Television
Savile's first television role was as a presenter of Tyne Tees Television's music programme Young at Heart, which aired from May 1960. Although the show was broadcast in black and white, Savile dyed his hair a different colour every week.
On New Year's Day, 1964, he presented the first edition of the BBC music chart television programme Top of the Pops from a television studio in a converted church in Dickenson Road, Rusholme, Manchester. On 30 July 2006, he co-hosted the final edition, ending it with the words "It's number one, it's still Top of the Pops", before turning off the studio lights after the closing credits. When interviewed by the BBC on 20 November 2008 and asked about the revival of Top of the Pops for a Christmas comeback, he said he would welcome a "cameo role" in the programme.
In the early 1960s, Savile co-hosted (with Pete Murray) the televised New Musical Express Poll Winners' Concert, held annually at the Empire Pool in Wembley, with acts such as The Beatles, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, The Who, and many others. On 31 December 1969, he hosted the BBC/ZDF co-production Pop Go the Sixties, shown across Western Europe, celebrating the hits of the decade.
Savile presented a series of Public Information Films promoting road safety, notably "Clunk Click Every Trip", which promoted the use of seatbelts, the clunk representing the sound of the door and the click the sound of the seatbelt fastening. It led to Savile's Saturday night chat/variety show from 1973 on BBC1 entitled Clunk, Click, which in 1974 featured the UK heats of the Eurovision Song Contest featuring Olivia Newton-John. After two series, Clunk, Click was replaced by Jim'll Fix It, which he presented from 1975 to 1994. Savile won an award from morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1977 for his "wholesome family entertainment". He fronted a long-running series of advertisements in the early 1980s for British Rail's InterCity 125, in which he declared "This is the age of the train".
In an interview by Dr Anthony Clare for the radio series In the Psychiatrist's Chair in 1991, Savile appeared to be "a man without feelings". Andrew Neil interviewed him for the TV series Is This Your Life? in 1995. In 1999 he appeared as a panelist in Have I Got News for You.
In April 2000, he was the subject of an in-depth documentary by Louis Theroux, in the When Louis Met... series. In each programme Theroux accompanied a British celebrity going about their day-to-day business, and interviewed them about their lives and experiences. In the documentary, Savile seemed distrustful and reluctant to reveal much about himself, although he did "confide on camera that he used to beat people up and lock them in a basement during his career as a nightclub manager". When Louis Met...Jimmy was voted one of the top 50 documentaries of all time in a survey by Britain's Channel 4.
Savile visited the Celebrity Big Brother house on 14 and 15 January 2006 and "fixed it" for some housemates to have their wishes granted; Pete Burns received a message from his significant other and friend while Dennis Rodman traded Savile's offering for a supply of cigarettes for the other housemates. In 2007, Savile returned to television with Jim'll Fix It Strikes Again showing some of the most popular 'fixits', recreating them with the same people, and making new dreams come true.
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“So by all means let’s have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delivered by a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, selling ergot pills. After all the public is entitled to what it wants, isn’t it? The Romans knew that and even they lasted four hundred years after they started to putrefy.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Photographs may be more memorable than moving images because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)