Part One: Jimmy Savile: Britain's Unending Nightmare

Robert explores the life and times of Jimmy Savile, the face of the BBC for decades, an ally of Margaret Thatcher, and a pedophile rapist on an incomprehensible scale. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Hey, everybody. Robert here, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences have announced that three different Cool Zone Media shows have been nominated for awards at the 30th Annual Webby Awards. You can vote on these now if you just Google the name of the podcast and the category. Behind the Bastards has been nominated in the Experimental and Innovation Podcasts category. It Could Happen Here is in the News and Politics Podcasts category, and James Stout's mini-series, Migrating to America: A Dream Worth Dying For, has been nominated in the Podcasts Documentary category. And you can find links to vote for each of these podcasts in the episode description and in the posts on social

• 0:46Robert Evans?

  media for episodes of It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards. Thank you. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  What? What were you saying? I couldn't hear you. I was just so enthralled with this book I'm reading.

• 1:08Robert Evans?

  Oh, is that a copy of Girl Gone Wild by Courtney Kosak?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:12Robert Evans?

  I'm excited to read that myself. I wish we could get Courtney on the show.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  I'm here. I'm here.

• 1:17Robert Evans?

  Oh, I probably could have told that by looking at my screen at any point in time, but I never do. Welcome to the podcast, Courtney. How are you doing today?

• 1:26Speaker 02

  I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back.

• 1:29Robert Evans?

  So, your book is coming out. That's exciting.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  It's exciting. It's nerve-wracking. Yeah, it's all the things.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  It's really good so far. I haven't finished it yet, but it's really good so far.

• 1:39Robert Evans?

  You want to up top here, plug what your book is before we get into the subject of our episodes for this and next week?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is an unwitting feminist coming-of-age about trying to make it in Hollywood. It's called Girl Gone Wild. It's about- All the mistakes, quote unquote, I've made.

• 2:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, and about like your time working for Girls Gone Wild, which you've talked about on on our show a couple of times in the past. And unfortunately, it's going to be kind of relevant to these episodes. Do you know who we're doing this week? Did Sophie inform you?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:17Robert Evans?

  Good, good. What do you know about Jimmy Savile?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Oh, OK, vaguely. I thought you were about to say Joe Francis.

• 2:27Robert Evans?

  No, no, no, no, no. Not I was not saying anything about Joe Francis. But we're talking about Jimmy Savile, who is was a. I mean, he was everything in UK pop culture for quite a while, right? Like, he started out as a DJ. He became like a television star. And he was ultimately just famous for being extremely famous. And being the guy who was like always on TV. If you grew up in the UK from like, really, the mid 70s up through the late 90s? Like, he was the face of the BBC. Do you know anything about this guy?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Is is he raunchy? Would the first thing that came to mind was like the stories about,

• 3:13Speaker 02

  you know, Robert Plant sticking or Jimmy Page. But did he have any connection with those bands?

• 3:18Robert Evans?

  Yes, he was connected to every band that was big in the 60s and 70s, pretty much. Like, there are very few major pop musicians from that. Like, I think people tend to call it like the golden era of pop music, of rock and roll and whatnot. There's almost no one that he wasn't connected to from like Elvis up through the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, like, he knew all of those guys. And, you know, didn't necessarily wasn't necessarily in good with all of them. But because of his position as like Britain's top DJ, like, he was connected to all those dudes. We'll be hearing some stories about those people.

• 3:55Robert Evans?

  But this guy, Jimmy Savile, is probably the number one request I get from British listeners. Is like, you need to do Jimmy Savile. And I've noticed that Americans tend to be either completely unaware of this guy or they only kind of heard a couple of things. And most of what they heard is that after he died, it came out that he'd been a massive pedophile for years, right? This is a guy who committed sex crimes on like an industrial scale.

• 4:23Robert Evans?

  He's kind of, in some ways, he's kind of like the British Jeffrey Epstein, or at least he's like, one of the guys you could accuse of being that.

• 4:33Robert Evans?

  But this is, you know, when I first, because I didn't know much about Jimmy Savile. I think I was kind of vaguely aware that he had existed. And then, you know, he dies in 2012. It comes out that all, there are all these allegations of horrible sex crimes he'd committed. And when I started reading it, initially, it was always framed as like, and no one knew. He kept it a secret his whole life. It was this, you know, there was no way anyone could have realized that like, the whole time he was this famous power broker in the music industry and in, you know, British television, he was also abusing women and boys. And what's really interesting to me is that like, that's all bullshit. It was entirely obvious the whole time. He like bragged about it.

• 5:16Robert Evans?

  There were numerous interviews where he talked about at least aspects of his behavior. Like, there actually was never any excuse for people to be surprised that Jimmy Savile was a massive sex pest. I mean, we'll pull up some photos of him later, but I, and I hate to be like, oh, that guy looks like a pedophile, but Jimmy Savile is the most, that guy looks like a pedophile, pedophile in the history of fucking pedophiles.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I can't wait to see. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, there was so much of that in this era, too. Like, in Woody Allen films where he's like dating a 17-year-old or, and that's like, not even considered bad.

• 5:54Robert Evans?

  Well, no, and it's, one of the things, I will, I will be using both the terms, like, when we talk about what he did, like, had sex with, and the terms molested or raped, because it's often unclear. The age of consent in the UK is 16. So him having sex with a 16-year-old is not inherently legally rape in the society that he's doing it, right? Like, we can have the opinions on that that we have.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:18Robert Evans?

  But that's part of what camouflage is this. And at the start of the pop industry, there's a lot of people, including probably most of the musicians from this era, whose music you like, who had sex with teenage girls.

• 6:33Robert Evans?

  Sometimes illegally, because there were a lot of 12, 13, 14 year olds got in there. But often very illegally, because again, the age of consent was like 16, right? And you know, this is, there is an element of, at the start of his crimes, this was a really different time and the moral values around that were a lot different. Were, part of what happens with Jimmy is that the period in which he gets famous and has, starts getting access to all these teenage girls, is also the period in which birth control becomes like, like particularly the pill, becomes normalized, right? So there's just this explosion in people fucking, right? That's based on, oh, suddenly there's no consequences to it? That, that doesn't really get like curtailed until the AIDS crisis, right?

• 7:20Robert Evans?

  And so part of what's interesting to me is that this is not just a guy who is, this, this is, part of the story here is this is a guy who kind of comes of age as a famous person during that era, where it's really easy for men at a certain level of fame to have access to a lot of teenage girls and quote unquote, "consequence free." It's not "consequence free." There's a lot of people that he harms permanently. But that's the way it's seen widely. And then he has to figure out a way, once that era ends, and once his kind of fame as a DJ ends, to continue having access to, to, to people of that age. And that's when, that's when he goes from a really gross guy in an industry filled with gross guys,

• 8:04Robert Evans?

  who all did very similar gross things, to a, a unique kind of predator, right? And that's the story of Jimmy Savile. Margaret Thatcher is also heavily involved.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Oh my God. So like, how old is he in this B-side of the story when he gets really creepy? I mean, beyond-

• 8:23Robert Evans?

