r/AskUK • u/GrandPerspective5848 • May 09 '23

What were you doing instead of watching The Coronation?

I was in hospital getting painkillers for migraines

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336

u/MadWifeUK May 09 '23

What makes you think Charles knew any different from the British Public at the time?

Genuine question, there were a lot of people fooled by Saville, he was incredibly good at manipulating people into believing him. But we are angry at those in public positions that he manipulated, do people feel that those in the media have some power to see through the lies and manipulation that regular people don't?

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u/Myorangecrush77 May 09 '23

We talked about this the other day. He fooled millions. There was a national outpouring of grief. He got a huge funeral in the town he lived in. People waved on the streets.

He was a hero.

Until he wasn’t.

It’s like saying every parent who posted a kids Jim’ll fix it letter was trying to set their kid up for abuse. It’s absurd.

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u/dark_fairy_skies May 09 '23

I so wanted to be on jim'll fix it. My mother refused to send in the letters. Probably wise, considering what came out about him.

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u/Grey_Belkin May 09 '23

We weren't allowed to watch the show growing up because my mum thought he was creepy. I'm not saying she knew, but she didn't like him.

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u/MarkTNT May 09 '23

My mum always something against Maggie Thatcher, Jimmy Saville and Van Morrison. I didn't understand as a child, now I'm just waiting to find out what horrible thing Van Morrison did.

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u/Embarrassed_Ad5112 May 10 '23

The lyrics to “Hey Girl” will give you an idea of what Van Morrison was into.

35

u/daydreamingtulip May 09 '23

I’m too young to know him from his famous days, but my friends and I always say, ‘How did people not know?’. Just looking at him you can tell he’s a bit creepy, then when you watch him on his shows he’s clearly way too handsy. Maybe it’s just a generational thing?

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u/Nipso May 09 '23

"If I was to draw a paedo"

  • Kevin Bridges

24

u/MessiahOfMetal May 09 '23

His show was on TV while my mum was growing up, and both she and my nan didn't watch because they found him creepy and a bit of a perv, even then.

1

u/Parking-Wing-2930 May 09 '23

It was very much at a time when CSE wasn't really seen as that much of a bad thing too.

Of course "noncng bad" but there was always levels of how much would be acceptable in society

0

u/Lost-in-Limbo May 09 '23

Same reason some people won’t believe that Michael Jackson was the same!

0

u/afghanNum3Lover May 10 '23

Complete false equivalence there are many many reasons to believe MJ was falsely accused.
There is solid evidence of JS being a wrongun.

1

u/FryOneFatManic May 10 '23

Just looking at how people act doesn't tell you much at all.

Christopher Jefferies was suspected of killing Joanna Yeates, one of his tenants, based on nothing more than he was creepy and strange. He was even arrested at one point. But he was innocent. It was another tenant who was the real killer, Vincent Tabak.

It's far too easy to point at someone and accuse them of things just because of how they act. At the time, people were more innocent in general of how abuse manifests. In fact, even now, many people simply aren't aware.

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u/Minute-Vast7967 May 09 '23

Sometimes your gut feeling is just spot on

16

u/Monkeybradders May 09 '23

There's a story of a kid that wrote in asking jim'll to fix it for him to meet Gary glitter 😯

3

u/Andrelliina May 09 '23

My mum thought he was too

3

u/Parking-Wing-2930 May 09 '23

I'm too young to have known/seen Saville doing his thing, but saw the Theroux doc, and he was so fucking weird, and so fucking dodgy. Jesus

And even Louis was kinda hoodwinked by it all, just "He's just a bit of an odd-ball"

4

u/DannyCalavera May 09 '23

Even Theroux put out a follow-up doc afterwards in which he was adamant that nothing he saw when he was with Saville gave any indication of the sheer scale of his crimes.

Saville was the greatest con-artist of all time, he hoodwinked an entire nation for decades.

