I have vivid memories of the day Jimmy Savile died: 29 October 2011, the day before my 41st birthday and two days before he would have turned 85. According to him, the proximity of our birthdays was significant: he was “full warlock”, having been a Halloween baby, whereas I was only half.
I had spent the previous seven years interviewing Savile at his homes in Leeds and Scarborough, in cafes and on seafronts, at the Athenaeum Club in London and even aboard the QE2. Since 2004, I had quizzed him about his colourful life, his role in pivotal moments in the story of postwar British culture, the extraordinary circles of influence that he had moved in.
