On October 9, 2012, the British media reported that the Metropolitan Police had set up or would be setting up Operation Yewtree. This followed a posthumous witch-hunt of the DJ/TV presenter Jimmy Savile, one which would soon intensify. Unusually, the police said they would be working with the NSPCC. As many as 25 girls had already been identified as victims as far back as 1959. The number of alleged victims would soon increase dramatically.
According to Giving Victims a Voice, the investigation was actually formally set up on October 5. (The page numbered 38 has been removed from the linked pamphlet; apart from the page number, it was blank).
One of the organisations credited on the front cover of this pamphlet is NAPAC. These nutters and cranks have their own page in this database. Note especially what Gabrielle Shaw says about Edward Heath. Any publication to which NAPAC contributes warrants suspicion.
Because Savile was dead, it was deemed other celebrities should be tried for sex crimes, including against the young. The vast majority of these crimes were imaginary.
You will find my dedicated video about the Savile witch-hunt on the video page; see the entry for October 26, 2020 in the second list. This explains how the Savile hoax was concocted by former Duncroft School pupils then sold to Britain and the world by Mark Williams-Thomas.
In 2018, Mark Smith and Ros Burnett published The origins of the Jimmy Savile scandal, an excellent paper that first appeared in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Volume 38, Issue 1/2, pages 26-40. It covers Operation Outreach by Surrey Police, and points out that Beryl Shaw (later known as Bebe Roberts) claimed to have been assaulted by Savile at Duncroft School in the mid-1960s. Savile first visited Duncroft on January 21, 1974.
If I had one criticism to make of this paper, it would it would be its use of the grammatically incorrect historic; the word historical is correct, but this is a common error.
Two bloggers have done a great deal more research on this insane witch-hunt:
Susanne Cameron-Blackie (1948-2017) blogged as Anna Raccoon. (She is cited in the above paper). Her insight is particularly valuable because she was actually a pupil at Duncroft School before Savile made his first visit. This article is lengthy but worth reading; it covers how she became aware of and exposed what has been called the Savilisation of Britain, including the forged letter from Surrey Police alluded to below.
The dedicated Jimmy Savile blog is called Jim Cannot Fix This (after a TV programme Savile used to host); it is run by a dude who goes by the name Moor Larkin.
This article published by the Guardian says Savile first visited Duncroft in 1970. As stated above, we know now that he first visited Duncroft in 1974. As for the claim in the first paragraph that his youngest victim was 2 years old. Where do they find this rubbish?
This excellent article, published originally by Tribune of all publications, covers a plethora of what it calls zombie factoids.
One of those zombie factoids is the forged letter from Surrey Police that explained why Savile wasn’t prosecuted. This article also covers that letter. And here is the full text of Savile’s questioning by Surrey Police; just don’t ever ask me to use the sick euphemism interview about one of these sit-downs. This document was originally downloaded in two parts.
When this transcript was originally released to the public, the name of Princess Alexandra was redacted; I have explained why in my aforemented video The TRUTH About JIMMY SAVILE, but here is the first part with the redactions in place.
Some people have made much of Savile’s connections with royalty and have suggested that because of this he was protected. Tell that to the falsely accused Prince Andrew! Savile was knighted in 1990 and had received the OBE as long ago as 1971. This photograph of him with then Prince Charles appeared in the Newcastle newspaper The Journal on December 18, 1978, page 2.
Like politicians and business people, ordinary celebrities are often the targets of lies and smears for all manner of reasons and none. Savile was no ordinary celebrity; he was a tireless self-promoter, genuinely eccentric, and working class. This latter may have had a lot to do with the volume of allegations. Envy, jealously, and at times naked hatred for an ordinary working man made good.
An attempt was made to link him to the Haut de la Garenne case in Jersey. Initially, Savile denied ever visiting the school, but later admitted he had. It may have been he had genuinely forgotten; it should be borne in mind that he had visited hundreds of establishments, including schools since he rose to fame in the 1960s, so that claim is not as unlikely as it sounds. There were claims that kids had actually been murdered at the school, but a fragment of what was at first believed to be a human skull turned out to be a coconut shell!
The list of crimes for which he has been postumously indicted beggars belief, including necrophilia, I kid you not. I have actually corresponded with a former politician who endorses this claim. Here though – if you can stomach listening to it – is a recording of what are perhaps the most outrageous claims made about Savile. And here are two proven claims against his accuser, Michael Shrimpton. Nuff said!