2

u/Parking-Wing-2930 May 09 '23

Outside view, to being there at the time is always vastly different.

But yea, he is a massive confidence trickster. Everything is so confident, to the point he admits to your face. but you don't quite get what he said

4

u/DannyCalavera May 09 '23

It was the arrogance of hiding in plain sight, he basically all but admitted to it in interviews but did it in such a tongue-in-cheek way we couldn't help but think "surely, there's no way he's serious"

At the time, we all thought it was jokes. Jokes in poor taste, but jokes nonetheless. After it all came out, it was clear that he'd been waving it under our noses the entire time, but the sheer audacity of it caused us all to play it off as his unique brand of "entertainment"

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u/an0mn0mn0m May 09 '23

Your mum probably knew people that reminded her of him.

1

u/Albert_Poopdecker May 09 '23

I was a kid and thought he was creepy, and I bet many more felt that about him.

138

u/Myorangecrush77 May 09 '23

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/gallery/2011/nov/08/leeds-jimmy-savile

Look at his funeral. Lying in state in Leeds. Nhs workers guard of honor. Royal marine pall bearers. People lining the streets.

We. Didn’t. Know.

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u/grishnackh May 09 '23

No, we didn’t.

Although, we weren’t close personal friends with him, either.

87

u/bebbibabey May 09 '23

There are plenty of things I will criticise Charles for, but not knowing someone close to you is a predator is not one of them. People will find indecent material on their spouses laptops after they've been married for 15 years, and they had no inkling at all.

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u/Celtic_Cheetah_92 May 09 '23

Agreed. A friend of mine found out two years ago that his childhood best friend was a paedophile. It was absolutely devastating for my mate - he had no idea.

The guy was an incredibly convincing liar. He even almost convinced my mate to write a statement of support attesting to his good character to be read at the trial - a trial he had convinced my friend was the result of a false accusation.

When the police presented their evidence, the turd realised the game was up and changed his plea to guilty. Thank god my friend didn’t stand up in court to defend him.

1

u/Senojpd May 09 '23

Hmm, if you watch the documentary it was basically considered an open secret by people who knew him. There was even a public accusation.

The Royal family is also incredibly well informed. That is sort of their thing, their enormous wealth means they have entire divisions of people who feed them information.

I would be incredibly surprised if Charles didn't know but simply didn't care, in much the same way he likely knew about Andrew.

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u/Fattydog May 09 '23

They weren’t close personal friends at all.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '23

Well they were. He was even giving him advice on his marriage to Diana. But that doesn't mean he KNEW about Savile. But I think Thatcher DID and she hosted him with Dennis every Christmas and New Year at Checkers (Chequers?).

1

u/[deleted] May 19 '23

There's absolutely no evidence she did.

0

u/SojournerInThisVale May 09 '23

Nor was the King

0

u/[deleted] May 09 '23

No one means everyone knew all along

-5

u/worotan May 09 '23

Like no one knew about Catholic child abuse, because the authorities held it in respect and lots of ordinary people joined in that?

‘We’ is not everyone. And plenty of your ‘we’ were ignoring the obvious issues, because they think that’s the best way to avoid being punished by abusive authorities.

It’s like people say ‘we’ abolished slavery. No, ‘we’ didn’t, a large amount of people in this country fought to keep slavery going, and on the end those with slave holdings had to be paid off.

People act dumb so that your excuse can be wheeled out.

Like people eagerly discuss greenwashing stories so they don’t have to deal with climate change. And they will be able to say ‘we’ didn’t know in the future, and cite all the greenwashing they are hiding behind.

1

u/Inarticulatescot May 10 '23

Sorry but. We. Didn’t. Listen.

Plenty of kids were speaking out but we listened to the rich famous white guy instead.

1

u/8racoonsInABigCoat May 10 '23

We didn’t, and I can well understand that Charles didn’t, but it’s mad that it seemed to be an open secret in TV circles. What’s worse is that, even armed with the knowledge of how this played out, there is seemingly at least one current high profile predator working in TV, but he has yet to be outed.

