It Was Good While It Lasted

Jimmy Savile was a very bad man, there seems little doubt about that. So how did he hold such an elevated place in British society? Was it hypnosis or misdirection, blackmail or sheer force of will? Did he groom the UK? Are we all his victims?

Well, you'd think so. Whenever the issue is raised everyone now jumps to say that they suspected him all along. Nobody ever liked him or trusted him, everyone always found him creepy - so why was he on telly in the most prominent possible position for nearly forty years? Why did we all used to watch him? Why did Britain lower its collective head when he died, and play along with the outrageously self-serving funeral rites he had put in place?

I don't have any answers, and there are simply far too many questions. I don't believe that it was all a massive conspiracy, because that way madness lies, but I also can't think it could have been possible without some sort of collusion. That said, Savile was clearly a resourceful and horribly self-possessed kind of monster - he almost seems capable of anything. Perhaps that's why they concreted his grave, not to keep thieves out, but to keep him in.

What I keep coming back to is his public persona: how very weird it really was and how very normal we all once believed it to be. Was it a case of misguided faith in the tradition of British eccentricity, in the notion of the card, the character? Or was it that, without knowing what he was really capable of, we were happy to balance his good works against his obvious personality issues and, because we are predominantly a fair minded people, consider one adequate compensation for the other? Some sort of strange national psychological shift must have taken place, as Jimmy Savile, loner, oddball, misanthrope, exhibitionist, bully and narcissist (these are just the traits he freely exhibited, the ones he showed us) somehow became a man qualified to tell the nation how to behave - a person chosen to warn us against danger.

It would have been the bitterest of ironies if Savile had ever presented a public information film about stranger danger or not accepting sweets from people you don't know (he didn't, although he did write the foreword for some cautionary books on the subject), but it still seems incredible to me that he was ever allowed to present anything, simply because he was such a deeply and unapologetically strange person. Take a look at this PIF from 1971. Try and watch it as objectively as you can, judge him on what you see, not what you now know.

So, objectively, what is going on here? Forget the mismatched outfit and the jewelry and the dirty white Perkin Warbeck haircut, these are as much props as his cigars and that chair he used to have that made cups of tea. What we have is a brittle, brusque man, full of anger, seething with contempt. When he starts shaking the box he becomes visibly agitated, his shoulders squaring as if ready for confrontation. He doesn't smile once, not even when his serious point is made. He's all stick, no carrot - and if you don't listen to him you're going to get smashed to bits: very unfunny.

In the second clip he's het up about women and their inability to shop and pick up the kids without causing an accident, although the idea that they might be badly disfigured seems to satisfy his desire that they get what's coming to them. And is it just me, or do they hold the final shot a little too long? Don't look into his eyes, you will start to feel that he is unblinkingly appraising you, and that you are not coming out of it at all well. Basically, he hates you, regardless of whether or not you wear a seatbelt.

Here's a short clip from his Saturday primetime variety show 'Clunk Click'. This is a low-key, more adult Savile than we're used to. He's actually quite somber and thoughtful, which is much more disconcerting than his usual sinister tomfoolery, especially if you listen to what he's actually saying. He's basically comparing himself to Jesus, and telling Uri Geller to use his gift to heal the world, just like Jimmy has. Savile seems convinced that he has overcome incredible odds to be on the telly, but he may of course be thinking of his double life, which must have been extremely difficult to maintain.

When he stops talking about himself and lets Uri do his thing, the subject of his drawing gets some indulgent titters from contemporary audiences used to the idea of Jimmy as a 'ladies man', but it obviously gives pause now. Interestingly, this clip (and the next) were taken from the BBC tribute show broadcast a couple of months after he died when he was still considered a high achieving weirdo and national treasure rather than an evil monster.

