British “entertainer” Jimmy Savile was extremely friendly with royals, prime ministers and captains of industry. He was also one of the most prolific sexual predators in British history. While some people knew about – and covered up for – Savile’s predation, the bulk of what is known about him came out after his death in 2011. While it’s worthwhile to examine how a predator like Savile hid in plain sight, a lot of information “coming out” about Savile these days has already been known for years. Still, I guess it’s good to remind people. There’s suddenly a glut of new documentaries and even one BBC dramatization about Savile. One of those docs is a Netflix documentary called Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story. In it, filmmakers went through Savile’s documents and they found a lot of correspondence with Prince Charles.
The Prince of Wales sought advice from Jimmy Savile shortly after the Duke of York made ill-advised comments about the Lockerbie bombing, according to newly unearthed letters. Savile, the late BBC presenter now known for his prolific sex offending, wrote a media relations “handbook” for Charles, 73, who went on to “incorporate” some of the advice in a memo that was shown to the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. According to letters spanning a period of 20 years, Savile, the former Top of the Pops host, appeared to take on a role as unofficial adviser to the future king.
On January 14, 1987, the Prince of Wales sent Jimmy Savile a letter. “Perhaps I am wrong,” he wrote from Sandringham in his spidery script, “but you are the bloke who knows what’s going on. What I really need is a list of suggestions from you. I so want to get to parts of the country that others don’t get to reach.”
It was not a one-off request. The prince and the presenter corresponded for 20 years, between 1986 and 2006, with Savile apparently acting as unofficial adviser to the heir to the throne. The depth and intimacy of their correspondence is revealed in a new Netflix documentary, Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, which uses archive clips to explore how Savile did what he did, grooming a nation into believing he was a talented broadcaster and tireless philanthropist when, off-camera, he was a serial sexual abuser and paedophile. After Savile’s death in 2011, aged 84, the police investigated about 500 allegations of abuse, taking place from 1955 to 2009, the vast majority from victims aged under 18.
The makers of the documentary — the director Rowan Deacon (The Case of Sally Challen) and 72 Films — gained access to dozens of letters in which the prince regularly sought guidance from Savile on his public speeches and on family matters. Among them is an extraordinary five-page dossier titled Guidelines for Members of the Royal Family and Their Staffs, handwritten by Savile in 1989 for the prince, then aged 40, in which the broadcaster lays out his vision for how the royal family should respond to significant incidents.
The prince and the royal family, like the rest of the nation, had no idea of Savile’s crimes. “He was duped, like we all were,” Deacon says. “The letters show the trust that Prince Charles put into Jimmy Savile. He was trying to appeal to the British people, trying to modernise. And he saw Jimmy Savile as his conduit to that. In hindsight, that was catastrophic.”
Honestly, Prince Charles has a bad radar for people. Diana knew that about him, lots of people know that about him – he tends to buddy up with sycophants, gurus and, yes, serial sexual predators. In Savile’s case, Charles wasn’t alone – Savile was beloved by the British establishment at every level. Is it really surprising that Charles would ask Savile to provide some PR/communications advice to the Windsors? Eh.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
He wasn’t duped. The man gets Intelligence briefings and can ask to see a dossier on basically anyone. The rumors didn’t magically spring up when he died, it was an open secret that was merely confirmed by actual victims putting names to allegations. Charles knew. Just like Andrew did about JE and GM.
Arbiter claimed that “Savile used to rub his lips up the arms of Charles’s young female assistants as a greeting” so he had to know he was a creep unless he saw that as normal.
Even l remember being told many many years before it all came out that Savile was a creep, though l never imagined that he was so vile. Many people must have known.
I always found his friendship with the royals odd but Savile was a household name and a very big fundraiser, which must have interested Charles..
Also on this line “the prince and the royal family, like the rest of the nation, had no idea of Savile’s crimes.”
I’m sorry and I know we’re not supposed to judge people by looks and I usually don’t, but as an American before ever even hearing the accusation when I saw Jimmy Savile I knew exactly that he was some kind of a creep by how freaking odd he looked and carried himself. He made your skin crawl with his demeanor. He is literally the poster child for a stereotype of what you would imagine a pedophile would look like in a bad movie or something.
He just looked off.
If you didn’t see it you have to ask yourself why, why did all that seem okay? And perhaps you should be more skeptical of people who clearly aren’t interested in participating in any social norms of hygiene and physical presentation because maybe there are other norms they refuse too.
Spot on! He has the same creepy vibe as Jerry Sandusky.
@HeyJude & KittyKat-
I’ve seen/sensed that by a creep who followed my two year old daughter& me around a drugstore. It’s borne of the intensity of their hunger/desire to abuse, IMO. They are trying to suppress it, but it’s nearly palpable. After relocating many times in that pharmacy while waiting for a subscription, I finally turned to him, holding my daughter chest to chest, facing her away from him, I hissed at him, “I know what you are. Get away from us.” It was so disturbing and I will never forget how sickened I was by it…
*waiting for a prescription (not Subscription)
how did I not catch that????