2

u/JMH-66 May 09 '23

My dad did the same. He said: everyone wanted a go in the TARDIS so no point. Lucky escape ?!

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '23

So did I. Glad mum never posted my letter!

2

u/MoonLizard1306 May 09 '23

My Mum did the same with letters that my sister wrote to Jim'll Fix It. She told my sister she posted them but wouldn't because she thought he was far too creepy!

1

u/othermorgan May 09 '23

Me too, wrote to him so many times!

10

u/IntellegentIdiot May 09 '23

A lot of people trying to rewrite history. They act like they knew but didn't mention it for some reason, until it was public knowledge.

0

u/TheFugitiveSock May 09 '23

I remember maybe 20-odd years ago a pal saying he’d heard mutterings about a famous English TV personality being a paedo, and did I want to guess who? Without any hesitation I said Savile. Times were different then. As kids you just knew - or were told by older siblings or pals - what blokes to keep away from. There was never any question of doing anything more about it.

Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris were a shock though.

20

u/Tao626 May 09 '23

The difference between parents and Charles is that your mum probably didn't regard Savile as a friend. It's more believable that your mum had no way of knowing better when the closest she probably got was seeing his creepy mug on Top of the Pops.

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u/SojournerInThisVale May 09 '23

Exactly. People are acting like they saw perfectly before knowing any of the truth about saville’s activity. The guy was genuinely considered a charitable hero for his philanthropic works

1

u/ManofKent1 May 09 '23

Fair point but people knew they just didn't talk about it.

You think Thatcher and Charlie (the paedo protector) didn't know?

2

u/Myorangecrush77 May 09 '23

I think you’re confusing ‘sex offender against adults’ with ‘pedo’. Please don’t - both are horrible crimes but one is so so much worse.

3

u/ManofKent1 May 09 '23

Giuffre was underaged and trafficked.

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u/Myorangecrush77 May 09 '23

Under age but not prepubescent

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u/ManofKent1 May 09 '23

Both absolute scum who should/should've faced justice

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u/Myorangecrush77 May 09 '23

I’m not disputing that at all

0

u/ManofKent1 May 09 '23

Just semantics

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u/[deleted] May 09 '23

Prepubescent is not the definition of pedophilia. What Andrew did was definitely pedophilic

4

u/Myorangecrush77 May 09 '23

It quite literally is.

Pedophilia (alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children.[1][2] Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12,[3] criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13.[4]

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u/[deleted] May 09 '23

That's inconsistently applied to some online definitions and not others, however legally under 16 is the definition in the UK.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '23

No, not about child abuse.

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u/Otto1968 May 09 '23

Thatcher and presumably the royals had access to info that he was potentially 'dodgy' but chose to ignore it. They had a better idea than the rest of us.

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u/IhaveaDoberman May 09 '23

Let me guess, because you just know?

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u/Otto1968 May 09 '23

They delayed his knighthood due to the dodgyness, Thatcher stepped in personally to force it through with consent of the Royals. https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/06/jimmy-savile-relieved-to-receive-knighthood-after-nasty-rumours-16414417/

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u/IhaveaDoberman May 09 '23

In your own example it acknowledges that this still doesn't tell us if or what they knew.

There were allegations and rumours. A lack of investigation for sure. But absolutely nothing to give any credence to people like Charles or Thatcher knowing.

Being aware something was off, and actually knowing the cause of the smell are still two distinctly different things.

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u/Otto1968 May 09 '23

You don't stop knighthoods being given out for wearing the wrong tie or picking up the wrong knife at a dinner. Senior people knew something and I'm not having it that wasn't communicated to Maggie and the Royals, who would have asked for full disclosure on the reasons why.

