Jimmy Savile and Freddy Krueger: separated at birth, united in your nightmares

“Now then, now then. How’s about that, then, guys and gals?”

What adds the extra dimension of horror to the revelations about Sir Jimmy Savile OBE’s sexual predilections, quelle surprise, is the power involved. Not just that the BBC and police, as huge institutions, closed ranks around their star — they do that all the time. It’s not just that his victims were opportunistically drawn from a pool of trusting star-struck youngsters. It’s that so many were lost children: runaways, borstal boys, girls from “approved” schools, even kids from orphanages.

It’s like the class war played out through sex.

Jimmy put the vile in Savile when he raped these children: the ones at the bottom of society who needed love the most. The paedophile parties that rewarded his showbiz cronies and their hangers-on were the nightmare underbelly of the 1960s dream. Where so many were going for sexual liberation, predators swam in the wake, picking off the stragglers who had little chance of gaining from the economic good times.

Their abuse shouldn’t be used as a Trojan Horse to clamp down on sexual autonomy for adults or to attack the values of the sixties. With all this country’s faults, universal healthcare and education, a robust housing programme and an improving distribution of the nation’s wealth, made it one of the planet’s best places in which to live.

While we’re reeling with disgust at the abuse in the Savile case and its cover-up, Health Minister Jeremy Hunt’s cynical headline-hungry calls for a 12-week limit on abortions while his government pauperise women through the savagery of their cuts, would inflate the numbers of the vulnerable working class who have fallen through the floor even further if enacted in law. Even more unwanted kids for a decadent ruling elite to dine on, whether as sexual fodder or free and low-paid labour in their businesses.

The spirit of Savile lives on in the callousness of our ruling elite. We’re all Soylent Green now.