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Monday 31 October 2016

Happy 90th Birthday Jim

Sorry folks I've been a tad unwell for a few weeks. But, I just couldn't end the day without wishing Sir Jimmy a great big HAPPY 90th Birthday. Back in 1977 when folk were sensible celebrities such as Jimmy fronted various public service campaigns. You may have seen this image before, alongside some moronic comment about who NOT to let babysit your little ones.
Yes, another one from my library - here's inside the annual

 Yes, that's 1977 when some 8, 11 or 12 year old was being attacked in the TV room at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. 1977, by which time, the world and his wife had heard tales about Jimmy yet, there he is a poster boy for child protection !
 The book and no doubt the BBC TV program presented advice for childminders, things to look out for, signs that their charges might be in some kind of danger 



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Two years later, Jimmy's still the greatest thing since sliced bread 

Meirion Jones is a couple of years older than me, he'd be about 22 when this annual came out. Old enough to pick up that phone and call someone anonymously if need be. It was only seven years since he'd claimed to have seen Jimmy at his auntie's approved school for delinquent girls. 
No, the majority of the population of Great Britain loved Jimmy Savile OBE 

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Not easy to make out but that's a cheque for the NSPCC Jimmy's holding in his hand 
 Try as I might, I still haven't found anything that even remotely comes close to proving that Jimmy did anything except good for others. So, again I say : Well done Sir Jimmy. I know you're still smiling down on us ! 

Onwards !

Monday 10 October 2016

I didn't see anything like that either

I've replayed Louis Theroux's interview with Sylvia Nichol to ensure I had her words right. But, in doing so I picked up on this rather telling remark, and it's not said by Sylvia, it's Louis.
Sylvia has just told him how, every morning since the story broke, she goes to her shed where she keeps a painting of Savile and speaks to him
I open the door and say why don't you do something about all this ?
Do something about what ?
This, what's, furor that's arisen since he died
Do you really do that
Now, here's the cruncher listen up !
So, basically, am I right in thinking - you don't really believe that, um, he raped, abused, molested ? 
NO ! I've never said that I don't believe that - I've made an absolute point of saying I've only saw the good in Jimmy Savile. I never saw anything, in that line. And, had I seen anything in that line I would have been the first to report it.

I believe you that you didn't see anything. I didn't see anything like that either (voice changes) But, I also have to believe those accounts, and try to square them with the person I thought I knew.

But, you didn't know him as long as I did. We've had a ghastly time.
 That's Sylvia behind Jimmy, along with Janet Cope his secretary.
I'm getting a very strong feeling that Louis's been hedging his bets since October 2012. Right now I'm not sure if he even believes his own words, I could be wrong !
But, let's rewind the tape a few minutes as she describes how Jimmy came to be at SMH. She was 'a medical secretary at the NHS at the spinal centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital'

He came to Stoke in '69, and it was to do a walk for the red cross and he stayed ... It was the second of January 1980, we had a really bad snowstorm, all our ceilings were caving in. They were wooden huts. Dr Silver phoned Jim, 'you must come, you must come, you've got to do something'. And Jim did, and within two days we were flooded with letters .. checks, money 

August 3rd was the grand opening day says Sylvia. A new Spinal Injuries Centre was built, and twenty eight years later, the hospital mourned the death of their best FRIEND ! 

 
How all this would change within a year ! Obviously the NHS bosses had to react to the claims made in exposure on October 3rd. Unlike, Louis though, at this point, they did not 'have to believe' any claims relating to hospitals for the simple reason that there hadn't been any ! NONE 
Ex- PC Thomas presented one alleged 'victim' who wasn't a patient but a visiting member of a choir, or so her ridiculous story goes. Then, just two days after the show, a stroke of - Meirion Jones style luck befell him and the Personal Injury Law fraternity in the shape of June Thornton. 
 A week later along came Caroline Moore, the hare was well and truly running now. Enter Ms Dux
 And, while the hospital confirmed it had had NO reports previously filed, the Police were building their case against a dead man 
One of those 'several' presumably being the eight year old girl, who turned out to be an eight year old boy. But, that's for next time guys and gals - I'm staying with Stoke Mandeville for now, I've so much to tell you. Starting with this little mystery - See if any of you can work this one out. Sylvia says that Jimmy first came to SMH in 1969. That makes sense because of his backing Britain effort wherein he began portering at Leeds and Broadmoor that year. But, did he do a Savile's Travels radio show there ? Even the dame didn't quite get her head round this one !
The Independent paid tribute to Savile in 2011 

Saturday 8 October 2016

Stoke Mandeville facts and fictions

They say that one needs a good memory if one wants to successfully sustain a lie. I'll get straight to business guys - here's what Cherie told Louis when she met him. She's just told him that he'd been 'gullible' in 2000, he'd been duped by the older, 'celebrity'. Then, the once gullible, film maker gets this old crap 
I was at school doing my A levels. All hell broke loose I found out I was pregnant. I had it on January 18th and they didn't know * I just wanted to go home and there was this huge electric fire - 2 bar fire behind the door and I fell on it.
I got to the hospital ... I couldn't use my hands and I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and I was just looking out of the window as I am now, and I saw somebody just running. But, as they were running, they looked at me .. they changed course and their eye fixed on me and they started running directly towards me, and the next minute the person tried to climb in the window ... he was climbing in, and by the time he got down, jumped down .. smiling, came straight at me, went to kiss me and his tongue went straight down my throat. And then he started jabbering ... you've been a naughty girl with your boyfriend.

