Week Forty-One In Which I Confess My Mum & I Hated Savile

Jimmy Savile used to like his cars. I was dead jealous that he had a Lamborghini Countach which he changed each year. I knew about it as he was one of the very first to be known to have a CD player in his car and the car audio trade would talk about famous people’s jobs they had done. I knew about Paul McCartney and Vangelis’ installs (who kept everyone waiting at close-the-shop time at Mike Wells’ while he closed his eyes and ‘conducted’ a whole track of his own, from the driver’s seat.) but to my intense frustration, I was never allowed to do features on the famous persons’ cars as the confidentiality of the installers is why they got the work, after their skill, obviously.
And of course, my late mother Claire Rayner OBE was a well known childcare expert (well, my brother and sister are better examples of an excellent upbringing&;) and was a champion of sex education for the young and was a regular broadcaster at the BBC. So much so, that in my few forays into BBC TV work (some BBC Breakfast stuff as ‘pundit’ and quite a heap of radio, always as ‘motoring journalist’) I would meet people who would say that they had met or worked with my mum. (Especially the terribly sweet folks on the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine team) Fact is, with just three TV channels for most of that time and celebrity being earned back then, not thrown about like used snot rags, as it is today, you simply had to be actually employed in the business for everybody to know everybody else in the trade.
Thus she met all sorts of people and one day she came home having met Jimmy Savile. She was a formidable ‘reader’ of people and that was part of what made her such a well loved agony aunt and it was like she’d met Gollum. I recall she even said, ‘His handshake was horrible, all limp and weird&;’ before going on to show me what it was like. The proffered hand was merely to be shaken as it was held limply at you, like he was a potentate. She was repelled. And I always said that something truly grotesque was going to come out about him one dayit was just so clear in so many ways, let alone Louis Theroux’s programme.
So, for once I find myself in the same political camp as the Sun newspaper that my mum used to be the agony aunt for before Deidre Sanders and that I feel his knighthood aughta be stripped posthumously. Even if he did have a CD player in his Countach.
Sorry, possible abuse of the column there. And one last thing. Poor Esther Rantzen was the only person who would have had the clout to have barged this into the public eye (even over and above me mum) and clearly feels awful that she didn’t know or act. I can only wonder how much of the current press coverage would have been made by Claire had she been alive and hale today&;
OK, time to get that pile of kit out of the loft and installed in the test rig. One of the most important is the top end set of three-way Hertz Mille speakers I have had in my loft (beautifully enclosed) for testing for far too long. They are the thick end of a grand’s worth. I shall be playing them upon a Soundstream Reference amplifier.
But just before I go get on, I want to offer up a huge thank you to CAR AUDIO DIRECT who I have blagged something from for a dear friend. I found she had ordered an under seat subwoofer to be fitted to her Ford Street Ka. As she is full time carer on benefits, just running the car is a tough call and insurance is costly as she only passed very recently. (Brave lass!) Her son is a lovely bloke and has come to car shows with his mum since he was tiny. It’s stimulating and he has an incredible knowledge of cars and their models and specifications. This is down to his being Autistic and is why mum is his carer. But she is doing an amazing job and far from the lad being non-verbal – she was told he may never speak to her or call her mum – he is capable and can communicate well and is growing up to be a man. The fact that the music he loves so and can sing along to (mum even downloads the lyrics for him to read) has some ripe language PARENTAL ADVISORY is mere detail and he has to learn the rules of such language’s use, in any case. I know that hearing him singing happily along makes mum emotional.
So, I made a couple of calls and Ultimate Audio in Bromsgrove, who were going to do The Metal Overlord’s Audi for him (it fell through as fixing the car was such grief he lost impetus and urge, sadly.) are going to install a Ground Zero under seat subwoofer for her, provided by Car Audio Direct. I shall bring you the full story in due course, but it made me good to feel that I have helped. I have of course deprived the shop of her trade but I promise I won’t make a habit of it&;
Adam Rayner On Line Editor