  He's pretty creepy the whole time. But like in his, it's like in his 40s and on, that like, things start to get really, that he get, that he, that he kind of evolves as a predator in a unique way. Because a lot of what's interesting to me about this case is that Savile's not just abusive to individuals, and he is, but he, he's like, he's grooming institutions, including the BBC and most of the major hospitals in the United Kingdom, in order to get access to victims after a certain point. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ, Robert!

• 8:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  All right.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 9:38Robert Evans?

  Picture this: You're listening to the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast, and suddenly, wait, what did they just say? Well, the questions raised in those show-stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. Hosts Gabe and Chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's Tuesday episode, from sexual health and HIV prevention to finding the right doctor. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences.

• 10:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, let's, let's start the story. James Wilson Vincent Saville was born on Halloween night, October 31st, 1926. Fucking Halloween, like, just...

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 10:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, his hometown was named Consort Terrace, a which Wikipedia informs me is in the Burleigh area of Leeds in the west riding of Yorkshire. Because for whatever reason, people on that island cannot give normal place names to places, like, fucking, hey, British people, here's a town name for you, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. See? Williams, that's how place names should sound. I don't know what the fuck you guys have been doing over there, but it's nonsense.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  St. Louis, bitches.

• 10:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Oh, no, he's in the Burleigh area of Leeds, in the west riding of Yorkshire. Fuck you guys, come on with your J R R token bullshit here. Get at, give it a normal name. Um, I'm sorry, British people, but also... I'm not. Um, so in his own autobiography, which was published under both the titles, As It Happens and Love is an Uphill Thing. No. Yeah. Jimmy writes this of his own birth. "Some babies are born strong, some weak. Being the youngest of seven, it would appear that my father's last effort was lacking in the juices of strength. Eyewitnesses have it that I was born sound asleep." He's a, he's a sickly kid, right? And his, his family members, people who knew the

• 11:39Robert Evans?

  family around that time confirmed that he was, you know, ill as a child and suffered from regular health problems. He exaggerates these as part of his like personal mythos and narrative. Um, for his part, Savile claims that he nearly died when he was two years old and was so sick that a priest was brought in to administer last rites while his mother prayed feverishly to a then unconfirmed saint, Margaret Sinclair. And like, things were so bad that the doctor just like leaves at one point and says, "Just tell me when he dies and I'll fill in the death certificate the rest of the way. I don't want to keep coming back here."

• 12:16Robert Evans?

  At one point, his relatives think that he's actually passed on and his grandmother does like the old timey thing where you hold a mirror up to his, you know, tiny mouth to see if he's breathing. Um, and in his book and in numerous interviews over the years, Savile took great pleasure in delivering the punchline to this joke, which is that as she puts the mirror down, he pisses, hitting his grandmother in the eye. And this story improving he's alive, right? This story is a foundational part of the Savile myth. And in his own autobiography, he follows it with this very strange passage. "Heartened by my urinary success of catching my grandmother fair and square, I continued in my infancy to pee on anything or anyone who unwarily came into range. And my first

• 12:57Robert Evans?

  recorded applause were for direct hits on guests, fires, tea tables, priests, and other such targets. I wasn't very popular for a number of years." That's weird. That's just an odd thing to say? It is interesting how early even in his autobiography, when he's, you know, he's a children's entertainer, to a major extent, right?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 13:19Robert Evans?

  But he's, he's writing to such an extent about like, his penis, you know? Again, there's a lot of, in these, in his autobiographies and the things he'll say, he will tell like, 80 or 90% of the truth. He doesn't quite go all the way, but you, he focuses a lot on stuff to where like, people should have known, this is a guy with a weird fascination with his penis and like, what it's doing. And it'll get a lot more, he'll talk a lot more, obviously about actual, at least, obviously, he's not talking about sex crimes here, but it is weird, the degree to which he focuses on this, in, as he's talking about himself as a two-year-old. Now, his mother, Jimmy's mother, Agnes, gives a very different account of his infant

• 14:02Robert Evans?

  illness, when she was interviewed in 1970. Per the book In Plain Sight by Dan Davies, she recalled the illness struck when Jimmy was two and a half. "My oldest daughter had him out in the pram and stopped at a shop, leaving Jimmy outside. He was strapped in but jumped about so much that the pram overturned and the hood caught the back of his neck and severed one of the muscles." And that's a completely different story. He's not like a sick kid who's dying and, you know, in bed or whatever. He's like a kid who has an injury, a pretty normal kind of injury. His pram falls over and he gets a muscle that's severed and the injury heals badly. Jimmy can't sit up or properly shut his eyes for six months, even while sleeping.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 14:41Robert Evans?

  He was admitted to the hos- yeah, it's really a scary thing if you're the parents. He's admitted to the hospital, who are like, "We don't really know what to do, you know? There might be, we could try surgery, but we don't know if that'll actually work." And his family says, "No, we don't want to like, risk that." On the way back from the hospital, Agnes stops briefly to pray at a cathedral. And then later that day, Jimmy goes to sleep and closes his eyes, which initially terrifies the family because they think he's died, because he hadn't been closing his eyes. But he was actually fine. The injury had just finally healed, right? That's a much less dramatic story, where like, and we all, we were clustered around, then they, they put the mirror up to see if he was still- No, he had a weird injury and they were scared because when he closed his eyes, they thought he was dead, but he wasn't.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  So it's not both. It's one was a lie and the other one.

• 15:29Robert Evans?

  One's a lie.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Okay, gotcha.

• 15:31Robert Evans?

  I can't think of why Agnes would have lied about this. I can think of a lot of reasons why Jimmy would.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:37Robert Evans?

  Now, Agnes did later write to the Catholic Church urging for the beatification of Margaret Sinclair, but again, this is just a very different story. His family was very poor growing up, although not unusually. They were like the normal level of poor for the town that they lived in. So it's not like he was the poor kid in town and had to watch all of these other kids who had more. It was, this is England in like the twenties and thirties and he lives in like the north in a mining town. Everybody's broke. Nobody has money then.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:09Robert Evans?

  Now, again, he was the youngest of seven and he was an accident. His mom's like 40 when she has him, which is, I mean, that's an old pregnancy today, especially in like the twenties. That's fairly uncommon. And he was dubbed, he claims, the family's not again child. That's the term he uses of like, they were like, ah, this was, we really can't ever let this happen again. And he's gonna grow up with a chip on his shoulder about this. He was never very close to most of his older siblings and he will later become a mama's boy in a deeply weird way. We're not really gonna talk about it enough in these episodes, but he's like veering towards Patrick Bates levels of like very strange mom issues.

• 16:54Robert Evans?

  But initially, he feels like he's ignored, like he doesn't get a lot of attention. And he'll write about this both as if it frustrated him and also he'll talk about like, and I really like that because I'm a loner and this really worked out for me. I like not getting a lot of attention. I can't tell which is coping and which is the truth. That said, his other family members don't seem to agree that he was ignored and not given a lot of attention. His sister Joan actually says that she and the rest of the family considered Jimmy their miracle baby and that he was kind of fawned over by all of his older siblings and everyone else in the family because he'd had health issues as a kid, right? And Davies points out in his book about Savile that while Savile preferred to

• 17:38Robert Evans?

  portray himself as the not again baby, as this kid that wasn't wanted and was kind of ignored, his family insists that he was treated as the miracle child, the chosen one, right?

