59 Facts About Jimmy Savile

Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile was an English DJ and television and radio personality who hosted BBC shows including Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It.

Jimmy Savile began a career playing records in, and later managing, dance halls.

Jimmy Savile was awarded the OBE in 1971 and was knighted in 1990.

Jimmy Savile, born at Consort Terrace, in the Burley area of Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, was the youngest of seven children in a Roman Catholic family.

Jimmy Savile's parents were Vincent Joseph Marie Savile, a bookmaker's clerk and insurance agent, and his wife, Agnes Monica Kelly.

Jimmy Savile's mother believed he owed his life to the intercession of Margaret Sinclair, a Scottish nun, after he recovered quickly from illness, possibly pneumonia, at the age of two when his mother prayed at Leeds Cathedral after picking up a pamphlet about Sinclair.

Jimmy Savile went to St Anne's Roman Catholic School in Leeds.

Jimmy Savile started playing records in dance halls in the early 1940s, and claimed to be the first DJ.

Jimmy Savile became a semi-professional sportsman, competing in the 1951 Tour of Britain cycle race and working as a professional wrestler.

Jimmy Savile lived in Salford from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, the later period with Ray Teret, who became his support DJ, assistant and chauffeur.

Jimmy Savile managed the Plaza Ballroom on Oxford Street, in Manchester city centre, in the mid-1950s.

Jimmy Savile managed the Mecca Locarno ballroom in Leeds in the late 1950s and early 1960s as well as the Mecca-owned Palais dance hall in Ilford, Essex, between 1955 and 1956.

Jimmy Savile presented The Vintage Chart Show, playing top tens from 1957 to 1987, on the BBC World Service from March 1987 until October 1989.

In 1994, satirist Chris Morris gave a fake obituary on BBC Radio 1, saying that Jimmy Savile had collapsed and died, which allegedly drew threats of legal action from Jimmy Savile and forced an apology from Morris.

The Christmas 2005 show counted down the festive Top 10s of 10,20 and 30 years previously, while the New Year 2007 show featured Jimmy Savile recounting anecdotes from his past and playing associated records, mostly from the 1960s and some from the 1970s.

Jimmy Savile presented a series of public information films promoting road safety, notably "Clunk Click Every Trip", which promoted the use of seatbelts, the clunk representing the sound of the door and the click the sound of the seatbelt fastening.

Jimmy Savile won an award from Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1977 for his "wholesome family entertainment".

Jimmy Savile fronted a long-running series of advertisements in the early 1980s for British Rail's InterCity 125, in which he declared "This is the age of the train".

Jimmy Savile was twice the subject of the Thames Television series This Is Your Life in January 1970 with Eamonn Andrews and again in December 1990 with Michael Aspel.

Jimmy Savile visited the Celebrity Big Brother house on 14 and 15 January 2006 and "fixed it" for some housemates to have their wishes granted; Pete Burns received a message from his boyfriend, Michael, and Lynn, his ex-wife, while Dennis Rodman traded Jimmy Savile's offering for a supply of cigarettes for the other housemates.

In 2007, Jimmy Savile returned to television with Jim'll Fix It Strikes Again showing some of the most popular fix-its, recreating them with the same people, and making new dreams come true.

Jimmy Savile had his own rooms at both Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor.

In 1989, Jimmy Savile started legal proceedings against News Group Newspapers after the News of the World published an article, in January 1988, suggesting he had been in a position to secure the release of patients from Broadmoor who were considered "dangerous".

Jimmy Savile won on 11 July 1989; News Group paid his legal costs, and he received an apology from editors Kelvin MacKenzie and Patsy Chapman.

From 1974 to 1988, Jimmy Savile was the honorary president of Phab.

Jimmy Savile cycled from Land's End to John o' Groats in 10 days for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and ran in the Scottish People's Marathon.

Savile set up two charities, the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Hospital Trust in 1981, and the Leeds-based Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust in 1984.

Jimmy Savile was frequently spoofed for his dress sense, which usually featured a tracksuit or shellsuit and gold jewellery.

Jimmy Savile was a member of Mensa and the Institute of Advanced Motorists and drove a Rolls-Royce.

Jimmy Savile was made a life member of the British Gypsy Council in 1975, becoming the first "outsider" to be made a member.

In 1984, Jimmy Savile was accepted as a member of the Athenaeum, a gentlemen's club in London's Pall Mall, after being proposed by Cardinal Basil Hume.

