but couldn't re-programme their brains to stop finding certain images/activities sexually appealing.

The Louis Theroux documentary that was just on was compelling viewing, especially watching Louis grapple with his earlier work.

I need to look that up on iPlayer this week as the article was an interesting read.

I thought it was fascinating, if at times unsettling viewing. I remember the original doc (from about 2001 I think?) and thought that Louis got some very interesting stuff at the time; he obviously suspected that Savile was a bad 'un and came very close to the truth, although never really getting anything concrete. He obviously found Savile a fascinating character as they stayed in touch for years afterwards, but seemed - in last night's follow-up - to be overly blaming himself for not spotting what now seems obvious (on reviewing clips from the original documentary). I thought he was being very hard on himself; Savile was a very slippery character, not to mention notoriously litigious. An interesting fact that emerged was that in the original documentary, Louis got one definite thing out of Savile - an admission (more of a boast) - of having sex with a 15-year old girl, which he reported to the BBC producers, but it was suppressed and no action was taken.

The weird thing is, well before the original film, I always thought that it was quite well-known that Savile was not only a prolific child molester, rapist and necrophiliac. When I was a student in Dundee in the early 1990s, Jerry Sadowitz had a show on BBC Scotland (as far as I know, it didn't run in England) and he regularly made jokes about Savile's necrophiliac tendencies. I remember one particular rant where he basically described not only Savile's unusual "tastes", but also how he was able to get away with it by threatening any would-be whistleblowers through various means: actual physical threats, litigation at any hint of impropriety, threatening to stop his charity work and his trump card, saying that if anyone reported him, he would simply name other far more high-profile names who shared his peculiar tastes. And of course, it turned out that Sadowitz was spot-on with everything he said, which is probably why he was never sued. However, this was Jerry Sadowitz and his jokes were dismissed as his usual brand of shock humour, so never taken seriously (there's a parallel here with similar allegations John Lydon regularly made in the late 1970s; he was Johnny Rotten and just trying to shock, or so people thought (or appeared to think). But even at the time, my mates and I were all of the opinion that Savile was a horrific creep and certainly guilty of everything Sadowitz and Lydon said.

Another story I remember from around that time was one my dad told; in the early 1970s he worked as a doctor at Leeds Royal Infirmary and said that Savile would regularly turn up as a volunteer porter (basically wheeling patients around on trolleys, including - and especially - corpses to the mortuary). He (my dad) said that it was pretty well-known that Savile wasn't doing this for purely altruistic and charitable reasons, but nobody could ever actually get conclusive proof of his wrongdoings, or catch him "in the act", as it were. But all the young nurses working there at the time were warned never to allow themselves to get into a situation where they were alone with him.

A lot has been made of his "hiding in plain sight" but I never bought into this angle. He obviously had dirt on some very important people and made it plain that he would bring them down with him, if anyone actually made serious allegations. It's well-documented that he was a regular visitor to Chequers when Thatcher was in power; also that - during the 1980s - she repeatedly tried to get him a knighthood but was warned off by senior Civil Servants, before somehow managing it in her last year of office. In the same year, he was made a Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of Saint Gregory the Great (KCSG) by Pope John Paul II.

It's an awful story from start to finish, really. There's an obvious parallel with Max Clifford, another one with dirt on famous people, but it didn't save him from prosecution. Savile must have had some seriously explosive stuff, but I guess we'll never find out now, what with him being dead and all that.

Both my mother and aunt where nurses in the 1960's and 1970's around Leeds.

They meet Saville a number of times through his charity work at hospitals and various nurses parties, in fact I can remember bother my parents telling us this when Jim'll Fix was in its prime.

Later on when I was older both of them told me he was one for the ladies and a bit of an octopus and one to avoid at a piss up.

I guess maybe these days that sort of behavior would be take more seriously and stamped on (rightly so) but it was viewed differently then.

What I never understood is how any celebrity however famous had a set of keys to one of this countries most secure
hospitals and could come and go as they wanted.

If one were to go full-on Icke-style conspiracy theory:

(from Wikipedia): "In September 1986, Edwina Currie became a Junior Health Minister.

In 1988, Currie appointed television personality Jimmy Savile to head up a task force to run the Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Savile was given extraordinary power and a set of keys with complete access to every part of the hospital. He mingled repeatedly with the 800 or so patients, many teenage girls, some severely disturbed and medicated."

There was a story doing the rounds in the late 1990s that Edwina Currie was - during her tenure as an MP in the mid-1980s - a regular guest at the alleged Dolphin Square sex parties, along with Savile and many other so-called VIPs. There is (apparently) footage of her forcing 13- and 14-old boys into acts of cunnilingus, though obviously this should be taken with a trailer-load of salt.

But it would be one explanation.

I was on a train last night and someone in the row in front of me was watching the new Netflix documentary on his phone. This meant that every time I moved my head or looked away from gazing out the window into the darkness beyond I would more often then not catch a glimpse of Saville. Gah.

(Has anyone seen it? Is it any good)

We watched both episodes (they're looooong) and it's good and well made but you don't feel like you've learned anything new about him or the cases etc. Just a few hours highlights gallery of him at his most odious and most charitable.

Tim Westwood now.

BBC News - DJ Tim Westwood accused of sexual misconduct
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61188603

Only glancing the first line of your post, I thought Tim Westwood was dead.

Then I read the rest. That link is unpleasant reading.