• 17:50Robert Evans?

  Which makes a lot more sense based on his subsequent behavior.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Some people cannot get enough attention. Like, there's

• 17:57Robert Evans?

  No.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  An endless hole.

• 18:00Robert Evans?

  And it's interesting to me that he feels a need to like, lie about this, to complain, to be like, oh, and they didn't even really want me, you know? I had to deal with the fact that I didn't really belong. Whereas his family's like, no, we were obsessed with him because he nearly died. Now, Jimmy's father, Vince, was a tall and gangly man who never made a lot of money, but was employed consistently. And seems to have been like, a pretty responsible parent, although not necessarily in a, what you'd call a reputable industry. His boss was the town bookie, a guy named Jim Windsor, who young Jimmy seems to have grown up admiring. Windsor once bragged to a newspaper that he'd been arrested once a year for 20 years. So, his dad's, he's, Jimmy grows up

• 18:43Robert Evans?

  connected to at least a low-level organized crime. You know, this guy's running like, numbers rackets and stuff. And his dad is kind of his gopher. But his dad's also not ma- not a big wig. His dad is handling like, very basic jobs for this guy. Like, he's, so Jimmy sees this dude who is like, kind of the, the patron of the family, who is a criminal and who's doing really, really well. But his dad's never doing really well, really well. His dad's just kinda-

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Question for you, Robert. Windsor, like, house of, like, royalty?

• 19:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. But no, he's not royal. It's just also a name. Some people are just named Windsor.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  I was like, I was like, British Windsor. The Queen's corgis. What's happening?

• 19:25Robert Evans?

  No, he's not, he, there will be royal family connections later, but not at this stage. This is just a guy with that last name.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Got it, got it, got it. My bad.

• 19:34Robert Evans?

  So from the jump, Jimmy grows up close to and comfortable with some of the more mainstream elements of organized crime in his society. And he probably grows up aware that like, the people who do best are the people who are willing to break the rules. And because my dad is kind of scared of going too far, we never had a lot, as opposed to his boss, right? It was a bolder man, who was willing to commit crimes and get arrested. So the family is like, working, lower-middle class, but he does get to see how the big shots do. And he kind of comes to want that for himself. Now, despite the fact that Jimmy often portrays his family as being quite poor and

• 20:14Robert Evans?

  like unusually poor, it's noted by people who knew them that Agnes actually, like the family owns an unusually large home. His mom makes them buy a larger home than they can really afford. So like, a lot of the rooms are kind of empty. I think because she wants a big, nice house as like a status symbol, right? So she has to budget really carefully, but they're able to afford the house. So they're doing okay. He goes to school.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  I was gonna ask you if they lived in one of those council estates, but no, they're not that poor.

• 20:45Robert Evans?

  No, they're not that poor. They're certainly not the bottom rung in terms of like poverty. They're not like comfortable, I wouldn't say, but they're getting by. And even though this house is kind of bigger than they could afford, his mom is really good with stretching their money. And he's able to like, they're able to afford it. And this is kind of, he becomes like a hand-me-down kid. He's known in town as like, he doesn't, no one ever buys clothes for Jimmy. He wears all of his older siblings' clothes, which a lot of people, you know, grew up with that experience.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty normal.

• 21:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He goes to school in town, and the main method of discipline in Jimmy's era and the place where he's going to school is that the headmaster will beat you with a bamboo cane if you're bad. This is not, again, weird for the time.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  No, but ow.

• 21:30Robert Evans?

  But ow. Because Jimmy is so sickly, he qualifies for free milk and a free spoonful of malt at school each day, which I think, I think they're trying to make, help him avoid getting rickets. I think that's why they give him a spoonful of malt.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  A spoonful of malt.

• 21:46Robert Evans?

  But I forget exactly why.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Helps the medicine go down.

• 21:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a very like 20s, 30s thing, right? The sick kids get free milk and malt. This is also something he writes and talks about constantly because it reinforces his underdog narrative. Agnes drove the family and they were, Agnes is like the, wearing the pants in the household, right? His dad is a very retiring and kind of shy figure. He's gonna die much earlier than Agnes and she is, she's the force to be reckoned with. They are extremely Catholic. Jimmy Savile is raised Catholic and is a hardcore Catholic his entire life. They almost never miss mass and she makes sure that even with the family budget as

• 22:33Robert Evans?

  tight as it was, they always have money to put in the collection plate for arguably the wealthiest institution in human history at the time. Yup, yup. Yeah, the Catholic Church couldn't have gone by without that tuppence that you dusted in there. They wouldn't have been able to afford to move all those priests who are molesting kids to different places so they can molest more kids. Of his mom's faith, Savile said, "She was an old fashioned religioso. She went to mass because she had a guilty conscience." Now, that's interesting to me because he'll emphasize this a lot and guilty over what? Now, we don't know. He never says. This is one of, a number of very vague, never directly stated bits of Jimmy lore that could be seen as supporting the idea.

• 23:17Robert Evans?

  Some people have suggested that he was probably molested as a child. There's not evidence of this. He never talked about it. I've never heard anyone like come up with any like clear factual allegations based on a firsthand narrative that he was molested. However, he has a deeply weird relationship with his mom and he goes on to molest hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, potentially thousands of kids. So, people naturally wonder, was Jimmy a victim himself? Now, I, I'm not, I don't have a satisfying answer on this. This is gonna be one of those things where I just have to shrug and say like, I don't know, but he is like, he never has a, a long-term relationship with an adult woman in his entire life.

• 24:02Robert Evans?

  He never has a real girlfriend. He never gets married. I don't think he's ever close to having a long-term relationship with a woman, other than his mom, who he will like go on dates with and hang out with as a young man. Like he, she is like his, a major part of his social life while he is like famous in the early years of fame. To an extent that a lot of people have wondered, was something go on there? And I could, I will tell you, people wonder that. I don't have any evidence. I'm not aware of any evidence. It's just kind of a thing people wonder. Because his relationship with his mom is so weird.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  She romanticized him in some way. Like, that's kind of damaging enough, but there's no-

• 24:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and may not have involved actual molestation. Sorry, I cut you off.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, uh, there's no priest molestation at any point?

• 24:49Robert Evans?

  Maybe, not that we know of. Like, obviously, there are priests who were around the area he grew up in who molested kids. Because that's true everywhere there were Catholic churches. But I haven't, there's, he never alleges that, and I don't have any evidence of it, right?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:07Robert Evans?

  So we can, we can ponder this. And obviously, it is not uncommon for people who wind up being child molesters to have been molested or to have had, like, very early traumatic sexual experiences. But that doesn't have to happen for someone to be a child molester. Sometimes people are just child molesters because they suck, right?

• 25:27Robert Evans?

