In Plain Sight: the Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies: A Shocking Read

A compelling account on how Jimmy Savile fixed it for the British nation to be hoodwinked.

This indepth book opens with the chapter entitled Apocalypse Now Then. The distinction between the defacing of a tombstone on a Scarborough hillside and the glitzy life of Jimmy Savile could not be more extreme. I grew up with Savile on TV. He always grated on me for no definable reason. I felt obliged to ‘like’ him because he was the oldest teenager on Top of the Pops, did lots for charity and was one of England’s great eccentrics. Even as a young child, I just couldn’t like him. But what a shocking story Davies tells.

Savile's Interviews with Dan Davies

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Few can be more qualified to write about Savile’s life than Davies, who first met Savile during a Clunk Click episode, where he got spooked into a lifelong obsession on the man behind the cigar smoke. Davies met Savile numerous time throughout his journalistic life, stopping in the ‘Duchess’ (Savile’s then dead mother) bedroom overnight.

Davies’ descriptions of Savile interviews make compelling reading, particularly the small detail: the way Savile would smugly puff at his cigar and stretch that thin grin, telling the same old tales. But Davies remains sceptical. Was Savile ever really a Bevin Boy? It would seem evidence did not always back up Savile's claims.

The Double Life of Jimmy Savile

Each chapter alternates between the present and the past, where the two timelines eventually meet at the end. Davies’ account evidences fastidiously accurate research, yet never gets bogged down into a dry detail. Instead, the tale is played out in a slow car crash, where Savile ingratiates higher and higher into British circles. Meanwhile, like a fly in the soup, Davies skilfully sandwiches unsavoury accounts of the vulnerable in children’s’ homes Savile virtually ‘owned’. The reader is catapulted between the persona of a national hero and a sex predator.

Davies does not sensationalize, but tells it as it is. But had this account been written as fiction, it might be criticised for being farfetched. It just comes to show that regardless of emerging as the youngest runt of a Leeds litter, having monstrous narcissism can carry you into high circles.

I feel this book is an important inclusion on British society from the 1950s to the 1990s, not least because Savile managed to woo not only the nobles, but also the British public.

My only issue is that I wish the book had contained more images. It has about 5 images that are rather small and indistinct. I felt, with Davies’ gripping narrative, more imagery could have made the experience more rounded.

That said, the book is a memorable read that sits uncomfortably alongside the memories I had of Savile as a child