I met Jimmy Savile in his penthouse flat on the sixth floor of an art deco-style block in Leeds. It overlooked Roundhay Park, where Peter Sutcliffe murdered Irene Richardson, but I do not know what Savile thought about that, because I did not ask, although I knew that they had met in Broadmoor. What did they talk about? “Everyone asks,” he said happily, but he wouldn’t tell. The flat was bright white, with blue carpets, and very clean. He had Cadbury Roses in his kitchen and no books.
I was there because he was a “national treasure”. He had been famous for so long that people thought he was interesting. That is how celebrity journalism works: it digests itself. He was dressed as a teenage boy, which made him look pitiful rather than sinister, because he did not know – or pretended not to know – how stupid he looked in a scarlet tracksuit, with a diamond-encrusted Rolex and a gold medallion. He was dressed as Jimmy Savile. It was a disguise.
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