Jimmy Savile was chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games for many years, and owned a house in Glen Coe; his appearance on the final edition of Top of the Pops in 2006 was pre-recorded as it clashed with the games.

Jimmy Savile acted as an unofficial adviser to Prince Charles, who sought his advice on a number of occasions on how the royal family ought to interact with the public and media.

In 1989, Jimmy Savile hand-wrote an unofficial set of guidelines to Charles on how members of the royal family and staff may respond to disasters.

On 9 August 1997, Jimmy Savile underwent a three-hour quadruple heart-bypass operation at Killingbeck Hospital in Killingbeck, Leeds, having known he needed the surgery for at least four years after attending regular check-ups.

On 29 October 2011, Jimmy Savile was found dead at his penthouse flat overlooking Roundhay Park in Leeds, two days before his 85th birthday.

Jimmy Savile had been in hospital with pneumonia, and his death was not suspicious.

Jimmy Savile's closed satin gold coffin was displayed at the Queens Hotel in Leeds, with the last cigar he smoked and his two This Is Your Life books.

Jimmy Savile's funeral took place at Leeds Cathedral on 9 November 2011, and he was buried at Woodlands Cemetery in Scarborough.

An auction of Jimmy Savile's possessions was conducted at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, on 30 July 2012, with the proceeds going to charity.

Jimmy Savile often came into contact with his victims through his creative projects for the BBC and his charitable work for the NHS.

Jimmy Savile spent 20 years from 1964 presenting Top of the Pops, aimed at a teenage audience, and an overlapping 20 years presenting Jim'll Fix It, in which he helped the wishes of viewers, mainly children, come true.

In 1987, Scottish stand-up comedian Jerry Sadowitz recorded a performance in Edinburgh in which he stated that Jimmy Savile was a paedophile.

In 2007, Jimmy Savile was interviewed under caution by police investigating an allegation of indecent assault in the 1970s at the now-closed Duncroft Approved School for Girls near Staines, Surrey, where he was a regular visitor.

In March 2008, Jimmy Savile started legal proceedings against The Sun, which had linked him in several articles to child abuse at the Jersey children's home Haut de la Garenne.

Former royal family press secretary Dickie Arbiter said Jimmy Savile's behaviour had raised "concern and suspicion" when Jimmy Savile acted as an informal marriage counsellor between Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the late 1980s, although no reports had been made.

Arbiter added that during his regular visits to Charles's office at St James's Palace, Jimmy Savile would "do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms".

The review said that Jones and MacKean had found "cogent evidence" that Jimmy Savile was an abuser.

The Director-General of the BBC, George Entwistle, apologised for what had happened, and on 16 October 2012 appointed former High Court judge Dame Janet Smith to review the culture and practices of the BBC during the time Jimmy Savile worked there; and Nick Pollard, a former Sky News executive, was appointed to look at why the Newsnight investigation into Jimmy Savile's activities was dropped shortly before transmission in December 2011.

One former Broadmoor nurse claimed that Jimmy Savile had said that he engaged in necrophiliac acts with corpses in the Leeds General Infirmary mortuary; Jimmy Savile was said to be friends with the chief mortician, who gave him near-unrestricted access.

Exposure Update: The Jimmy Savile Investigation was shown on ITV on 21 November 2012.

In 2022, former BBC presenter Mark Lawson wrote about his encounters with Jimmy Savile, and hearing from many BBC personnel not at the top level about his abuse and rumoured necrophilia.

Signs on a footpath in Scarborough named "Jimmy Savile's View" were removed.

The Jimmy Savile family expressed their sorrow for the "anguish" of the victims and "respect [for] public opinion".

Jimmy Savile's body is interred in the cemetery in Scarborough, although it has been proposed that it be exhumed and cremated.

In 2012, Richard Harrison, a long-serving psychiatric nurse at Broadmoor Hospital, said that Jimmy Savile had long been regarded by staff as "a man with a severe personality disorder and a liking for children".

Psychologists in The Guardian and The Herald argued that Jimmy Savile exhibited the dark triad of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

Jimmy Savile confirmed that complaints had been raised before 2012 but were ignored by the bureaucratic system:.

Many honours are considered to cease on the death of the holder; some of Jimmy Savile's honours were considered no longer applicable, and did not need to be rescinded.