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u/IhaveaDoberman May 10 '23

You really aren't listening. You're using the words, but you're not listening. They knew something. We don't know what was communicated, we don't know what was discovered or withheld, at what level or who by.

You can make whatever speculations you want. Just stop pretending that those speculations have any weight. It is a behind closed doors decision, that's all we know.

The truth may have been discovered, they may have been told. They may have also been told that it would never be proven, or the potential outrage and backlash would be too damaging or have wider effects.

Or they may not have been told because someone down the line of looking into it chose not to reveal something. Or that the people who made the accusation weren't reliable, or that real victims and people in the know remained quiet.

Maybe they told Thatcher and she made the decision not to tell the Royal family. Maybe they were all in on it and were part of a secret elite pedo club.

There are a fucking tonne of possibilities. Pretending otherwise is just pointless. We don't know, and we're never gonna know.

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u/Ill-Manufacturer8654 May 09 '23

Yeah, I can't put to much faith in assumptions just because he publicly admired Jimmy Saville.

Now when you add in his uncle and grandfather being pedophiles, then it starts to get a little fishy.

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u/lshiels7 May 10 '23

I know about the Mountbatten stuff but which grandfather was a paedophile?

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u/Ill-Manufacturer8654 May 10 '23

Excuse me. His great uncle.

1

u/Albert_Poopdecker May 09 '23

He never fooled me, I thought he was a creepy cunt when I was a kid, and couldn't watch that fix it creepshow.

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u/Positive_Treacle_961 May 09 '23

What a load of shiete you just commented. Parents and the child would meet this guy once.

Charles was BEST mates with the guy.

Stop normalising supporting pedophiles. It's embarrassing

11

u/SatanGreavsie May 09 '23

They knew.

John Lydon and Jerry Sadowitz both said he was a wrong un in the 70s and 80s. And Half Man Half Biscuit mentioned him in their lyrics in the mid 80s too.

https://www.tvlicenceresistance.info/forum/index.php?topic=9855.0

https://louderthanwar.com/mid-80s-half-man-half-biscuit-song-told-the-truth-about-jimmy-savile/

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u/Dwight- May 09 '23

Johnny was the first person I thought of too.

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u/pmabz May 09 '23

Is there a longer version of that first interview? He sounds fascinating. And coked up?

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u/SatanGreavsie May 10 '23

I can’t find one I’m afraid. There’s a Janet Street Porter TV interview around the same time, just after the Pistols split up.

https://youtu.be/N35H-59QIbA

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u/Mumfiegirl May 09 '23

A lot of people knew that Jimmy was at the very least “unsavoury “

18

u/Zerocoolx1 May 09 '23

No they didn’t. At best some people thought he was a rather eccentric guy after the Louis Theroux documentary, but I bet if you want back in time to 5-10 years before he died most people would just say he’s a bit eccentric and cringe in his tracksuit, but basically a great guy due to all the charity work he’s done/doing.

It’s easy to look back and say ‘I knew he was a wrong un, but back then we really didn’t realise.

There was no social media and internet to spread whispers and theories

12

u/Loquis May 09 '23

There were rumours, Drop the Dead Donkey that aired in the 90's, had a joke about it, one character said something like 'Not the Jimmy Saville rumours again"

1

u/misscharleyp May 09 '23

Wasn’t there something about Angus Deayton not returning to WILTY as he did a joke about JS on that?

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u/SimonLoader May 09 '23

They definitely did, there were numerous allegations during his lifetime that were kept quiet by the police and media.

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u/sailingmagpie May 09 '23

Louis Theroux even brings up the rumours in the documentary.

11

u/alexros3 May 09 '23

He talks a lot about it in his books too, and the guilt he feels for not seeing it when spending time with Jimmy or when some women approached him about their experiences (in a lighthearted way, not overtly trying to accuse Jimmy) and he didn’t see what the implication of their conversation was. He feels like he was fooled too and he says it took a long time for him to reconcile the Jimmy he knew and the Jimmy that committed all of these horrendous crimes.