Finally, here he is in conversation with Russell Harty, one of the most apparently artless but insidiously offensive interviewers who ever lived, a man who was always pissing off his subjects. There's something chilling about the control Savile exudes in this sequence: he's being interviewed live on national telly in front of a hundred people in person and millions at home, and he doesn't even bother to stop eating his dinner. When Harty puts his foot in it, Savile destroys him. It's all done under the pretence of banter, but his eyes aren't smiling - he's deadly serious, even about the chips - and the message is quite clear: this is not a man to be fucked with. If he was this aggressive offscreen, it is perhaps not surprising that people waited until he was dead to tell the truth about him.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or even a particularly astute people watcher. I'm also looking at a completed jigsaw, not trying to work out what the picture should be, so it's easy to see everything as a puzzle piece. But it bothers me this Savile business: the awful things he did; the impunity with which he did them; the fact that he got away with it his whole life, and that he implicated us all simply by being such a public figure, the fact that it was 'good while it lasted', and it lasted so very long. Like I say, it bothers me. It bothers me a lot.

I Like Icke

The least interesting explanation of David Icke’s behaviour over the last twenty years is that he is insane, although that in itself throws up lots of questions, especially around the way society treats the mentally ill. Now I don't think David Icke is insane, but then I don't really know what David Icke is, conman, prophet, cosmic messenger or heir presumptive to the Godhead. I don't believe any of what he says, but I can't be sure that it isn't true.

David's personal history is fascinating, and if it looks familiar it's because it mirrors what generally happens to saints and messiahs: a normal life thrown into chaos by an impending sense of destiny; a sudden, sometimes violent conversion; martyrdom; redemption. Lest we get too carried away, psychiatric wards are full of saints and messiahs, too, of course.

A NORMAL LIFE

David was born in 1952. From an early age, he wanted to be a professional footballer. Like Albert Camus and Pope John Paul II, he played in goal and, like them, enjoyed the solitude and time for reflection that the position offered: the sense of being in a team, but also apart. He played for Hereford and Coventry before retiring at the shockingly young age of 21 with chronic arthritis. It was this crippling condition that would perhaps have more bearing on his unusual destiny than any other factor.

With his footballing career behind him, David then decided that he would like to work for the BBC, so he became a sports reporter on a Leicester newspaper before breaking into regional radio and TV, achieving his goal in 1983 as one of the 'Breakfast Time' team alongside Selina Scott and cross dressing flagellant and drug user Frank Bough. At the same time, struggling with his arthritis, he began looking into alternative therapies and this, ultimately, led him to new age theories and The Green Party, for whom he became a spokesman in 1988 (the Green Party did not have a leader on principle, but Icke was by far the most charismatic and popular of its four elected speakers, a de facto leader).

David, pictured just before things got weird

AN IMPENDING SENSE OF DESTINY

In 1989, things started to get weird. David began to feel the pull of destiny, an unexplained, unseen influence, a presence that disconcerted him and left him anticipating something that never seemed to materialise. Whilst in a newsagents he felt a sudden magnetic force, a strange, compelling energy that directed him to a book by a psychic medium called Betty Shine. David decided to contact Betty and see if she could help him with his arthritis.

In 1990, David left the BBC, having resigned after refusing to pay his poll tax, a political stance the ‘impartial’ corporation couldn’t allow. Privately, I’m sure they felt relieved, as David was clearly going through some sort of mid-life crisis. That same year, Betty Shine had some unexpected news for David: he had been chosen to heal the Earth.

I'll repeat that: HE HAD BEEN CHOSEN TO HEAL THE EARTH.

The deal was this: David would be the receptacle for information from the spirit world. He would not understand it all, but he would pass on the messages through books and personal appearances. He would be ridiculed and scorned but, ultimately, he would be proved right.

A SUDDEN, SOMETIMES VIOLENT CONVERSION

Shortly afterwards, David felt a strong urge to visit Peru and, at a pre-Incan burial site, he went through his most profound experience to date, feeling as if he had been plugged directly into some spiritual socket, his body and mind energised with an unearthly power, as if he were an empty vessel to be filled with new and astonishing ideas.

On his return to the UK, David resigned from the Green Party and, dressed in a turquoise (a ‘healing colour’) track suit, called a press conference to tell everybody what had happened to him, that a series of global catastrophes were imminent, and that the world would end in 1997. He has said that, even as he made the announcement, part of him was thinking ‘David, this is nonsense’*.