  Anyway, his childhood is interrupted by World War II, the big dub dub dose. Although, not in a way that was particularly traumatizing to him. A lot of British kids in this era have really traumatized, because they're bombed, right? Kids in London and stuff are getting bombed and hiding in shelters. And he gets a bit of that, but he's in a really good area to avoid, like, the worst of that. He recalls when he was 11 or so and the war started, that he and a bunch of local kids were taken out of the city to this rural camp where they did minor manual labor in order to keep them away from bombs. Basically, it's a long-term summer camp where, you know, you're working on projects and stuff. You're helping to build things out in the woods. And they're just trying to keep you away from where the Germans are targeting.

• 26:13Robert Evans?

  Now, just based on when things happened, we know Jimmy was 13 in 1939, so he can't have been 11 when the war started, because that just isn't, doesn't work. One of the difficulties here is Jimmy gives ages for where, when, how old he is when a bunch of different stuff happens that absolutely cannot be true. And I don't know why he'd lie about it. This may have just been, honestly, him forgetting, because once you get to a certain age, it's hard to be like, was I 10 when that happened? Was I 12? Like, I can't tell for myself on some things that happened to me.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Check your damn memoir, though. Come on.

• 26:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it is a little, you do have to like, kind of go back and be like, no, he couldn't have been 11, he was 13. We know when he was fucking born, right? He wouldn't have been worried about getting bombed by the Germans in 1937. That would have been crazy. And they hadn't started bombing the UK in 1939, but I can believe that, you know, maybe that, like, that era, they were getting worried about it and stuff. So, anyway, whatever. Whatever age he is when he gets to this fucking summer camp, he's only there for a few months before his parents borrow a car to visit him. I think he's there for like, six months, and then they come to visit him, and his mom sees that his camp, where he's camping, is directly underneath like, a massive gasoline tank, and she's like, well, fuck, he could get blown up here.

• 27:32Robert Evans?

  I'm not gonna let him just, I'll take him home, right? I feel like the odds aren't any worse that he gets blown up in Leeds than sitting underneath this gas tank. So his mom takes him back home, and this is the moment that Jimmy, you can tell Jimmy says this, thinks this is the moment that his life really begins, because once he gets back home, all the men are away at war at this point. This probably would have been like, 40, 41, right? All of the men are away at war, and a bunch of the older teenage boys, who aren't old enough to have been like, drafted yet, are working, right? They're taking over jobs that the, the grown men have, have, are no longer able to do, as are a lot of the, the, the women, and there's shortages of everything.

• 28:15Robert Evans?

  So first off, he is kind of one of the only quote-unquote "men," because he's 13 or 14. Now that's, in this era, a child starting to become recognized as a child. But if you think back to it, if you go back a generation or two, a 14-year-old is basically a man in, in Western society. That's when you start working full-time. That's when people, you are old enough to like run a job and be living your life. And the concept of a childhood isn't, doesn't sort of descend evenly upon society. It is starting to at this period of time. But it's also not very, it's not weird that he's going to be treated by a lot of adults as a grown man, as a 14-year-old, or as close to a grown man,

• 29:00Robert Evans?

  because all of the bigger grown men are gone, right?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Including his dad? Or is his dad still around?

• 29:08Robert Evans?

  No, his dad is still around. His father's like old enough that he's, he's not gonna get drafted, but he's like working all the time and shit.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:15Robert Evans?

  Um, so because there's shortages of everything, a vibrant black market opens up, and Jimmy rushes straight to the middle of it. You know, he was, because of sort of his upbringing, I think he was primed to be willing to get into a business like that. And because everyone else is kind of gone, he's able to start making money by, as he puts it, "We were all in the racket business then," which is likely true. So he's, he's hustling one way or the other. He's finding things that people need. He's selling them for high prices. He's like probably nicking stuff to resell. You know, this is kind of the birth of him, like, starting to become and live as an independent person. And he, he gets into it basically as a war profiteer, you know, as a 14-year-old war profiteer,

• 30:00Robert Evans?

  which is interesting. You know who else is a war profiteer?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Products and services?

• 30:07Robert Evans?

  Very possibly. We have no way of knowing. Uh, I would say there's like a solid 40% chance that whoever is advertising this podcast right now is a war profiteer. And hey, somebody's gotta make money off of wars.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 30:53Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto, Dolutegravir, Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 31:17Speaker 06

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 31:53Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

• 32:03Robert Evans?

  We're back! So, Jimmy is making spare money hustling. Until one day, he decides to go buy the local ball, one of the big local ballrooms, the Mecca Locarno Ballroom, which is like a dance hall, right? And he sees that they need work, because again, all the men are gone. He turns himself into a gopher for the adults in Leeds' vibrant entertainment industry. The city had recently been nicknamed Britain's "City of Sin" by one Sunday paper, and working at the Mecca is what gave Jimmy his real education, one that, quote, and this is from his autobiography, "qualified me for every A-level that ever existed in hell." He is not really hiding the fact that he's a scumbag.

• 32:47Robert Evans?

  Jimmy continues, "Not yet five feet in height, as thin as a drumstick, with big eyes, ears, and nose, I was everyone's mascot, pet, runner, holder of mysterious parcels and secrets. Because I didn't understand the first thing about anything, I was the confidant of murderers, whores, black marketeers, crooks of every trade, and often of the innocent victims they preyed on. I also played the drums."

• 33:09Robert Evans?

  And he's, you know, dressing that up to make a better story, but this is probably pretty accurate as to like what he's doing. He is, he is hanging out with a very bad crowd who are making their living, like, there's a lot of prostitution that gets run through this ballroom. There's a lot of like sketchy stuff happening here. And because he's this kid, everyone's kind of fine with him being in the room. Now, he is also doing like a formal job there. The Mecca was short on members for the bands because of the war. So as Jimmy tells it, he became the relief band for the whole establishment, getting paid 10 shillings a week to fulfill a 50-pound-a-week job and scrounging for cigarettes under the seats

• 33:52Robert Evans?

  to make extra coin. This was a very different time. That's like a good way of making extra money is let's find some like half-smoked cigs to sell to people. That tells you how bad the war years were, that there's a good, there's a vibrant industry and cigarettes people didn't finish.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Not even just for him, yeah, to sell. Oh, my God, gross.

• 34:13Robert Evans?

  He would finish school at four and then rush to the Mecca to perform for their afternoon shows. Then he'd have a couple hours break, and then he'd do a second half-hour spot in the evenings. The relief band was just him and a girl who played piano. And even in the 30s and 40s, this was not a legal arrangement. Quote, "Being hopelessly underage and therefore highly illegal, there were times when I was persona non grata onstage. 'Don't come in tomorrow,' the manager would hiss. 'The directors are coming.' When the visiting boss asked, 'Where's the second band?' The suave reply never failed. 'There's a big air raid going on in Hole, or Doncaster, or Halifax, and the relief band is made up of firemen. There were always lots of fires.'" So he is illegally doing this, and it's being justified as like, "Oh, no, the band's

• 34:57Robert Evans?

  not here right now because they're putting out fires from the bombs." Don't, don't notice that it's like a 14 year old kid.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  They're totally adults, yeah.

• 35:06Robert Evans?