It is clear that most right-thinking people, including those working at the BBC, were more than a little skeptical about this mountain of allegations, whatever they thought of Savile, but eventually there were so many of them that the vast majority of these people and the general public came to believe there could not have been so much smoke with no fire at all. Instead, they should have asked who was creating all this smoke.
Here are four reports from different health authorities into the alleged activities of Savile. Each one came up with a big fat duck egg.
Booth Hall Hospital report
Queen Mary’s Hospital Carshalton report
Queen Victoria Hospital report
Wythenshawe Hospital report.
In January 2013, Alison Levitt QC published a 128 page report, but it was Dame Janet Smith who was given the mammoth task of making sense of all this nonsense. She is an impressive intellect, as I know from personal experience, but she allowed herself to be bamboozled by the sheer number of allegations.
Here is her opening statement. Here is her full report, all 782 pages of it. This is actually Volume 2; Volume 1 relates to Savile and Stuart Hall – summaries and conclusions. Volume 3 relates to Hall alone and was written by Linda Dobbs, another former High Court judge.
Although a number of alleged rapes are detailed and a number of rumours, including anonymous letters, two things are missing from this massive work: medical evidence and contemporaneous police reports. Are we seriously expected to believe Savile was raping girls left, right and centre literally for decades yet not one became pregnant or sought medical treatment, and not one reported him?
This obituary from a popular Sunday newspaper shows the high esteem in which Savile was held. He was given a funeral fit for a king, literally, but even before the screening of that infamous Williams-Thomas sham documentary, his gravestone was smashed up and removed to the scrap heap.
Eventually, after the documentary was shown, most of the people who had known Savile denounced or simply deserted him, but one honest woman embarrassed a thousand shameless liars. This interview by Nick Ross was uploaded to YouTube on February 27, 2015.
A number of contemporaneous articles about Savile can be found on my main website, including The scramble begins for Jimmy Savile’s money, which is what this was all about for many people, certainly the lawyers made a killing on it.
The following people (all men) are listed in alphabetical order by Christian name. They were not all victims of Operation Yewtree and do not all appear on the Timeline. Neither were they all innocent. Having been dealt with above, Savile isn’t listed.
Andrew Lancel was born in 1970 so was too young to have been accused of groping girls in the 1960s. I have included him on this page because he is a actor and was accused within the relevant time period. Like the older Michael Le Vel and the much older William Roache, he appeared in the soap opera Coronation Street in which, ironically, his character was tried for rape and acquitted (falsely). Andrew Lancel does not appear on the Timeline but a brief report of his acquittal for imaginary homosexual offences can be found on my main website.
Chip Hawkes – the stage name of Leonard Hawkes of The Tremeloes, on the Timeline, May 2013.
Chris Denning: Not to be confused with an academic of the same name, this former DJ was born in Hayes (where I grew up). In 1974, he was convicted of indecent assault. Things got a lot worse after that, and although it is not surprising he was a target of Operation Yewtree, it is surprising that he was still working in the music industry decades later, including apparently in the Czech Republic where he continued to prey on underage boys. He pleaded guilty to a large number of sexual offences, and will probably die in prison.
Cliff Richard is not included on the Timeline but this article on my main website will suffice. Richard went on to sue the BBC for violating his privacy, and won, but this case wasn’t really about privacy, it was about a cynical and quite sick attempt, a conspiracy if you will, between the police and the BBC to incite cranks et al. to make false allegations against him. It worked, but none of them was deemed credible even by the cretins who run the CPS. Richard is widely believed to be a closet homo, which may account for the viciousness of some of the allegations against him.
Dave Lee Travis is the stage name of David Patrick Griffin; he was prosecuted as David Griffin as can be seen from the transcript of his failed appeal. He was known widely as DLT.
His prosecution and the way the CPS went about it was one of the most disgraceful. Although he wasn’t charged with rape, I was reliably informed by someone close to him that one individual did in fact accuse him of rape but that this was too much even for the British police. Having said that, I have not added him to the main Timeline. DLT had to sell his home to pay for his defence; if he had not he would quite likely have been convicted and sentenced to seven or eight years in prison.
