Jim certainly fixed it!

So Sir Jimbo is an alleged kiddy-fiddler!

Well, who would have thought it? Apart that is, from several PAs and Producers at the Beeb who, if the allegations of dressing room misconduct are true, couldn't have failed to be aware and must have turned a blind eye.

I saw a documentary once on Sir Jimmy, and he certainly was a very odd man. There was a touch of the Norman Bates about him since several years after her death he hadn't touched his mother's room and had failed to dispose of her personal items and clothing. When asked about his mother, and whether he thought it was rather morbid to hang on to stuff like that and almost worship her in the way he did, he got very touchy (not literally, in that case!)

Now, of course, many people are coming forward with allegations which, sadly, will probably never be proven or otherwise and the man's reputation will be tarnished forever, possibly rightly. His family must be mortified, and their actions today to remove his headstone and have it broken up and put into landfill only two weeks after erecting it in his memory with glowing sentiments reveal the extent of their hurt and despair.

It will be an impossible task for the police to sort out the genuine allegations (if any) from the attention seeking weirdos, and this is a story that will run and run. Someone who was idolised by many of my parents generation for his charity work and in particular for his TV shows will now have his peculiarities splashed all over the tabloid press and most of the broadsheets to be pilloried and lambasted without being able to answer in his own defence or even give his alleged victims satisfaction by admitting his crimes. Many older people who have laughed at and admired him over the years will be disillusioned and disappointed, to say the least.

I remember watching Jimmy Saville as a child on TV and desperately wanting to write to Jim'll Fix It with my own ambition, which was to drive a police car at speed down a high street with the siren going and lights flashing (seems rather tame, now!). Many others must have felt the same, but perhaps we had a lucky escape. If many of the misdemeanours were indeed committed at Television Centre, then some of the victims must have been children that were featured on that show, surely? Why else would they be in his dressing room? And what were the TV people doing to allow him in there unsupervised with those children, and without their parents?

The BBC will have a great deal to answer in this investigation, and it will be interesting to see how it manages to wriggle out of it or how it reports it. Sir Jimmy (and he may not be that much longer) allegedly  indulged in his habits over a considerable period of time and he must have begun to think he was untouchable.

Perhaps it's as well he is no longer with us. An old man such as he would be now would be treated appallingly by the media and given a trial by TV, which would be totally wrong. No matter how convincing these allegations may seem at the moment they are just that - allegations - and until someone can find some proof that's what they will remain. The likelihood of their truthfulness is, in terms of the law, irrelevant and we should remember that.

If he did do these dreadful things, then yes he should be stripped of his knighthood and the plaques etc erected in his memory should be removed. Glorification of an individual guilty of any kind of exploitation against the vulnerable must be avoided regardless of the worthy aspects of their character. And we must put safeguards in place against such a thing happening in again the future.