Lead Jimmy Savile investigator blasts The Reckoning for missing key details

The man who exposed Jimmy Savile has criticised The Reckoning for missing some key details.

Detective-turned-investigator Mark Williams-Thomas was one of the people responsible for outing Savile, who would use his celebrity status to prey on hundreds of people, male and female, many of them minors.

Williams-Thomas worked as the lead investigator on the ITV documentary The Other Side of Jimmy Savile which brought the entertainer’s horrific crimes to light in 2012, a year after Savile’s death at the age of 84.

The 53-year-old has since criticised the four-part BBC series, which takes a look at Savile's life and the crimes he committed.

Episodes one and two dropped on Monday and Tuesday, this week, as Steve Coogan has been praised for his role as Savile.

Taking to X, formerly Twitter, Williams-Thomas gave his opinion on what was missing from the first two episodes.

"So much more to be told about Savile and others at the BBC in the 70’s & 80’s," he tweeted on Friday (13 October).

"Like the BBC Payola story which hit the headlines in February 1971 just 4 days before (Samantha) Claire McAlpine’s suicide."

Actor Tia Dutt plays Sara, a fictional character in the show, who the detective believes tells the story of Claire McAlpine, a 15-year-old who committed suicide in 1971 after she wrote in a diary that she had sex with two DJs while she was still a minor.

BBC

"The Payola story has never been told … this note below says so much," Williams-Thomas added.

"I was going to make a Payola programme but at the time did not have the capacity or time to do it.

"Singer Dorothy Squires, BBC Radio Two producer Jack Dabbs, and seven other people were charged in connection with allegations that BBC employees had been bribed with money, sex, and holidays to promote certain records.

"The arrests were the result of a two-year investigation by Scotland Yard into 'payola' allegations published by News of the World in March 1971."

While Savile was questioned by police at the time, Squires and Dabbs were acquitted of corruption charges on 6 November, 1974.

LADbible has contacted the BBC for comment.

Williams-Thomas previously claimed he risked his career to expose Savile.

Speaking to LADbible, he said: "I remember being so determined to do it, even when it was difficult, we had real challenge to get it commissioned, ITV were amazing, but it was really difficult.

"I remember saying to my producer on the tube, 'We can't let this go, we have to get this out there'.

"We put out lives into it, and I remember saying to her and a number of other people that if we get this right, then it will make a massive change and difference, but if we get it wrong and people don't believe us, we'll never work in telly again, we'll just be ostracised from everything that we do."