I could write a lot about this case but one thing stands out. Here is one report of the imaginary hospital incident. This accusation wasn’t one of the charges but was thrown in to blacken his character. The woman who accused him was obviously seriously not right in the head, and claimed Travis had put her through forty years of Hell.
Someone who was following the trial had been at this event and had filmed it. He (or possibly she) contacted DLT’s legal team. The film showed Travis turning up with his wife on his arm and an entourage in tow. This film was actually uploaded to YouTube at one point and I should have downloaded it at the time, but when I returned to it, it was gone.
Eventually, as will be seen above, Travis was convicted of one minor, indecent assault against an adult woman. Utterly pathetic.
At one point he was set up by a corrupt journalist named Camilla Long, but rather than recount that, here are a couple of anecdotes about Travis, both from 1990. In July that year, he announced on his programme that a man named Glyn Jones needed to attend hospital PDQ for a kidney transplant. Mr Jones had gone fishing but his wife said he would be tuning in to his favourite programme, and he was.
Earlier that year it was reported he had rescued a man from the rubble of a wrecked bus shelter. He was driving by in his jeep when he saw the shelter collapse on him. DLT and two off-duty ambulancemen then drove the victim to hospital.
David Easter was questioned by the police about the alleged rape of a woman seventeen years previously. His solicitor said she had jumped on the Jimmy Savile bandwagon. Easter is an actor who has appeared mostly in British TV series, including soap operas. His entry can be found on the main Timeline at May 16, 2014.
David Smith was a driver who had worked for the BBC. He was said to have been the first person charged in connection with this witch-hunt. He was arrested in December 2012 and charged with sexually abusing a 12 year old boy in 1984. For real. Bailed from Southwark Crown Court in April 2013, he failed to turn up for his trial in October whereupon the judge ordered him to be brought before the court. He was found dead.
Eddy Shah falls within the Operation Yewtree timeline but was not one of those accused in connection with it. He stood trial at the Central Criminal Court; his acquittal can be found in the database at July 12, 2013.
Fred Talbot was a celebrity weatherman who had previously been a teacher. Here is my article about his warranted conviction. Having said that, take note of what his Counsel said about some of the allegations made against him. Sadly (for him if for no one else) this was far from the end of his troubles, and he would face two more trials being finally released from prison in December 2019.
Freddie Starr (1943-2019) was primarily a zany comedian. I have not included him on the main Timeline. He was first arrested November 1, 2012 but did not face charges.
One of Starr’s false accusers, albeit of something relatively trivial, was Karin Ward, one of the false accusers of Savile from Duncroft School. He made the mistake of suing her for slander. And lost. Here is the judgment. The judge in that case also presided over the Johnny Depp defamation case and was, in my humble opinion, a right idiot. Incidentally, I appeared opposite him in the 1990s when he was a barrister representing the odious Gerry Gable. Following his failed court action, Starr fled to Spain where he died in relative poverty. A sad end to a man who was once a quality entertainer.
Gary Glitter needs no introduction. Born Paul Gadd in 1944, he was a slightly older glam rock star, self-deprecating, over the top, and likeable. He was also an avid collector of child porn. His November 1999 conviction and short prison sentence sent him into exile where he did more than look at obscene photographs. His activities made him an internatiional pariah and he was lucky not to have faced a very severe sentence in Vietnam. All the same, his convictions after returning to England have to viewed as at best dubious. You can read what I think about his trial here.
Glitter was released on licence from his 16 year sentence in February 2023 but was recalled to prison the following month for breaching the terms of his parole. Whether or not his Operation Yewtree convictions were warranted, no one should have any sympathy for this lowlife.
Jim Davidson is a comedian best known for his near the knuckle humour; he appears on the Timeline at August 21, 2013. Also check out my review of his book. One of his accusers reminded me of one of the more deranged false accusers of Bill Cosby. The reader might like to compare the allegation of forced oral sex with the claim of Linda Ridgeway Whitedeer in one of the many press conferences held by Gloria Allred (in the May 2018 video The Prior Bad Acts Of Gloria Allred).
Jimmy Tarbuck was one of the first of those falsely accused during this witch-hunt. This article tells you all you need to know. Notice the overkill including the seizure of his wife’s computer. This is so typical of the British police, something that never happens in the United States unless there is a terrorist angle or the suspect is accused of serial murder.
