Warning: this article contains discussion that some readers may find distressing.
After much anticipation, Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary, Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, has finally arrived on the streaming site.
Including archival footage of the disgraced late entertainer, as well as interviews from those who worked closely with Savile, the two-part series reveals the public’s early suspicions of him.
Following his death in 2011, Savile was widely accused of sexually abusing hundreds of people, many of whom were underaged. He was never charged during his lifetime.
In the new documentary, which arrived on Netflix on Wednesday 6th April, multiple journalists and former co-workers talk of their concerns about the TV presenter.
In episode 1, journalist Martin Young reveals he “knew something was wrong” when he first met Savile for an interview, which took place as Savile was taking part in a charity run across the country.
He adds: “I started to ask him about all the charity work. After all, the run was for charity, but I asked him about working for Leeds Hospital, I think it was.
“Anyway he did hospital duties and he did ambulance duties as well and he started talking about the crashes and so on that he attended as an ambulance employee, and he told one story that was bizarre for the first time you’d ever met somebody.
“He said he went to this one and it was terrible and, ‘We saw the body and it was definitely dead. It was decapitated.’ And he said, ‘I rolled under the lorry. I volunteered, and I came back with a head.’”
Meirion Jones, an investigative journalist, claimed that Savile would visit Duncroft School, which was an institution for emotionally disturbed girls.
“I’d remember seeing him driving off with a couple of girls in the back of his car very excited. They were waving up at their friends,” he says.
“Certainly one of the most famous people in Britain is turning up and that started to become a bit of an issue for my parents who were both teachers and they’d say to my aunt, ‘Why are you letting this guy hang around with 13-year-old girls?’”
In another scene, journalist Lynn Barber, who previously worked as a writer at the Sunday Express, speaks of rumours of Savile liking underaged girls.
She said: “I asked around the office and what was striking to me was how many people said, ‘You know he likes little girls.’ It was a very widespread rumour.” However, she adds that at the time, they never had any evidence when it came to this particular story.
These are just a few of the revelations made in the documentary, with television presenter Selina Scott also sharing her first-hand experience of what it was like to work with Savile on breakfast TV.
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Scott says she was as much as an “act” on TV as Savile, with them both playing up for the cameras to create entertainment for viewers.
“He was odd, but he made people laugh, and it’s a gift to make people laugh,” she says.
While intriguing on-screen, Scott suggests that Savile’s behaviour might not have been received in the same way if it weren’t for his TV persona.
She adds: “If this guy was walking down the street, you wouldn’t want to speak to him or you might be afraid to speak to him. You’d think that he might be slightly dangerous – something odd about him. But, of course once he’s sitting there on the sofa, he’s made human.”
Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story is streaming on Netflix now.
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