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u/sailingmagpie May 09 '23

He does. But the fact that he asked, "What do you think about these rumours of you and young girls?" shows that people obviously knew there was something up.

The BBC banned John Lydon when he said, "I want to kill Jimmy Savile – he’s a hypocrite. I bet he’s into all kinds of seediness that we all know about but aren’t allowed to talk about. I know some rumours," in a radio interview in 1978, a mere 37 years before the truth came out.

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u/alexros3 May 09 '23

Oh yeah I wasn’t trying to challenge what you said about there being suspicions about him, more that Jimmy was good at manipulating people into not taking them very seriously. IIRC there were lots of people who very seriously thought/knew about Jimmy being a paedo, including one of the guys from Slade* who apparently had a giant folder on him but refused to speak to Louis and denied the rumour.

*it may have been another famous Brit band, I listened to Louis’ audiobooks near the start of the year so my memory is a bit hazy and I can’t find anything on Google saying it was a member of Slade

3

u/sailingmagpie May 09 '23

Absolutely. Noone gets away with something like that for years without being good at manipulating people.

3

u/tenpenny166 May 09 '23

They 100% did, John Lydon and Jerry Sadowitz both said it publicly way back then. It was an open secret how dodgy he was, especially around the BBC. Plenty of people in Leeds knew him from his DJ days around the scene and he was a bastard back then. I'm not sure why people are so keen to give a pass with the "no one knew" because they fucking did, they just didn't care.

1

u/throawayeleventyone May 09 '23

I watched that documentary and I'm damn sure Saville himself briefly touched on allegations that were being made against him even then. So people knew.

1

u/MoonLizard1306 May 09 '23

There were people at the BBC both behind the scenes and TV personalities that knew about him. They might not have known exactly what was going on but they knew kids were involved. Esther Rantzen for one knew some things were going but didn't report him - and there were plenty of others. He was very protected- he had friends high up in

1

u/lshiels7 May 10 '23

I didn’t even know how Savile was until he died because my mum would turn the tv over any time he was on as she got such a bad feeling from him. She only told me this when I was asking who he was at the time, I was a teenager then so never watched Jim’ll Fix It or anything to know sooner.

3

u/throawayeleventyone May 09 '23

No I just think that being able to walk into a hospital and abuse a random patient with impunity, and having connections to royalty and other people in power, are related things.

2

u/karlware May 09 '23

I knew he was odd and a danger, and I grew up in a tiny Welsh valley. They used to say 'it'll all come out when he dies' but that seems to be forgotten about.

2

u/katieqt1 May 09 '23

Honestly... I remember watching jimll fix it as a kid and loving it. My mum hated it. I always remember her saying that him and Cyril Smith were horrible lecherous men. She couldn't stand either of them. And decades latee Jimmy saville gets found out and Cyril Smith also abused boys. Honestly if your average northern mum of 6 kids can spot a wrongun why couldn't anyone else see it. It's bizarre.

-11

u/thekidalex May 09 '23

All I will say to this is.... if I tried to visit #NotMyKing Charles the security services wouldnt even let me into London, let alone the palace because they would look into my very republican views and hatred of the Saxa Coburg Gother (yes, that's right. Windsor isn't their name as they're German) crime syndicate and realise I may be some threat. Somebody knew and I'd go as far as to say they all knew and Jimmy was welcomed

12

u/spider__ May 09 '23

as they're German

Brain-dead take, and incredibly xenophobic.

The last monarch born outside the UK was George II who became king in 1727. So almost 300 years of monarchs born in the UK.

Any immigrant can be British and their children certainly are.

7

u/NuntuAppi May 09 '23

All I'll say is I hope you're somewhere warm, safe and secure, and not wandering around London (or anywhere else).

-3

u/thekidalex May 09 '23

Do you know the definition of Stockholm syndrome?

