Jimmy Savile admitted getting knighthood…

UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

Jimmy Savile admitted getting knighthood was ‘a relief because it got me off the hook’

In the light of details about sexual abuse and macabre acts that emerged from an inquiry into Jimmy Savile last week, this compelling and disquieting interview by the celebrated journalist Lynn Barber takes on new meaning. We run it in full for the first time since it was published in 1990 in The Independent on Sunday

LYNN BARBER Sunday 29 June 2014

Sir James Savile is absolutely knocked out, over the moon, tickled pink, and thrilled to bits with his knighthood, and still reeling from the excitement of it all. Ooh, but it has played merry hell with his diary. “The Queen deciding to give me this tremendous responsibility – I mean, you go to bed one minute without a care in the world and you wake up the next morning with this gi-normous responsibility come through the letterbox.

Do you want to see the gear?” he asks, burrowing under the put-u-up to find his briefcase (we are in his London flat) from which he produces a transparent plastic folder. “Read it all,” he urges. “Go on. Have a little dwell on that. That folder encapsulates it all.”

The folder encloses the letter from the Prime Minister offering him a knighthood, the envelope it came in, some bumf about keeping it secret till the proper date and then – proudest of all – telegrams from Charles and Diana, from Prince Philip, a handwritten letter from Angus Ogilvy and a very sweet homemade card with a stuck-on snapshot of Princess Bea, from the Duchess of York. He is almost bursting with pride as he shows them off.

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