UNITED KINGDOM
Cstholic Herald

By Francis Phillips on Friday, 26 October 2012

I have just been watching a replay of the BBC Panorama programme about Jimmy Savile. There were many clips of his very successful TV programmes dominated by Savile himself, with his trademark cigar, platinum hair and wearing his tracksuit. With the advantage of hindsight we all now know that he was far from the public-spirited eccentric that he presented in the media. Watching his antics during the Panorama programme, the question in my mind was: how did he get away with not just fooling some of the people some of the time, but seemingly all the people all the time – for decades?

Some of the answer to this lies in the institutional blindness of the BBC to the reality behind Savile’s smiling, zany mask. Mary Riddell, in an article about Savile in the Telegraph, rehearsed the…