DJ Neil Fox speaks out on Jimmy Savile at Radio 1: 'There were some absolute horrors out there'

DJ Neil Fox speaks out on Jimmy Savile at Radio 1: 'There were some absolute horrors out there'
neil fox accusations
Jamie  Micklethwaite

By Jamie Micklethwaite


Published: 16/05/2022

- 20:41

Updated: 16/05/2022

- 21:07

The DJ known as Dr Fox was acquitted of all allegations of sexual assault

Legendary DJ Neil Fox has spoken out on the legacy Jimmy Savile left at Radio 1.

Savile died in 2011 aged 84, having never been brought to justice.


He is now believed to be one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.

And the DJ formerly known as Dr Fox said the Saville case led to more DJs receiving more complaints.

He told Nigel Farage on Talking Pints: "There were some absolute horrors out there, and I'm sure that's what kicked things off."

Fox was found not guilty after being himself accused of sexual assault.

And he revealed singer Cliff Richard was a big help during that time.

Neil Fox
Neil Fox
GB News

He added: "He was going through his battles and we really got to know each other."

The director of a documentary about Jimmy Savile said it aims to examine the disgraced entertainer’s relationship with the British public and the establishment to explain how he was “hiding in plain sight” for so long.

The two-part Netflix programme, Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, delves into archive footage covering a 50-year period to consider how one of the biggest stars in television got away with his crimes as a prolific sex offender.

It also explores Savile’s relationship with the Prince of Wales, in particular the letters they exchanged over many years during which the presenter often provided advice on public and family matters.

The documentary’s director, Rowan Deacon, told Times Radio that some of the material they examined was Savile’s correspondence with Charles, which, she said, gave them an “understanding of the nature of the friendship that they had”, which she feels has not been fully understood before.

Neil Fox and Nigel Farage
Neil Fox and Nigel Farage
GB News

She said: “I suppose what was most interesting, and why we’ve included those in the film, which looks really broadly at many reasons why Jimmy Savile wasn’t apprehended before he died, is that the relationship was one where Prince Charles trusted and respected Jimmy Savile.

“And I think that’s really interesting because I think what we were trying to do is look honestly at our, the British public’s, relationship with Jimmy Savile, in order to try and explain how he got away with it.

“And I think there’s been a temptation to say after the revelations ‘Oh well, I always knew, I always hated the man’. That seems to be the common answer we got when we phoned people up.

“And I think that’s unhelpful because I don’t think the archive material or footage brought that out. I think that isn’t the case. He was trusted and respected. And I think that we need to look at that in order to understand how perpetrators behave and how this happened.”

Deacon noted in conversation with The Times 2 supplement that they are “not suggesting for one moment” that the prince knew what Savile was “really up to”.

The director also said that a great deal of the more than 700 hours of footage that the documentary team looked at had been put away following the revelations of Savile’s years of sexual abuse.

Through her analysis, she feels his approach at “hiding in plain sight” changed across the decades.

She said: “I think in the 1960s and 1970s what’s most shocking is that his what we now describe as lascivious, creepy, assaulting behaviour on women, which is happening in front of the camera on broadcast footage, what’s shocking about that is not that he’s doing it, because we now know what we know, it’s that nobody blinks an eye, it’s completely normal.

“So I think that the social conditions at the time normalised that kind of behaviour.

“I don’t mean the things that we found out that he was also doing, but the sort of public lasciviousness and creepiness (that) was not judged as anything problematic.”

Charles, the rest of the royal family and most members of the public had no awareness of his crimes before the revelations.

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