MARTYRDOM 

The national press seemed to think that David was in the middle of a massive nervous breakdown so, sensitively, played the story for laughs. The BBC, perhaps wishing to get even with their difficult ex-employee, invited him on to their flagship ‘Wogan’ show to talk about his new direction, where he was met by Terry at his least twinkly and a derisive, mocking audience. Somewhere along the line, he mentioned he was the ‘son of God’, although, he says, he meant that he was simply a part of the ‘infinite consciousness’ rather than claiming to be the second coming.  Whatever he meant, however, the appearance made David a laughing stock, a national joke. It nearly destroyed him and, presumably, destroyed Wogan’s chances of getting the Dalai Lama or The Pope on the show.  

Turquoise lamb to the slaughter

Terry stifles a titter

'But they're not laughing with you, they're laughing at you'

REDEMPTION

But David prevailed. He didn’t try and make the national news any more, instead concentrating on writing books and engaging with an ever growing audience who were at least receptive to his ideas, even, in some cases, thinking of him as a Prophet. His early Biblical-style predictions of floods and earthquakes became more sophisticated over the years, including predicting attacks on major US cities between 2001 and 2002, as well as a Middle Eastern conflict that would lead to World War 3 (his ‘hit rate’ is certainly better than the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have predicted the end of the world ten times since 1914, and they didn't even mention Jimmy Savile, who David outed as a predatory paedophile the day Savile died) Over time, his audience grew, and his reputation, irreparably damaged within ‘normal’ society, grew stronger and stronger in alternative circles (his website currently receives over 350,000 hits a day).

David’s main focus over the last twenty years has been to make sense of the messages he apparently receives from the ether, weaving together a compelling, hugely complex web of conspiracy theory that appeals to almost everyone who thinks that the world is a shadowy place with something to hide.  He has drawn together a worldview that is also a saga, a continuous narrative - part 'Revelations', part 'Dune', part H.P Lovecraft - which can be continually updated to incorporate current events and personalities.

At the heart of it is the idea that the world is controlled by an elite few, and that everyone else is unknowingly manipulated into slavishly following their orders. It’s the standard Illuminati / Bilderberg / New World Order idea, but with a uniquely Icke-ian twist : the secret leaders of the world are alien lizards. Oh, and paedophiles. So, yes, alien paedophile lizards, who use blood sacrifice and genocide to create the negative energy that they feed on.

Now that sounds ridiculous, but, again, can you prove it isn’t so? Don’t all religions start with a seemingly fantastic truth which, in many cases, may even be a lie? And it’s not just religion that can be hard to take. Some people still refuse to believe the Earth isn’t 6,000 years old despite all the evidence; some people simply can’t believe in evolution, or that Princess Diana is dead, or that Jamie Cullum isn’t a jazz artist - it doesn’t mean that they are all stupid, or mad, or hucksters, or con men, or liars - just that, perhaps, they find it difficult to overcome their programming (except the Jamie Cullum people: they’re simply idiots).

Icke’s main point seems to be not much more than that we are all conditioned from birth to work for the system without ever really questioning what’s behind it all, so perhaps his paedophile alien lizards are symbolic or allegorical or just a shock device to shake up our collective brain boxes. If his message can be encapsulated into a few guiding principles it might be: you are not free; you are living an illusion; there are answers out there, but you have to look harder and in different places, and forget everything you think you know.

Now I don’t necessarily believe that The Queen is a reptilian human hybrid and murderer, or that the Moon is a control station, or that Cancer is a fungus from outer space, but, when it comes to making up your own mind in this weird and impenetrably baffling world we live in, I like Icke.   

* This part of the story always reminds me of Howard Beale in 'Network' (1976). Beale is the respected long term anchorman of a news programme who, when he is told he is about to be fired, goes on air to say that he is about to commit suicide, and if everyone tunes in next week they can see him do it. Beale doesn't have to kill himself because his ratings improve, so instead he becomes 'the mad prophet of the airwaves', a crazy holy man who goes onto TV to tell it how it is and shout 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'.

We take it for granted that Beale is literally as mad as hell, but there is a scene when he is woken in the middle of the night by a light on his face and he sits up and has an animated conversation with an unseen presence. It's hugely unsettling as, for a moment, you're no longer sure if this is a delusion or is really happening - then you realise that, for Beale, it's all the same thing.

On a lighter note, it also strikes me that Icke's conversion from football pundit to new age prophet is an Alan Partridge series waiting to happen.