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The Tip Off

Ep. 56 Exposing Savile - Part Two

The Tip Off

The Tip Off

News, News & Politics

4.7650 Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones think they have everything they need to finally expose Jimmy Savile’s abhorrent crimes. But as their transmission date gets nearer, their BBC bosses start to pull back.


This is the story of how the BBC came to drop the Newsnight investigation into Savile and the seismic consequences of that decision.


This is the second part of a two-episode story.


Read all about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/02/jimmy-savile-bbc-journalists-risked-jobs-reveal-truth 


https://www.itv.com/news/update/2012-10-04/watch-the-itv-documentary-on-jimmy-savile/


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Victim-Zero-Jimmy-Savile-Tried/dp/1786060299


https://www.channel4.com/news/by/jackie-long/blogs/my-friend-liz-mackean-a-forensic-journalist-who-had-time-for-people-who-others-ignored


https://www.channel4.com/news/hunted-russia-gay-dispatches-channel-4-video 


Special thanks to Liz MacKean's family for their support.


This show is a co-production of Studio to be. 


Hosted and produced: Maeve McClenaghan 

Co-Executive Producers: Joaquin Alvarado and Ken Ikeda

Producer: Olivia Aylmer

Audio Editor: Chloe Behrens

Sound design, audio mixing and original music: Claudia Meza

Transcription support: Soobin Kim

Theme music: Dice muse



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Just a warning before we start. This episode contains strong language and deals with sexual abuse.

0:07.1

Listener discretion is advised.

0:13.0

Last time on the tip-off.

0:15.4

You immediately start thinking, what was it that I was really seeing back then?

0:19.8

I hadn't spoken to her before the interview.

0:22.0

I'd read her account for what had happened.

0:24.3

But it was meeting her and talking to her.

0:27.4

That was it then.

0:28.3

I absolutely knew that she was telling the truth.

0:32.0

As I left the interview, she said to me,

0:35.3

the BBC will stop this.

0:36.7

They won't let you put this out.

0:38.6

I'm Mav MacLenigan, and this is the tip-off.

0:59.5

This is the second part of a two-part special.

1:04.7

Last time, we heard how Marian Jones and Liz McKean were deep into an investigation for Newsnight. They were talking to several women who alleged that popular children's

1:09.6

entertainer Jimmy Saville has sexually abused

1:12.2

them decades earlier. They had followed clues online and made contact with many people,

1:18.6

including getting a vital on-screen interview recorded with a woman called Karen Ward.

1:24.4

They knew this story could be huge.

1:34.0

And all of this is going on while their BBC colleagues in the Daily News teams are reporting on Saville's recent death.

1:41.0

Even his funeral was splashed across the news, a bombastic affair involving a gold coffin in Leeds Cathedral.

1:46.0

His coffin, which was carried into the cathedral by Royal Marines, was first driven around some of his favourite places in the city,

...

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