Biography

In January 2013, a joint report by the NSPCC and Metropolitan Police, "Giving Victims a Voice", stated that 450 people had made complaints against Savile, with the period of alleged abuse stretching from 1955 to 2009 and the ages of the complainants at the time of the assaults ranging from 8 to 47. The suspected victims included 28 children aged under 10, including 10 boys aged as young as 8. A further 63 were girls aged between 13 and 16 and nearly three-quarters of his victims were under 18. Some 214 criminal offenses were recorded, with 34 rapes having been reported across 28 police forces. Savile was never charged during his lifetime.

In November 2009 he received an honorary degree in the arts from the University of Bedfordshire for his lifelong support of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, UK. He particularly supported the Stoke Mandeville National Spinal Injuries Unit because he had brought about its inception and sustained a spinal injury (from which he eventually made a full recovery) as a result of a tunnel roof-fall while he was working as a coal miner in the 1940s. In October 2012, the university announced that the degree would be posthumously rescinded following a series of sexual abuse allegations made against him following his death.

In the 1990s, satirist Christopher Morris broadcast a spoof obituary of Savile on BBC Radio 1 which claimed he had dropped dead during the Stoke Mandeville Hospital Boxing Day party, but the patients were not mourning and wished he had suffered rather more.

Following the revelation of his crimes, there were many calls for him to be stripped of his Knighthood and OBE (Order of The British Empire) but this is impossible due to the honors dying with the person.

His second appearance on This Is Your Life (1955) is thought to have been a mistake by Thames TV, who had not only lost the recording of his first appearance but had completely forgotten that he had already appeared previously.

He's a sabra. A sabra is an Israeli fruit that's prickly on the outside and all soft and lovely inside. That's Jonathan King.

Don't try and get people to like you, but try to make sure they don't DISlike you.

I've got everything. What have I got left in life? To wake up tomorrow. Because if tomorrow is as good as today, that'll do for me.

Question One: Am I doing my thing at the cost of somebody else? Answer: No. Question Two: Am I doing my thing and getting plenty? Answer: Yes. Now if I'm a bit lucky, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't spread it about a bit, maybe, and make somebody else a bit lucky.

[comment by Ted Beston, the producer of his radio show] "Right from the start, we got on well together. If there was something I didn't agree with, or he didn't agree with, we'd sort it out. And at the end, we'd decide that *he* was right."