  They're totally adults. And it's a whole band. Now, that is a fun, old timey tale of child labor. And we love a good, it is honestly, as child labor stories go, I don't know, they have an issue with that. I don't think it hurts a 14 year old kid for them to play the drums for an hour or two a night.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 35:22Robert Evans?

  Right? That's not really that bad, as things go. But you can see what's happening here, right? From almost the beginning of his life, Jim is drawn towards entertainment. And from his first gig, he gets used to the idea that your age doesn't matter. Even if there are laws against it, and that he's kind of special. He's not subject to the rules. And that's bad for a kid to learn, right? That's going to have consequences.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:50Robert Evans?

  Now, again, the adults around him don't find this too strange because of the time that this is happening in, right? And Savile also credits the, the, the way he's treated, the fact that he remained small and sickly. "I was like a chair or a table. People used to talk in front of me because I didn't exist. Anybody who had done anything wrong, I knew who had done it, but nobody ever asked me." And one of Jimmy's great strengths here is knowing when to keep his mouth shut around crimes. A skill he would only master further as an adult, right? Knowing how to cover up when he's aware that something illegal is going on. This is again, a very, very early thing that he learns how to do. Now, he claims that his first date is at age 12.

• 36:32Robert Evans?

  Based, again, because he's also saying that this is happening while he's working at the dance hall. That can't be accurate, based on when he was born and when all of this happened, right? But he claims that he goes on his first date when he's 12 with a 20 year old. And even if he's 14, a 14 year old and the 20 year old's pretty messed up, right? With a 20 year old who worked at the box office. He takes her out to a movie and the two like made out to some extent afterwards. If this story is true, and again, he's the only source on this. And he's telling the story because he thinks it makes him look cool, then Jimmy was molested as a child, right? But also, he clearly, if this happened at all, he clearly didn't view it that way. And wrote proudly in his autobiography that he learned, uh, based on this fooling around in the dark.

• 37:17Robert Evans?

  Quote, "The 90% you can't see is just as important as the 10% you can. These days, the percentage is reversed, but the principle is the same." Right? This is his- First lesson about girls.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Oh my god, you can totally see how it started. This is crazy.

• 37:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's crazy how much, how open he is about this, right?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 37:37Robert Evans?

  So, young Jim finds himself drawn to entertaining people, right? Particularly to performing onstage and to women. Basically, from the time that he's a pre-teen up to the time that he's like in his early adolescence. The other thing he develops early on is a fascination with death, specifically corpses. In his autobiography, immediately after describing his first date, he discusses a time of great excitement for me when one of the Mecca's lady patrons was discovered in several carrier bags in a ditch. This woman had been chopped to pieces and murdered and chopped to pieces, right?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 38:14Robert Evans?

  He talks about this grisly murder in a way I've never heard anyone write about a murder. He writes that, quote, "This was a whole new scene for me. I could never work out why it was necessary to cut her into bits."

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Alright, bro.

• 38:25Robert Evans?

  Now, that's an unhinged way to describe.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  That's, that's one of the most-

• 38:30Robert Evans?

  That's fucking wild.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  That's one of the most fucked up things I've ever heard. What do you mean? What do you mean, kid?

• 38:35Robert Evans?

  It gets way worse.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  I'm sure-

• 38:37Robert Evans?

  Jimmy Savile's relationship to dead bodies does not get healthier after this point.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  But, Jesus, he's what, like 12, 13, you said?

• 38:45Robert Evans?

  He's ma- he's like 14, probably.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Maybe 14?

• 38:48Robert Evans?

  Something like that. It's a little hard to tell, again. Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 38:51Robert Evans?

  Young. Yeah. It's fucking nuts.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  That's some fucking sicko shit.

• 38:56Robert Evans?

  What's even weirder is this next bit. Again, he's talking about a woman being cut up after getting murdered. "It was all part of a strange adult world that I never tried to understand. And even though I had a good idea who'd done it, no one ever asked me. Besides, I was far too excited about leaving school the following month."

• 39:15Speaker 01

  He didn't see this body cut up, did it?

• 39:17Robert Evans?

  He did. He's, yeah, he did. And he's fascinated by it. He really liked his-

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Oh, he witnessed it?

• 39:22Robert Evans?

  He's, he witnessed them finding the corpse.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, okay.

• 39:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Oh my god, dude.

• 39:27Robert Evans?

  Or at least that's what he, how he describes it. It's a little unclear, but I think so. And this must have happened when he was 14, because he says he left school the following month. And that 14 is when he graduated, right? Again, you are kind of, in some ways, childhood is starting to be more kind of formalized, understood. But there are ways in which you're kind of an adult at 14 in this era, right? And he's going to be treated like one, in some ways. So after the Dunkirk evacuations, everyone in his town had to put up soldiers for a few days because there was no quartering act in the UK, right?

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:00Robert Evans?

  Which Savile describes as totally bizarre. And both of his parents become like major activists in terms of like supporting the war effort. His mom and dad help organize this big fundraiser in Leeds where they like gather a bunch of money from the local community to help pay for the military to build bombers. And there's a, you know, they, eventually they raise enough to build 250 bombers. And this is like a huge story in the local papers. His parents are in the newspaper and being praised for raising money for this charitable cause. And that's going to stick with him too, right? This is a big deal to Jimmy. His two older brothers were both overseas serving by this point, and one of them actually got trapped during the siege of Malta.

• 40:45Robert Evans?

  Families all over town were receiving telegrams notifying them of their dead sons and husbands with some regularity. Jimmy watched all of this happen, but wrote later that, quote, "I wondered why people wept during the war when their relatives had been killed. I didn't even know what killed was. I was much more inquiring than I was affected." And that's can't be true, right? Because like, you're not a tiny kid at this point, bro. You were born in 1926. You're like 14 or 15 when this is going on. You know what death is.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Also, you just saw that lady chopped up. You totally know.

• 41:19Robert Evans?

  It's weird to be like, I didn't understand why they were sad that their son was killed. You know what death is? You're 14. You're not like a four-year-old. If he was writing about like being a six-year-old and then I didn't understand why that, well, yeah, that's not weird, but this is weird. That's a weird thing for you to say. And he does this a lot. He writes and talks about the war years often and about his cognition of what's happening as if he was a small boy then. And he's not. He's a late teen, like young adult while the war is going on. So that part's really weird to me. I don't know what to say about it other than he does that and it's kind of strange that he does that to me.

• 42:00Robert Evans?

  In March of 1941, he and his mom have to run for cover during an air raid. A cop near them was killed by the bomb. And after the raid, Jimmy claims that he picked up a black glove with a hand still inside it.

• 42:14Robert Evans?

  In Davey's book, In Plain Sight, he writes, "It is a morbid detail and one that Savile savored." He's going to tell this story a lot with a degree of relish, like he's excited by this. And you get the feeling that he's excited at the time. Again, this is all gonna be important much later on. Yeah. Yeah, he's, he's not, he's not well. That's not a healthy reaction.

• 42:38Robert Evans?