Wow, did Louis really believe this ? Better still, did he even bother to compare this to the story she gave the dame ? You see, in Louis's version, she's on her own when running man comes bounding through her window - he'd spoken to the head surgeon 'or someone had told him that I was on my own in there' 
She says she rebukes herself for not telling anyone at the time 
'Why didn't I go up to someone and complain and make a thing of it ? But, you were scared to ... 

In the dame's version 
Consider the physical impossibilities of her tale ! When was the last time you were inside a room looking out a window and able to lock eyes with someone who's so far away he has to run to get to you ? Now, remember this is 1973, she'd been admitted after an accident, presumably to the burns unit. I doubt it would have been the spinal injuries unit huts whose windows looked like this


And this
In 1973 Jimmy filmed inside the spinal injuries unit for an episode of Clunk Click. Here he is cheering up two young patients, the 'gangsters' as he affectinately refers to them as



 Did I give you tee-shirts ? He jokingly berates the boy

   Jimmy's pulled out a picture the lad has drawn of him 
Making the boy blush about his girlfriend 
 Note the windows, the curtains that create a bed-space and some privacy on wards. OK, Cherie may not have been on one of these wards, but I ask you, would Jimmy have been able to get into ANY window on any ward ? Remember, she said he JUMPED DOWN from the window, meaning he'd have had to climb up the bloody thing. NO, this story is either an exaggeration of something harmless that may have happened, or, a complete fabrication ! Either way, Cheirie doesn't sound all there does she ? Sorry 
Here's Jimmy inside the ward during the campaign to rebuild the spinal injuries unit circa 1980 

The least thing either Louis or the dame could have done was ask her which ward she was on ? You see Stoke Mandeville Hospital is a very big place. Next time, I'll be considering what Jimmy's friend Sylvia Nichol has to say about Jimmy and Stoke Mandeville hospital. At least she knows when he first visited the place, the actual date that is. I leave you with an image I swiped from one of the Exposure films 






 
 

Wednesday 5 October 2016

Louis - an alternate scenario

I'll come back to Jimmy's friend Sylvia later. Her interview would have been next chronologically speaking, but I just had to write about this one, today. You see, Theroux did achieve something during that 75 minutes, he asked a Mail on Sunday journalist, why her paper did NOT expose Savile in the mid-eighties. The Mail was not happy with Louis, not happy at all 

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3818928/Admit-Louis-just-no-match-wily-monster-Savile-CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-weekend-s-TV.html

Ouch ! So what of the 'cowardly attempt to trap a freelance journalist' ? Let's listen to how that one went down shall we ? I've just watched it again and transcribed the conversation word for word.
 Like most of us including Meirion Jones, Louis had an aunt. Unlike most of us that aunt worked for the Mail on Sunday ! Louis explains how he'd heard some Savile rumours in his teenage years but could not remember their source. He did however manage to trace ONE ! 
I traced one back through my my mum to my aunt who worked at the Mail on Sunday. She told me she heard it from a co-worker called Angela Levin.
Enters cafe & begins interview
You heard that there was an interest in disabled youngsters - when ? What year ?
In the mid eighties
When you did your first profile ?
Well, I found him despicable .. bully. He would, and I was told (inaudible) one nurse, play with little girls who were paralyzed from the waist down.
I mean, it seems odd that a newspaper, where you have the resources to get that story out there and do something about it. That, if you believed it, um, that you couldn't have somehow, done something ?
It wasn't a case that, if you believed it you could do it, because the libel laws were very strong, he was also extremely connected .... he raised thirty million pounds, he could threaten to not raise another penny. You'd have to be a very brave newspaper to do that. 
Anyone thinking what I am ? This woman is clearly out of her depth, how silly are the arguments she presents. So what if he never raised another penny, if he really was molesting disabled youngsters, it was Fleet Street's Finest, duty to do something. Read on folks !


Let me present an alternate scenario to you. That a nurse tells you that Jimmy Savile comes to visit her hospital and he molests disabled girls, right ? Which is, sort of, what she told you, is that right ? And then you feed this back to the investigations team, or some senior people at the Mail, and they go to work attempting to substantiate that, and he's caught. And then maybe even hundreds of victims are prevented from ever being molested ?

Erm, it's not a scenario that ever happened. I don't think I went back and told the investigations team.
Yeah, but I'm saying, if you had, if you'd sort - blown the whistle
 

(inaudible) trying to blame this on me ? 

Louis then launches into a speech about what 'we could have done' etc etc
Levin - Yes, I think you mustn't be overwhelmed by someone's fame ... He was very very famous, he had very good connections .. he knew people in high places ...

Blimey, poor woman, is this what you get for spreading tittle-tattle 30 years after the alleged event ? Why am I not feeling too sorry for her ? After all, Theroux has a bloody good point, why didn't SOMEONE in the press, at least, THINK about investigating Savile ? Could it be that the truth is, they just didn't believe that nurse, that ex-convict, that serial liar ? And, even if they did, they sure as hell weren't going to risk a few quid investigating the claim/s, let alone, thousands in the libel courts. 

Best, leave him be eh ? Best, let him carry on abusing disabled youngsters ? Sorry, folks I don't buy it - never have, never will !


 Happy days - tweeting backwards and forwards with the seriously dense, former editor of the mirror, who, bypassing his own investigations team, decided to go straight to the professionals. According to him that is ! 
 Here's my own alternate scenario for Mr Theroux 

I wonder if Louis could tell SOMEONE if these two 'victims' were the same two 'girlfriends' of Jimmy. Could he maybe - compare notes with Paul Connew, maybe get an BBC investigations team together himself so that he could corroborate the stories he presented on Monday night ! 
Not blaming you Louis, just thinking of all those poor sods who might end up in prison because folk just give in and believe any old cock and bull ! 

Just saying !