Jonathan King was a songwriter of some repute. He was also a predatory homosexual. (He is not to be confused with any other person of that name, especially one in show business). In 2001, King was convicted of historical sexual offences against underage boys. The investigations against him, on both sides of the Atlantic, were extremely low key, and for this reason alone the allegations against him were more credible than most of this nature. The later allegations against him were not credible, to put it mildly, but I will not be adding him to the Timeline proper.
Max Clifford has his own page in this database. His disabled daughter, on whom he doted, believed emphatically in his total innocence and continued to appeal his convictions after his death in prison. I corresponded occasionally with Louise Clifford through Facebook. She was a genuinely nice person. She died in May 2023 a month before her fifty-second birthday.
Michael Le Vel is a time-serving soap actor. Although he falls within the timeline of Operation Yewtree, the false allegations against him were of a personal (and quite vicious) nature. He can be found in the database at February 13, 2013.
Mike Osman is younger than me so one of the younger victims of this witch-hunt. The DJ was arrested on January 2, 2013 but did not face charges.
Neil Fox is yet another DJ who was falsely accused by demented women. He was not targeted by Operation Yewtree but was first arrested September 30, 2014. He has his own page in this database.
Nigel Evans is a politician rather than a show biz type. And a homosexual. He can be found on the Timeline at April 10, 2014, speaking after his acquittal.
Evans should not really be included on this page as he was an MP rather than an entertainer – no jokes, please. Although I can’t go into detail here, I have an inside source on him. Some of his perverted sexual encounters involved financial transactions, something that is incredibly dangerous even for a heterosexual politician. Whatever, this was yet another case that should never have got anywhere near a courtroom.
Paul Gambaccini is yet another homosexual, but that is the worse thing I can say about him. I interviewed him in October 2015 at a meeting at Law Society Hall. Here it is.
Ray Teret (1941-2021) died in prison. I wrote a bit about him here. Like Chris Denning he had a track record, although unlike Denning he wasn’t a homo. He was targeted by Operation Yewtree because he had been a friend of Savile. The way he was investigated was in stark contrast to other suspects. Greater Manchester Police went to great lengths to prevent the testimony of one accuser contaminating that of another, and they even found physical evidence, a noticeboard which young girls had signed. They cut it out of the wall and took it to court.
Richard Westwood (known as Rick Westwood) is another member of The Tremeloes. See the same brief entry in the database for Chip Hawkes at May 2013.
Rolf Harris (1930-2023) has his own page in this database. Wendy Wild (Wendy Rosher) was the most obvious of his false accusers. That conviction was quashed by the Court Of Appeal. This pathetic woman died in 2019. Like the anonymous hospital accuser of Dave Lee Travis mentioned above, she claimed this imaginary indecent assault had put her through forty years of Hell. Great minds think alike, so, apparently, do sick ones.
Stuart Hall has been mentioned above. He is the only genuine predator herein who was a surprise. His full name is James Stuart Hall and he was born on Christmas Day, 1929. Hall was for many years a presenter of the popular TV novelty game series It’s A Knockout.
Initially, he denied everything, but on the eve of his first trial he changed his plea to guilty. Here are the sentencing remarks from that trial. In spite of his guilty plea, I find it difficult to credit some of these claims. They have a whiff of fantasy about them. My own view, and this is pure speculation, is that Hall was told if he pleaded not guilty to any of these they would charge him with rape. Whether or not that was the case, they did indeed charge him with rape. At a second trial he faced no fewer than twenty separate allegations against two girls. He pleaded guilty to one indecent assault and was found guilty of a second, but he was acquitted of all the major charges. One of these girls was on the pill, even though she was under age. And she kept going back for more. Unreal.
Ted Beston was a BBC producer. And a Jimmy Savile producer, which is why he was arrested. No charges were brought against him due to insufficient evidence, a CPS euphemism for no evidence at all.
Wilfred De’Ath (1937-2020) was another BBC producer who had worked with Jimmy Savile. He was arrested for the alleged indecent assault of a teenage girl in the 1960s. The complainant would later withdraw her witness statement but not the allegation. De’Ath said he was arrested at 7am by seven police officers. This says more about the police than it does about him.
William Roache is the final name on this list. A time-serving soap actor, he can be found on the Timeline at February 6, 2014. He was acquitted of all charges; his accusers were not simply fantasists but liars.
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