The Savile Legacy

[poliphilo]

How long before they start making movies about Jimmy Savile? What a great role it is, by the way. Actors are going to be queuing up to play him.

The further we move away from him the bigger he's going to loom. No other figure of the period tells us so much about ourselves. 

The sleaziness of our morals, the tawdriness of our culture, the corruption of our politics.  

Will historians of the future be talking about the Era of Savile, the Age of Savile, the Savile Years. You know, I think they will.

Comments

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Savile as spirit of the age? Shudder.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's shuddersome- but...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

"He groomed a nation" is the phrase that will last from yesterday.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Great phrase-making.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

The greengrocer this morning had a box labelled 'Saville oranges' - he is everywhere. (I'm at least half serious here).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A brightly coloured fruit with a bitter after-taste.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, very neat!

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Yuck.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

We don't talk about the 'Gilles de Rais' years, so I doubt it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but de Rais was before there was celebrity culture.

Savile was all over late 20th century Britain like a rash- a genuinely significant cultural figure who knew everybody and got himself honoured by the Crown and the Pope and the Royal Marines. Working class boy who made good, pioneering DJ, social climber, TV celeb, do-gooder- and monster. All our obsessions, all our narratives meet in him. he's the social historian's wet dream.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

But a monumental self publicist with an ego to match (does that sound familiar at all?)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And such amazing will power.

A report I read the other day said he went to the States before he was famous and managed to befriend Elvis Presley. That must have taken enormous chutzpah. I don't think it can have been easy to break into Elvis's charmed circle- especially when (like Savile) you were a talentless nobody.

[spike7451.livejournal.com]

You know, I think they will.

..... I think you are so right!