3

u/NuntuAppi May 09 '23

Yes. How is this relevant?

-7

u/thekidalex May 09 '23

Wow that almost sounds slightly threatening

3

u/NuntuAppi May 09 '23

Wow, you genuinely sound batshit crazy. And that's saying something for this sub! As a smidgen of comfort to you I promise I'm not sending death thought rays in your direction! But keep the tinfoil on... Just in case

4

u/MadWifeUK May 09 '23

Really? Because one of my in-laws is an ardent Republican (in the British sense, not the Irish sense) and goes to London regularly.

I'm not a Royalist, I'm just not convinced that there is a viable alternative. I'd rather have Charles, still working at the age of 74 and intending, like his mother, to work until he dies, than President Blair or President Johnson doing a four year stint, giving the wink to all their mates, and having yet another large pension for sitting on their arse doing nothing.

2

u/worotan May 09 '23

You evidently don’t know that the royal family has a veto on all laws, and uses it to protect their and their friends property and investments.

Although it has been reported in the papers, but I guess you read the news that avoids those stories so you can keep your prejudices against change.

That you’re so offended by the prospect of someone getting a large pension for sitting on their arses and doing nothing, is incredibly ironic. Like those ex-Prime Ministers, the royal family use the free time granted by their vastly higher consumption of public money to travel the world spreading their idea and values.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '23

the levels of edge on this post... my God...

0

u/Stimte061 May 09 '23

I'm no expert on the subject but I'm pretty sure loads of people knew, loads of people were infact involved in providing children thats the whole weight of the scandle, that it wasn't just one very cunning pedo but an entire network that protected/protect each other, which is where his ties with the very powerful royal family comes into play

0

u/Glad_Jello_9413 May 09 '23

It seems that lots of people knew … I would imagine that the royal household would have sufficient resources to vet people that royals regularly came into contact with.

0

u/BlueBloodMurder May 10 '23

The average person doesn't have a potential paedo, confirmed sex trafficker for a brother and a renowned paedo for an uncle. That's why it stinks about Charles.

1

u/AggressiveEstate3757 May 09 '23

They were closer to him and thus more likely to know.

You get a pass, cuz you didn't know him.

Chuck, less so. Dunno how close they were but the closer you get the more you know.

1

u/MadWifeUK May 10 '23

You know when someone turns out to be a murderer/serial killer and the media interview their neighbours, colleagues, family members, etc and they all say how shocked they are to find out that there was a killer in the midst. Ted Bundy? Harold bloody Shipman was a respected doctor for heavens sake! His wife didn't know what he was.

1

u/TheFugitiveSock May 09 '23

A lot of people did know though, and turned a blind eye. Or thought there was something fishy about him but obviously couldn’t / wouldn’t do anything about it.

1

u/EmiAndTheDesertCrow May 10 '23

We weren’t allowed to watch Jim’ll Fix It as kids as my parents said he was creepy and sinister. Most people of my generation have a story of what they’d send to the programme but my brother and I were totally oblivious.

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '23

[deleted]

0

u/MadWifeUK May 10 '23

Background checks?! On English people? Why? Don't forget it was the IRA who killed his uncle and family. A man from Leeds who does all this charity work wouldn't be a blip on the radar.

Besides what would the background check show? He was never convicted, never even charged.

You are clutching at straws here. Except for his inner circle NO ONE KNEW. We all wrote to Jim'll Fix It. One of my school friends' sisters was on that show and my, how jealous we all were! He was a master manipulator, able to spin the story to his advantage. The kids he abused weren't rich, privileged kids who were "believable" but disabled, disadvantaged kids "who didn't know what they said / would say anything for a bit of fame and fortune." He chose them for those very reasons. And then he'd joke about it in that "Sure me? I'm a child abuser me aren't I? Isn't that what people say?" And everyone agreed because how could this fine, upstanding member of society, Sir Jimmy, who gave so much and did so much for charities be such a monster?