Charles like most people associated money and fame with being a good person. That isn’t true. Most powerful people betrayed their morals to become rich and famous. Look at Charles and William. Born rich and famous. But neither use their power and influence to help change the world. Charles pretends with his eco stuff. But he really just wanted his country estate to look better and that just ballooned.
There were many rumours going around about Savile and his predatory behaviour as far back as the 1970’s, especially near the area where he lived. He liked to consort with powerful and connected people, and used them as a shield whenever questions arose about him. (“He can’t be that bad, he raises money for charity and he’s a mate of Prince Charles”, etc.). Plus he was just incredibly creepy and made people’s skin crawl. My parents wouldn’t let me watch his shows as a kid – my mum couldn’t stand him.
So yes, Charles is not a great judge of character – and he is a sucker for a sycophant and surrounds himself with them. Savile flattered his ego, and that’s all it takes with Charles.
I didn’t think I could be more disgusted with the RF. I was wrong.
Expect Bully-Boy to be thrown under the CH juggernaut over the coming days.
What’s “the CH juggernaut”?
Clarence House, I assume. Charles’ HQ.
This is why I never believed that Charles was appalled by Andrew’s friendships with Esptein and Maxwell. Paedophilia is not seen as taboo amongst the
British establishment.
I agree @Amy Bee. When does coincidence stop being coincidence, and when does it point to something else fishy in the RF?
Probably when each and every country who is still into this family realizes they are supporting about 10 lazy people, with their own money, and they are still paying for the pedophile.
But the royals were sooo worried about the connections that the Sussex’s would make without the vetting by excellent palace aides! Bwahahaha!!!
Oh the connections in Hollywood! Meghan was too HOLLYWOOD!!
We can’t have members of the royal family being friends with Oprah, MY GOD THE HORROR!!!
Jimmy Savile, Bishop Peter Ball, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell…the Windsors seem to quite a few friends who have a proclivity for abusing and trafficking minors.
Considering Charles’ favorite Uncle Louis Mountbatten was accused of abusing boys in Northern Ireland I’d have to guess that this behavior is generational.
How can a Prince of the realm with access to some of the highest security surround himself with people like this unless he either condones or partakes in the same activities himself?
I know people with privilege and secrets might actively work to ingratiate themselves with the powerful and stupid, as the BRF, to have some cover. But the BRF seems to have been consistently targeted by these characters… is there a pedo newsletter that said “Charles and Andrew, they’re idiots, very useful idiots, make friends”? It’s hard to believe the BRF could have been this idiotic for decades, with the intelligence at their disposal – were there some elective affinities between the whole BRF institution and the creeps who targeted them? At least someone in the legions of aides must have been somewhat complicit or wilfully blind.
It’s a rotten and disgusting institution that needs to be dismantled, for the public good.
The whole asking a celeb for PR advice is bad enough (I’m giving the benefit of the doubt that Charles didn’t know of his paedo ways at the time) but can we swing back to why he asked? Andrew literally said that when a plane lands in the middle of a village and kills 270 people it ONLY AFFECTS THE COMMUNITY IN A SMALL WAY???? This is when he is standing in said village where a massive crater lies in place of a street of houses 3 days after a jumbo had been blown out of the sky!!! Even 34 years ago they knew that pig was an out and out narcissist so I’m not surprised he thinks he can be rehabilitated in the public eye 😠
OMG, thank you for this. I must have missed his idiotic, tone-deaf, insensitive statement at the time. In this light, you are right! Why the heck would Jimmy Savile be your go-to for PR advice??? I didn’t realize Charles was that stupid; stupid, yes, in that all of the BRF are, but still.
This family who thinks they were appointed by God to rule Britain seems ..not very bright. Really really not bright.
‘known for his prolific sex offending’ What a weird way to write that, The Times.
Anyway, maybe the reason Charles has such a bad radar for people is because he himself is a morally corrupt individual raised in a morally corrupt institution? Who can say!
So that’s why Meghan was trending last night here in the U.K. they were trying to divert from this
So, Charles was a “schemer” who manipulated the media to his advantage. But it’s okay because Male and Prince. Not okay for Princess Diana, per British media.
A cop specialising in helping victims of abuse told me about Savile in the late 80s – victims were too scared to come forward and they couldn’t prosecute. So don’t tell me the royals or the establishment didn’t know.
Exactly. And with over 500 victims, of course people knew, they just weren’t people who ‘counted’. They weren’t royal, they weren’t Establishment.
My first thought was “of course.”
The British royals are trash. Posh accents can’t cover that up.
They are really falling apart, and by that, I mean any “royals” on Salty Isle. They are eating their young (Eugenie), giving passes to pedophiles (because WAR HERO!). Pedo described his veteran glory as one second, on the since deleted post, but we are still supposed to find one second in a pedophile’s life glorious???
So now they have given us a brand new pedophile??? That has been whispering in the ears of this family for decades? Good fucking cheese, even the white markles aren’t this dumb.
Christ on a cracker, racist and misogynist Philip died at exactly the right time, he’s now a national treasure!
Eh. Jimmy Savile can’t have been all that bad since he’s retained the OBE honorific, presumably in perpetuity at this point.
Since the British monarch is Sovereign of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, doesn’t Betty deserve a mention here.