Jimmy Savile Made Creepy Comments When He Entered The Big Brother House

It's been more than 11 years since the death of Jimmy Savile, and since then, scores of horrific sexual abuse allegations have come to light.

Prior to his death though, he was a popular DJ and TV host, and a new Netflix documentary examines how the paedophile managed to 'hide in plain sight' for so long.

A classic example of this was evidenced in 2006, when Savile appeared on Channel 4 reality TV series Celebrity Big Brother.

Channel 4

Indeed, it is hard to watch back his entry into the house with the benefit of hindsight, with housemates excitedly cheering his arrival and politician George Galloway hailing him as 'legendary'.

Savile proceeded to go around the group offering out hugs and kisses, before telling former basketball player Dennis Rodman: "I want you to know I have a violent temper but you have nothing to fear from me."

After hugging Coronation Street star Rula Lenska, he said: "I would want to marry all of you ladies for at least 24 hours."

But the creepiness really ratcheted up when he met Chantelle Houghton - who went on to win the show despite not actually being a celebrity.

"I know that many fellas love you, but they don't love you with the sincerity and tenderness I do," he said, holding her hand and kissing it.

"I always tell the truth even when I'm lying," he added, before kissing her hand again.

Later, while Rula was cooking, Savile told her she looked 'far prettier' than she does on TV 'in the flesh'.

Watch here:

Savile appeared on the show for just two days, fixing problems for celebrities, in a nod to his show, Jim'll Fix It.

As housemates wrote down their requests, Savile said: "Don't forget ladies, I'm available most weekends for home visits."

Savile died in October 2011 aged 84, having never been brought to justice. New two-part Netflix documentary Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story explores how he managed to get away with his heinous crimes.

Having analysed 700 hundred hours of archive footage, director Rowan Deacon concluded that Savile adapted his approach to 'hiding in plain sight' 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."

Deacon feels Savile's tactics changed by the 1990s, as by then she thinks he was seen as a 'creepy and strange figure', so he himself became the 'source of the rumours'.

"He's the one saying the creepy things and suggesting that he's up to no good, and I think he does a kind of double bluff with the audience," she said.

"So it's quite confusing and people end up thinking 'Well, he's sort of saying it so it can't be true.'

"And I think that kind of psychological game that goes on, it's quite complex, that we can now look back at in the archive and we also asked our interviewees who were in the archives to look back at it themselves, which was kind of an interesting experience, really helps us to understand how this happened in a way that’s illuminating."

Topics: TV and Film, Weird, Crime, Big Brother

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey