Scarborough has fallen out of love with Jimmy Savile - understandably so. The man who was laid to rest here at an angle so that he could see the sea was celebrated for his connections with this town. For example, it was he that arranged for the QM2 AND QE2 cruise liners to perform a sail past of the towns bays. Apparently, a tribute cruise performed by the new Queen Elizabeth was due to take place next year, including another sail past of Scarborough in August, but this has since been cancelled in light of the revelations about the man.
As well as an elaborate headstone on his grave, various tributes in the form of plaques and paths named after him were put in place only recently.
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And even more recently they have been removed.
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There have been rumours about Savile for years but it's astonishing how quickly the official version of who he was has been superseded by a newer repulsive version. And all celebration of that 'official' version has been swiftly discarded as upsetting and inappropriate.
More and more about Savile is being uncovered, a lot of it simply incredible. This blog contains some bizarre details about his life and career. It's astonishing nothing (or any weight) was brought to bear against the man while he was alive. But then to most he merely seemed eccentric rather than dangerous.
That was true enough on the one occasion I crossed his path. One of the things Savile was well-known for in the 70s was his series of adverts promoting British Rail. On top of any financial rewards he received for this he also got a gold pass that allowed him unlimited travel on the railway. With Scarborough being one of his favourite haunts, it was only a matter of time before I came across him at the station.
It was fairly early on in my career there - I couldn't remember the exact year. All I can recall was that I was in the ticket office one Sunday morning. Sundays are always rife with engineering work somewhere on the network and on this day there were no trains coming in or out of Scarborough at all. Coaches were taking passengers between Scarborough, York and Leeds.
The familiar figure, dressed in his trademark tracksuit and sporting all his jewelery approached the ticket window. He exchanged some words with the supervisor, who had met him before. Then he asked me how to get to 'String of Beads' which he quickly explained was some sort of peculiar of rhyming slang for 'Leeds'
I explained to him about the Rail Replacement Bus Service. This didn't faze him at all and I commented that he was taking it very well (I had already had several other customers that morning who were thoroughly PO'd about the whole affair). He replied that taking a coach was not really a problem. Things could be much worse, he opined. We could all be living in Kosovo (I guess that reference helps to tie down the period this all took place in, a little...), he said. And with that he went and boarded the coach.
It was a strange little encounter, but I've remembered it all this time.
More soonliest
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