Sunday 30 October 2011

Now then, now then, now then... guys and gals!

I was saddened this weekend to read of the death of Jimmy Savile.  Definitely one of life's great characters, the perennially tracksuited figure, dripping with gold jewellery and resplendent with fat cigar is one of my most enduring childhood recollections - and long before the word "chav" was even thought of!

I think back to all the nights I spent listening to that distinctive voice on Radio Luxembourg, my transistor radio sneakily hidden under the bedclothes when my parents fondly imagined I'd gone to sleep!  To that very first "Top of the Pops" way back in the year I took my O levels, and then to the Sunday lunchtime Radio 1 "Double Top Ten Show" with its challenge of 'points' awarded for remembering the hits of years gone by: I think I still have some old reel-to-reel tape recordings of some of them.

The stories he used to tell of being a porter at Leeds Royal Infirmary, his fundraising exploits for Stoke Mandeville - and of course, all those Marathons he ran!  In an age increasingly dominated by revelations of sleaze amongst the rich and famous, it's a refreshing change to have come across a genuinely good person.

"How's about that then?" 

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