  From age 15 to 16, he just keeps working at the Mecca and taking on odd jobs, mainly to provide his mom with money for food, both of which earn him praise, right? The fact that he's making money and the fact that he's like an entertainer. He gets a lot of praise early on from this. He also starts training with the Army Air Corps because he's expecting, he's gotta be like 18 when the war ends. He's expecting to be called up to the RAF in another year or two, when he's like 16 or 17. Like, his expectation is that he's going to serve. And many people would have no doubt been better off if he'd gotten sent to the front and died to some Messerschmitt. But Jimmy had the dubious luck instead to become a Bevan boy.

• 43:19Robert Evans?

  So, in the early years of the war, British Minister of Labor Ernst Bevan decreed that 1 in 10 men between the ages of 18 and 25 would be conscripted to work in the coal mines, rather than to fight at the front. And it says 18 to 25, younger boys got conscripted all the time, as happened in the military, or not, or got involved, got one way or the other, got in. And Jimmy is not 18, I don't think, when he gets, he gets called in to be a Bevan boy, although it's a little hard for me to say what age he is. But he does this, this happens to him. And this is a foundational part of the Jimmy Savile saga. Although I can't actually tell you that this 100% happened, but we'll get to that. Here's a representative sample of how this is usually described from a CNN article.

• 44:04Robert Evans?

  "He was one of the surviving Bevan Boys who received an award from the then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008 for helping to keep the mines operational during the conflict. Savile suffered serious spinal injuries in a mine explosion and left the colliery." Right? And so that's the, that's the standard version of the story, that he, he does his duty to his country as a mining boy when he's a teenager, and he eventually, after a couple of years, gets horribly injured and, you know, has to leave. And this is a big part, because he, he can honestly say, when he's like a big entertainer, "I was a coal miner." Right? Because a lot of Jimmy's, a lot of Jimmy's appeal as an entertainer later will be that he's a, he's an authentic voice from the north. He's a real man of the people, a common man. He worked as a coal miner as a boy, right?

• 44:49Robert Evans?

  Now, for his part, Jimmy simultaneously claimed to have enjoyed the work in the mines and to have been haunted by it. Quote, "The noise, the dark and dust and the torn fingers created an impression of hell that I will carry to the grave." But he also writes that this is the period of time in his life where he learns, quote, "the power of sheer oddness." Because he's the weird kid. And he's, he's notably weird, like other people are kind of weirded out by young Jimmy. And so he gets a job, most of the time that he's a Bevan boy, he gets a job where he's basically alone in an isolated chunk of the mine, that periodically coal trucks will come through, and sometimes they get derailed. And so he has to like, put them back on the, on the tracks if they get derailed.

• 45:33Robert Evans?

  And so every day, he just goes there and he's sitting alone for like 12 hours or whatever in a coal mine. Like, that's his job. And this gives him a lot of time to read. This is kind of when he claims he got his education, basically. Because every day he'll come down and he'll turn on his light and he'll read books all the time while he's sitting alone in the coal mine. He spends, he claims, three and a half years doing pretty much this. He rarely socialized with his coworkers, and they seemed to have been repelled by him. In fact, Jimmy recalled one specific moment where this became clear to him. Instinctively regarded as strange by my mates, there came a day when they drew apart from me and I started to draw apart from the normal world. It all started as a joke on my part. And this is, this is interesting. The way he describes that as like, this is

• 46:18Robert Evans?

  when I drew apart from the normal world is really compelling to me. So let's talk about this joke that he plays, that he thinks severs him from, from normal society. So one day he shows up late for work, still dressed in his best suit that he'd been wearing the night before. I think he'd been out at the club or something like that. And he had no time to change. So he goes down wearing a suit, which perplexes his peers, right? Because you're going to ruin whatever you're wearing if you take it into the coal mine. And now because he doesn't want to destroy his best suit, once he gets into his position down there, because he's spending the whole day alone, he just strips naked and he wraps the suit in newspaper and he works in the nude all day. Then at the end of his shift,

• 46:59Robert Evans?

  he like cleans his face and his hands off and he puts the suit back on. And so it appears as he walks out that he's leaving the mine, wearing a clean suit, looking like he had when he'd gone down the start of the day. Quote, "In the history of coal mining, no one had spent eight hours underground and emerged clean, not a smudge on the collar or cuffs. Witchcraft it may not be, but unnatural it certainly was. And I was branded from that moment." Right?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  What's so weird, dude?

• 47:28Robert Evans?

  That's, that's, that's really odd, Jimmy.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Odd shit.

• 47:31Robert Evans?

  So Dan Davies, the author of In Plain Sight, asked him about this decades, like 60 something years later. And when he asks Jimmy about this moment, Sav, like why he did this, Savile responded, "I wasn't sure what it did, but it did develop my out of the box thinking. I didn't do it for any reason. I just realized that going back clean would freak people out. And it did. I realized that being a bit odd meant there could be a payday."

• 47:58Speaker 01

  You're such a fucking weirdo.

• 47:59Robert Evans?

  That's going to be super important.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  That's so strange. I thought he was just trying to save his suit. It's also weird that like-

• 48:08Robert Evans?

  He wants the reaction.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  The body is described in, but then hell is coal mining when he's reading a book? It's like, what?

• 48:16Robert Evans?

  Well, some of that, I think, is just because he wants to really judge up how difficult. And even though he seems to have had basically the best job you could have down there. He really wants to like play up because it's good for his later reputation. But I don't think he's playing this bit up where he's talking about this, why he did this, that he just feels a compulsion to freak people out and get a reaction. I mean, look, as an entertainer, I get that. I was that kind of kid in some ways, right? Sometimes you did things just to see how people react or just because you wanted to get everyone laughing, right?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Jackass made a career of it.

• 48:51Robert Evans?

  Right, yeah. And it's interesting that he's, his goal is not to make everyone laugh. He wanted to freak people out. Like, you could see how a different person could have made this a funny bit and like brought everyone in. And like, this is something that could make your pals laugh and could like have an impact on them. He wants to scare them, kind of. He wants to make them to be upset with him and to feel like, because then they won't pay attention to him. If they think he's really weird, they'll give him a wide berth and he'll get to continue doing his own thing alone. That's something Jimmy is going to take from this experience and it's going to be with him his whole life. So the war ended and the Bevins Boys started deserting the mines because they didn't want to work in a mine anymore. It sucks.

• 49:33Robert Evans?

