Jimmy Savile said paedophile popstar Gary Glitter 'didn't do anything wrong'

The comments, recorded two years before Saville died, will be aired along with allegations from five women that the Jim’ll Fix It and Top of the Pops host molested them as minors.

Savile said in previously unaired 2009 interview footage that he believed Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was prosecuted due to his high profile.

Glitter was jailed for four months in 1999 for downloading 4,000 child porn images. He was also deported from Vietnam in 2008 for sexually assaulting two girls aged 10 and 11.

In the following year’s interview, Savile said: ‘Now Gary, all he did was to take his computer into PC World to get it repaired.

‘They went into the hard drive, saw all these dodgy pictures and told the police. The police then go, ‘Oh we’ve got a famous person – we’ll have them.’

‘But Gary has not sold ’em, has not tried to sell ’em, not tried to show them in public. It were for his own gratification.

‘If you said to that copper, what’s Gary Glitter done wrong? Well nothing really. He’s just sat at home watching dodgy films.

‘Whether it was right or wrong is up to him. They didn’t do anything wrong but they’re demonised.

The footage will be aired in the ITV1 documentary Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile on Wednesday.

In the program, five women claim Savile made attempts to take sexual advantage of them when they under 16 years of age.

One woman, going by the name Val, alleges Savile indecently assaulted her ‘dozens of times’ and raped her.

Esther Rantzen, who worked at the BBC alongside Savile and founded ChildLine, says she and colleagues ‘blocked our ears’ to rumours about his sexual behaviour.

‘I feel that we in television, in his world, in some way colluded with him as a child abuser – because I now believe that’s what he was,’ she says in the documentary.

‘We all blocked our ears to the gossip. We made him into the Jimmy Savile who was untouchable.

‘Jim’ll Fix It was for children – he was a sort of God-like figure. These children were powerless.

‘The jury isn’t out any more. What upsets me is that not one of these children could ask for help.

‘The abuse of power was as great as the sexual abuse.’

Former producer Wilfred D’Ath also says Savile referred to Top of the Pops as his ‘happy hunting ground’.

Former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who was brought in to investigate evidence for the programme, said he believed the allegations of misconduct by Savile to be true.

‘The accounts all connected in terms of modus operandi,’ he says.

‘I had no doubt the people making the allegations were telling the truth.

‘The great shame is that Savile is not alive to face the allegations.

‘We are right to give these women a voice – one not heard while they were children.’

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