On the set of The Reckoning, the four-part BBC drama about Jimmy Savile, the horrific sexual abuse he committed and the culture that enabled it, Susan watched the monitors during filming. Steve Coogan plays Savile, the DJ and TV presenter who, after his death in 2011, was revealed as a sexual predator. “I got a shiver,” she says. It was the same, years before, whenever she saw Savile appear on TV. “He would make me feel sick. He was creepy, just the most disgusting human being I’ve ever met. Sleazy.”
Susan, who doesn’t want to give her surname, is one of four survivors who are interviewed on camera, appearing alongside the drama. The writer Neil McKay approached her after she had been in the 2016 documentary made by Louis Theroux, his examination of how – during making a previous documentary on Savile, and their odd friendship that developed since – he failed to spot his abuse. McKay visited Susan around six years ago. It was daunting, she says, and at the time she had no idea she would feature in the film. “I might have had second thoughts,” she says. “But I felt I needed to do it, to help anybody else. If I could do it, then hopefully there’s another woman somewhere who’s going through the same thing, who hasn’t had the guts to come forward.”