  Davies, his biographer, suspects that Sappel was a repeat work skipper even before the war ended. And basically that he was never working as much as he should have. He was kind of skipping out a lot of the time, even from the jump. Now, this is important because every version of the Jimmy Sappel story includes him being horribly maimed in a mining accident, which is why he stops doing the work, you know? However, I can't say that this really happened or when it would have happened. He gives different dates for when this mining accident happened every time he talks about it. He claims to be a different age when this happens every time he talks about it. And he gives kind of differing accounts about how it happened. His initial claims about how bad this injury was and when it happened simply can't have

• 50:18Robert Evans?

  been true because the age he claims to have been when he was, and he says that this is serious enough that he's, he's basically unable to move right for months. This can't have happened because the age that he does that, we know that he was participating in like a bike race through France. That like, there was a post-war, like a big like bike marathon, basically. And we know he's in it. So it can't have happened then. It's really, it's unclear to me what actually went down here. I found a CNN article that describes him as having suffered a serious spinal injury. And Jimmy did keep a surgical support jacket that he said he was made to wear as he was recuperating from the injury. So he probably got hurt to some extent. But again, the timelines he give us just doesn't

• 51:02Robert Evans?

  work with the things that we know that he was doing, like participating in the first tour of Britain's cycle race in 1951. If he's injured when he claims he was, and it was as bad as he claims he was, it can't have happened the way he said it did because of the other things we know that he was doing. So I, I don't know, was he actually hurt in a mining accident? Did it, was it a minor injury? Or did he just stop going to work one day and later lied about having been badly injured in order to like, because that's a better story than I just kind of abandoned mining. He said in 2008 that he'd been hurt after working for seven years as a Bevan boy. And that's impossible. We know that's impossible because in 1948, he was in a movie. He's like an extra in a film. And that movie

• 51:47Robert Evans?

  still exists. So you can see that he's physically healthy. He's visibly very fit in, in the movie. Like, we know he wasn't in like traction from a spinal injury then. During an interview in the 1980s, Jimmy gave yet another different story and claimed that a chest cold got him out of the pits in 1948. I think that's a lot likelier, right? Just that like, oh, I just kind of had the flu and stopped coming into work and started doing other shit. That's a lot more believable to me. There are some people who suspect Jimmy lied entirely about being a Bevan boy. I think that's unlikely, but he definitely didn't do the job as long as he claimed. We know this because by the late 40s, after the war is over, he becomes

• 52:29Robert Evans?

  an athlete. He gets into really good shape. He's cycling all the time. And he's eventually going to be like a professional athlete. He's also on the side selling scrap with somebody. He's got like a scrap business. He's probably working with his dad right before his dad passes on. And he does some odd bits of agricultural labor. There's this like post-war government scheme where they're paying kids to like work on farms to help get the country back up and running after the war. Per Davey's book, In Plain Sight, quote, "It was on one such camp that he discovered his talent for hypnotism, surprising him and those watching by persuading an unsuspecting female victim out of her clothes. A sign of the unpermissive times

• 53:09Robert Evans?

  was that the room emptied in a second," he wrote. So that's kind of the first story Jimmy gives us of him doing something really sexually questionable, that like both he's studying hypnotism to get ladies to take their clothes off and that everyone else in the room is really uncomfortable with what he's doing, right? And he's like, "Yeah, it's a sign of the times. We were more repressed back then." No, Jimmy, that's just weird. Just like really uncomfortable.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Fucking weird, dude.

• 53:37Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. You know what else makes people uncomfortable?

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Products of services?

• 53:42Robert Evans?

  Sometimes, sometimes.

• 53:47Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 54:17Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto was right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 54:41Speaker 06

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients, or taking Defetolide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 55:16Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

• 55:27Robert Evans?

  So, for the late 1940s, Jimmy's dad is ill and dying, and that makes Jimmy increasingly the breadwinner and emotional support for his mother. And he begins to slip noticeably into the role of caring for her beyond all of her other children. It was his mom that tipped him off about one of the most significant moments in his life. Some neighborhood kid had wired a gramophone up to a radio, allowing you to basically get kind of a proto DJ set going? This is like the birth, the early birth of like the turntable systems that DJs use now is like a gramophone we hooked up to a radio to make it louder? So Jimmy falls in love with this. He buys this thing and he starts, he like holds an event and sells tickets to it. He has his mom make refreshments.

• 56:12Robert Evans?

  He like rents out a room at a social club owned by the Catholic Church. And he's like doing one of the first DJ sets anyone would have ever done, right? Where he's like putting on records and like picking what songs are gonna come on at what time. This is like very pre-history of DJing DJing. Only about 12 people show up, but Jim was electrified to see people dancing to music that he picked for them. Quote, "I felt this amazing, power is the wrong word, control is the wrong word, effect could be nearer. What I was doing was causing 12 people to do something. I thought, I can make them dance quick. I can make them dance slow, or I can make them stop.

• 56:54Robert Evans?

  That one person, me, was doing something to all these people. And that's really the thing that triggered me off and sustained me for the rest of my days." That's really important.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  His ego is entirely too inflated for being a DJ? Are you kidding me?

• 57:11Robert Evans?

  But it's interesting, you talked, I've had a lot of friends who are DJs. You talk to most people who are into this and they, if you ask what appeals to you, it's like the music, they love music, they like dance, like there's something about the art. Jimmy is always very clear, he doesn't care about the art. He is not at all interested in this as a creative endeavor. He likes being a DJ because you get to make people do stuff. You are controlling the emotions and mood and to an extent, the movements of a group of people. The control is what appeals to him about being a DJ. That's very upsetting.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  That's so strange. Yeah, it's like a hypnotist kind of continued.

• 57:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. As Davey's notes, and I think this is obvious from that quote, Jimmy, like the art of what he's doing is kind of lost on him. He's purely in this for power and control. So he starts hosting more of these record dances, renting whatever venues he could find and occasionally running out halfway through a set when his equipment broke. Because this isn't, none of this stuff works very well at the time. Now, this is also the first time when he starts to write about taking birds home from shows with them. He almost exclusively, in his autobiography and in his personal writings, refers to girls and women as birds, right? That's the term he uses and he uses it constantly.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Why? Well, it is common at the time, right?

• 58:32Robert Evans?

  It's very common at the time, very common. He keeps doing it through the 70s and 80s, 90s, which is weird. But at the time, again, that's part of the story is when this starts, it's not so weird. He's a teen, young adult at the time. When he's 17, 18, the fact that he's taking 16, 17, sometimes 15 year old girls like home from the club at night, isn't the weirdest thing in the world, right? Like it's, it's not considered too strange by any of the people because he's right in that age bracket, more or less, right? He is a teenager too at the start of this. And so that's, it's not seen as super odd. And part of what's interesting to me is that Jimmy never kind of gets out of that mind state, right? Of like the one that he has when he's like an 18 year old, right?

• 59:15Robert Evans?

  And it's important to know that he goes down this road very early. Now, we don't actually know when this starts to happen, when he starts DJing and, you know, fucking taking girls home from these shows that he's doing. Because by realistic calculation, it should have been around 1948, 49, or 50, maybe even 51. But Jimmy would sometimes say these shows took place in 43 or 44. So I can't take any of the dates here too seriously. It's just impossible for me to know. But by his late teens to early twenties, Jimmy is playing shows as a DJ. He's not making a lot of money at this, though. But like, he gets, obviously, he's interested in it because of the benefits that it brings him. That said, because it's not making money for him, he decides to try his hand at being a pro cyclist.

• 1:00:00Robert Evans?

  He'd always liked cycling. He'd been into it as a kid. And this is when cycling started to take off as a competitive sport in the post-war period. And he gets really into that. And he was actually pretty good at cycling for a while. He competed reasonably well. He never wins any major races, but he finishes second in a big one in 1950.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I just, like, I'm sorry. I have to say, it's like, okay, I was like 17, I worked as, at a restaurant. I carried the food to the tables. But like, that's not what I was into. And so I, it's like, it's like if I was just like, and I became a professional basketball player. Like, what?

