Few celebrities have relished being in the public eye as keenly as Sir Jimmy Savile, who has died aged 84. He was as well known for his work for charity, particularly at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, as for his broadcasting – Jim'll Fix It and Top of the Pops on television, and disc jockeying on radio. A shrewd promoter of his own image, he was never spotted without his trademark fat cigar, garish tracksuit and trainers, and ostentatious jewellery. He had also developed his own patter, a sort of do-it-yourself Yorkshire esperanto that enabled him to greet the sick, the press or strangers with equal fluency.
Savile attributed his cigar habit to an incident from his childhood in his native Leeds. "I began smoking cigars when I was seven," he recalled. "My dad, Vince, who was a bookmaker's clerk, gave me a drag on one at Christmas, thinking it would put me off them forever, but it had the opposite effect."
It was a memorable moment in a childhood that was poor and difficult. He was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, and later claimed that his mother "clothed, fed and accommodated nine people on £3.50 a week". The young Jimmy's Christmas treat was to be shown around the toy department of Lewis's in Leeds. His parents were too poor to buy him anything, and Jimmy was not, in any event, the favourite child of the Savile brood. Yet he professed gratitude for his character-shaping upbringing. "I was forged in the crucible of want," he announced floridly, "and because of that I consider myself far more privileged than people who had everything."
When Savile had found his professional feet and began to exploit his powerful instinct for making money, he lavished attention on his mother. After she was widowed, he looked after her in his Scarborough flat for 16 years before her death in 1973. She was a flinty, unsentimental character, but he always called her the Duchess and treated her with a respect that verged on superstitious awe. After she died, he kept her clothes hanging in a wardrobe, and had them cleaned once a year. Dr Anthony Clare, the Radio 4 psychiatrist, suspected that Savile's emotionally starved childhood had left psychological scars that fuelled his public flamboyance and urge to do good works, but Savile was always contemptuous of any attempts to probe into his psychological make-up. "If an eminent psychiatrist told me I did all this because I was compensating for something, then I wouldn't be bothered. I don't care about the reason, I just want to get things done," he said.
But many considered that there was something strange about Savile. His enthusiasm for spending quite so much time in the hospital environment had a touch of the macabre about it. Looking back on the death of his mother, he said: "When she died she was all mine. She looked marvellous. She belonged to me. It's wonderful, is death."
Behind the professional good samaritan there was a man of ruthless willpower, intelligent enough to become a member of Mensa. It was as if the scale of his charitable efforts was an expression of his enormous desire to be seen to have achieved something.
He first dabbled with show business while still at school, earning five shillings a week as drummer to a female pianist at the Leeds Mecca. During the second world war, he hoped to join the RAF, but instead found himself sent down the coalmines under the Emergency Powers Act – a Bevin boy.
Curiously, he found the back-breaking work enjoyable. "A lot of the lads couldn't stand it by themselves all day in the Stygian gloom, but I was perfectly happy there. It was an excellent job. I started at 13 shillings and ninepence and eventually got to one pound and one shilling a week for a six-day shift."
His mining career was cut short when he was blown up in a "shot-firer's explosion", intended to bring down part of the coal face. He suffered a serious spinal injury which forced him to walk with the aid of sticks, and to wear a steel corset to make him stand straight. He was in constant pain. He recalled catching a glimpse of his reflection and not recognising the stooped, prematurely aged figure in the glass.
However, his condition improved, and within three years he could walk without sticks. The episode doubtless explains why Savile would later be particularly keen to support Stoke Mandeville's National Spinal Injuries Centre, for which he raised an estimated £12m, out of a total £30m for a range of causes. It was one of Savile's most remarkable achievements that he could recover from a potentially disabling injury to participate in countless marathons and bicycle races – he cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats in 1975 – usually for charity.
While Savile became a ubiquitous public figure via his media work, or for promoting car seat-belts via the "clunk click, every trip" campaign, or, also in the 1970s, for plugging British Rail in their "let the train take the strain" commercials, there were apparently a few murky secrets hidden away in the early part of his career. He was a professional wrestler for a time, though winning only seven of 107 bouts, and he was involved in running nightclubs, for which his Flash Harry appearance and louder-than-life demeanour must have been perfect.
In 1983, he shocked many of his fans and charity recipients by giving an interview to the Sun in which he described violent and sordid incidents from his past. "The people who work for me call me the Godfather," he claimed. "And nobody messes with the Godfather. He is the boss. The big man." And, he added: "Some of the hairy things I've done would get me 10 years inside."
There may have been poetic licence involved, and perhaps it was partly bravado, but there was some truth in the story. "I never had anyone beaten up, but I did not take any nonsense in the dance halls," he told another newspaper. "I had to look after the welfare of hundreds of youngsters. I was protecting my young patrons from drugs and other immoral influences." Part clubland heavy, part teetotaller and practising Roman Catholic – the paradox was typical of Savile.
In 1948 he had amplified a wind-up gramophone at a dance in Leeds, and he took pride in having pioneered the use of two turntables and a fader to provide a non-stop stream of music. His drive and bravado in the dance-hall world took him into broadcasting, first for Radio Luxembourg. On 1 January 1964, he introduced the first Top of the Pops programme, from a converted church in Manchester, and he returned for the last broadcast, on 30 July 2006.
Soon after the inauguration of Radio 1 in 1967, he was recruited by the BBC; his weekly show ran for two decades from 1969. His old-fashioned showbiz style – "Now then, now then ..." – was worlds apart from his innovative fellow DJs from the pirate-radio world, and nobody could ever accuse Savile of being fired by a crusading zeal for finding and promoting revolutionary pop music.
His flair for self-promotion and his desire to help, as publicly as possible, those in need dovetailed into each other. Countless supplicants who appeared on Jim'll Fix It between 1975 and 1994 were brought face to face with pop stars or sporting heroes or to fly with the Red Arrows thanks to Savile's paternalistic, bombastic intervention. Patients at Leeds General Infirmary and inmates at Broadmoor, the high-security hospital for psychiatric patients at Crowthorne, Berkshire, became accustomed to Savile's colourful presence.
Going far beyond routine celebrity tokenism, Savile had his own rooms at Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor, and he would divide his time between them and the five flats he kept around the country. In 1988, he was appointed chairman of a task force set up to advise on governing Broadmoor. His annual income was said to be in the region of £250,000, from his media work and public appearances, but he paid 90% of it into two charitable trusts. He claimed he needed only enough money to guarantee his personal independence.
To questions about his apparent lack of a sex life, Savile retorted that he had committed himself to the entertainment business at an early age, and it was only "logical" (a favourite word) that he should rule out personal ties in favour of his career. He remarked that sex was "rather like going to the bathroom". Savile was never going to be Milk Tray Man, parachuting out of the darkness carrying a red rose and a box of chocolates.
But it is as a raiser of cash for charity that he will be remembered. His efforts won him a broad spectrum of admirers from royalty, show business and politics, and recognition in the shape of an OBE (1971), a knighthood (1990) and even a knighthood from the papacy (1982).
As PM, Margaret Thatcher always invited him to Chequers, near Stoke Mandeville, on Boxing Day, and Savile was allegedly one of the few people able to get away with taking the mickey out of the Iron Lady. Sir James Savile, OBE, is an impossible act to follow.
James Wilson Vincent Savile, broadcaster and charity fundraiser, born 31 October 1926; died 29 October 2011
