Paedophile Jimmy Savile admitted to using his hair as a "smokescreen" to make him seem "friendly" in a decades-old unearthed interview.
The disgraced TV personality was one of Britain's post prolific predatory sex offenders after hundreds of sexual abuse allegations were made against him after his death in 2011. He is said to have around 500 victims.
Despite allegations being made during his lifetime, accusers were either ignored, not believed or Savile sometimes took legal action against them.
A new Netflix documentary shares how Savile was able to evade justice through the power of fame, his carefully crafted connections and his 'quirky' TV persona.
But his looks were also clearly part of his disguise, including infamous unkempt white hair.
Speaking in an old clip, which is show in the documentary, he says: "The hair is, you might say, a gimmick. I call it smoke screen.
"Being easily recognised with all the hair and things like that, immediately people see you, they switch on to who you are, and because of the image on television, 99.999%, and I haven't met the other .1% yet, people are very friendly."
Tina Davey, a former BBC secretary who worked with Savile, describes him as a "very clever man" and that he was "not emotional about anything".
She says: "He was a very clever man. He knew that fame bought power. His level of fame gave every him door opened. Hie wanted his fame to go beyond anything and anybody.... he wasn't emotional about anything. He told me, it was the most profound statement, 'I'm a machine'.
"And he was. The one and only time I saw him show any emotion, he had lost his mum. I said to him, 'I'm so sorry.' He did cry. Never seen it since or before. Deep down, he wasn't on the same road as a lot of us, in terms of boyfriends, girlfriends, moving on to husband, wife and children. He really wasn't in that road."
Among those he courted during his lifetime were the royals and Margaret Thatcher, who had been prime minister at the time.
Lord Robin Butler, who had been principal private secretary to the Iron Lady, says that she persistently pressed for Savile to receive a knighthood.
"Their relationship was pretty close," he says. "He was writing letters to her, she had invited him to the prime minister's country residence, Chequers. Stoke Mandeville [Hospital] is on the doorstep of Chequers, it was round the corner. Margaret Thatcher particularly liked Jimmy Savile because he wasn't relying on what the state could do. His entrepreneurialism, his taking the initiative. Her vision of society, a thriving economy, relying on successful people who were then able to support people who were less fortunate than themselves."
After Savile died, hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse and recollections from witnesses surfaced.
The allegations included children as young as two and patients of Stoke Mandeville Hospital where Savile, who raised millions for charity allowing him to avoid the accusations, volunteered as a porter.
At the infamous psychiatric hospital Broadmoor, one nurse told an investigation the presenter had boasted he had "mucked about" with some of the corpses in the mortuary. An investigation found that his interest in dead people was "not within accepted boundaries".
*Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story is available on Netflix