• 1:00:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Like, what?

• 1:00:42Robert Evans?

  I mean, it's not, it's, it's a, part of what he's doing here is, in this post-war period, there's a bunch of open places, right? Cycling has just started becoming a competitive sport. So as just some dude, you can kind of slide in, and if you're okay at cycling, maybe make a life of it. And it's gonna be the same in the music industry, the same as a DJ. Like, he is looking for places, he's looking for things that, where there might be money, and where it's not, it's a new thing. So like, it, it, it's not really been ironed out how this business is supposed to work. It hasn't ossified yet. So it's easy for him to get in. And it's easy for him to get in.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  There's just so many stories like this, where a guy was like,

• 1:01:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I just decided to become a professional cyclist, right?

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  And then I walked into a room, and I got my First job, I had zero experience.

• 1:01:30Robert Evans?

  That's the.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  And now I'm a bajillionaire.

• 1:01:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's really the post-war experience for a lot of assholes in a nutshell.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 1:01:40Robert Evans?

  Now Jimmy's never super committed to the competitive side of racing. I think he likes it because there's a lot of girls, right? Uh, in fact, he loses one race because he and his buddy, as they're cycling past, see some girls having lunch by like, you know, in a park or something, and they decide to stop and flirt with them. And so everyone else passes them. He regularly flexed the power of his oddness here, too. He starts doing that in his cycling days. He would do shit like he would show up for races wearing a full tuxedo. And he would hire someone to like run up where everyone else is stretching pre-race. He's got his tux on and he hires someone to run up with like a tray and a mirror. So he can like freshen up and get like, make himself look nice. While everyone is like prepping for the race.

• 1:02:24Robert Evans?

  He's doing this as a bit and he's doing this because it makes him stand out. One of his buddies later said of him, he was a good rider, but he was never a great rider. He was a real character, however. Some of the other riders thought he was a bloody fool and he was a buffoon at times. In fact, his buffoonery is gonna be what takes him further than the cycling. Because he's never good enough to really make a living as a professional cyclist. But he does, he does become famous, even though he's never one of like the guys winning races. He's one of the most famous cyclists of his day because of his bizarre behavior. He gets his first nickname, Oscar the Duke Seville.

• 1:03:04Robert Evans?

  He registers as Oscar Seville for reasons, or Oscar Savile for reasons that I, I don't know. But he gets his nickname the Duke because he finishes the race while smoking a cigar, imitating Winston Churchill. As Jimmy later said, "I was forever with the gimmicks before gimmicks had ever been invented." And Sophie's gonna show you a shirt from not too much later in this period of time. There's Jimmy with a cigar. He's always got his hair like that.

• 1:03:31Robert Evans?

  It's, he's, this is a young British man with a cigar in his mouth and like long shock white, straight hair, like clearly like bleached white hair.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Robert Evans?

  It's really strange. No one else looked like Jimmy Savile, like at any real point in his life. And he does, like, again, I hate doing the wow, that guy looks like a pedophile thing, but that guy looks, you wouldn't trust that guy with your kids.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:56Robert Evans?

  You just saw him, right? That's again, there's something dangerous about that.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  A very off-putting looking person. One thing's for sure is our colleague James Stout, former cyclist, also British. This is like, it opposite day, James Stout.

• 1:04:12Robert Evans?

  He's evil, evil James, yes.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Evil James. And like, and if there's one thing I know about James is James fucking hates this guy. We've never spoken about it.

• 1:04:21Robert Evans?

  I mean, you can't, you really ought to hate this guy.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:25Robert Evans?

  You've barely gotten started with the evil. He hasn't even done anything all that evil yet. He's just done some really weird and upsetting things, right?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  His bangs in that photo, deeply bad. Sorry.

• 1:04:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like fucked up bangs. I don't know how to describe it to you other than fucked up. Um, so Jimmy's

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Man looks bad.

• 1:04:41Robert Evans?

  Crowd appeal vastly exceeds his actual skill on a bike and race promoters notice this. And after a match in which he showed up hungover and collapsed mid-race, he's offered a job. They're like, look, Jimmy, clearly cycling isn't going to work out for you, but everyone loves you. You're like one of, maybe the most popular cyclist we have. How about trying your hand at being a race commentator? Do you want to be the guy who like, like, talks about what's happening, basically, right? And as Jimmy said, it turned out I was a natural ad lib broadcaster. And this is going to be his, the big break that leads to everything else that we're going to talk about in these episodes. But that is the end of part one. Courtney Kosak, how are you feeling?

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Whew. What an exciting episode.

• 1:05:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah. We've just kind of got the Jaws music going. You know, something really, you know, this is going to a terrible place.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  I do recognize him based on that photo that you showed.

• 1:05:37Robert Evans?

  He is a very, and if you, did you see the, the sequel to 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple?

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:44Robert Evans?

  Oh, man. There's a reason. So all of the bad guys in that movie are dressed like an aping Jimmy Savile. And there's a reason for it. Um, cause that movie, if you haven't seen it, I love it. The whole film is an extended critique of Thatcherism. And there's a very good reason why the psychotic, like murderous villains are dressed like Jimmy Savile. But we'll talk about all that later. Courtney, you want to plug anything before we roll out here?

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Well, I want to plug Sophie's facial expressions during this episode.

• 1:06:16Robert Evans?

  Excellent.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  They were so good, such a good compliment to yours. And also, guys, buy my fucking book. You'll like it. It's called Girl Gone Wild.

• 1:06:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. What else are you doing? Nothing. Buy her a book.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:06:32Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  I don't know. Should we, should we continue? Should we record part two or should we just take a break and just like, I'll read Girl Gone Wild. I don't know.

• 1:06:42Robert Evans?

  I'm, I'm gonna take a break. I'll read the entirety of Courtney's book and then we'll come back in like four minutes. How's that sound?

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Great, great.

• 1:06:50Robert Evans?

  Great, great. All right, everybody. We'll be back Thursday with some stuff that's really going to upset you. Good night.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

• 1:07:34Speaker 05

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:08:04Speaker 07

  If you're a fight fan and you haven't seen the BKFC app yet, you're missing the world's most exciting combat sport. Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship has changed the game. No gloves, no stalling, no boring rolling around on the ground, just pure violence and pure entertainment. The BKFC app includes live events, past fights, original series, behind the scenes access, merch discounts, and more. Only $7.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Get the BKFC app at BKFC.com. This is Danielle Robé from Question Everything.

• 1:08:38Speaker 05

  Okay, here's the thing. Life doesn't exactly slow down, and neither do I. Between work and travel and podcasting and everything else on my calendar, I need clothes that can keep up. That's why I'm all about cotton. It's natural, breathable, soft, and doesn't shed microplastics when washed. Plant, not plastic. So whether it's a perfectly worn-in t-shirt, elevated loungewear, or the cozy cotton PJs that you'd prefer to wear all day long, cotton always delivers. It's comfortable, makes getting dressed easy, and then it somehow always looks good. Cotton, the fabric of our lives.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.