Prince Charles’ letters to paedophile Jimmy Savile exposed

Charles’ friendship with disgraced TV presenter Jimmy Savile is examined in a new Netflix documentary that has uncovered letters between the two.

Prince Charles’ close friendship with disgraced BBC presenter Jimmy Savile is being examined in a new Netflix documentary which uncovered letters between the two.

Savile, who was exposed as a paedophile following his death in 2011 at age 84, is the subject of a new special Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story.

Letters obtained by the filmmakers, which were written between 1986 and 2006, showed Prince Charles sought advice from the radio and TV personality, The Times reported today.

According to the outlet, the late BBC presenter wrote a media relations “handbook” for the heir to the British throne. Some advice suggested by Savile was later shown to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, Fox News reports.

Prince Charles’ private letters to Jimmy Savile have been exposed in a new documentary. Picture: Getty

The first of the letters, dated January 14, 1987, was a handwritten note from Charles, now 73. It said: “Perhaps I am wrong, but you are the bloke who knows what’s going on. What I really need is a list of suggestions from you. I so want to get to parts of the country that others don’t get to reach.”

In one correspondence, Charles sought guidance on how to deal with Prince Andrew’s insensitive comments about the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, a terrorist plane bombing that killed everyone aboard as well as 11 people on the ground in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland.

When Charles’ younger brother visited Scotland just days after the tragedy, the Duke of York said, “I supposed statistically something like this has got to happen at some stage … Of course, it only affects the community in a very small way.”

Rowan Deacon, the documentary’s director, told the outlet that “it reignited a discussion about how the royal family should respond to disasters”.

“Jimmy Savile wrote this dossier, quite an in-depth document of advice, on how the Queen should behave and how members of the royal family should not be in competition with each other,” Deacon said.

He was a beloved children’s TV presenter – but after his death, Savile was branded one of Britain’s worst sex offenders by police. Picture: Lewis Whyld/PA Wire/AP

Deacon noted that Savile’s guidelines included hiring “a special person with considerable experience in such matters” and having “an incident room” with “several independent phone lines, Teletext, etc”.

The exchange implied that the Prince took Savile’s advice seriously.

In a 1989 letter, he wrote to Savile again, saying: “I attach a copy of my memo on disasters which incorporates your points and which I showed to my father. He showed it to HM [Her Majesty].”

In 1989, Charles also asked for suggestions on “useful morale-boosting visits, etc. to worthwhile groups, places, projects and so on that don’t get enough attention”.

In another letter, dated December 1989, Charles asked Savile to meet with Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s wife at the time.

“I wonder if you would ever be prepared to meet my sister-in-law – the Duchess of York?” Charles wrote. “Can’t help feeling that it would be extremely useful to her if you could. I feel she could do with some of your straightforward common sense!”

Deacon stressed there is no indication that Charles knew anything about Savile’s alleged crimes, which became public knowledge after his death.

Charity man with a dark secret

Bestowed with a knighthood for his charity fundraising, Savile was best known as the host of the BBC’s Top Of The Pops weekly television pop music show, launching the program in 1964 and returning to present its final edition in 2006. For almost 20 years from 1975, Savile also hosted the hugely popular series Jim’ll Fix It, in which the broadcaster responded to children’s letters by arranging for their wishes to be realised.

In his lifetime, Savile championed several causes. He frequently participated in marathons to raise money and led work to collect £20 million for the creation of a national spinal injuries centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in southern England.

Savile kept his personal life a closely guarded secret. Picture: AFP

Savile never married and fiercely guarded his personal life, which sparked curiosity. He lived alone in his native Leeds, in northern England, reserving part of his home as a shrine to his late mother. The documentary noted that since Savile’s death, independent investigations and those made by Scotland Yard uncovered that he had been “a prolific and predatory sex offender, abusing hundreds of people, some as young as five”.

More than 450 allegations of sexual assault and abuse have been made against Savile. The allegations followed Savile long before his death. In 2013, British police released a transcript of an interview with Savile in which he vehemently denied allegations of sexual abuse and said his accusers were only after money.

Savile told officers he had “no need to chase girls” or “take liberties with them,” because as a host of popular TV shows, “what you don’t do is assault women, they assault you”.

Reports also emerged suggesting that he participated in acts of necrophilia, gaining access to the mortuary of Leeds General Infirmary where he worked as a volunteer porter.

According to The Times, an anonymous letter was sent to police in 1998 that said Savile “thinks he’s untouchable because of the people he mixes with”. That included Savile’s relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who lobbied for him to be knighted in 1990.

The unearthed letters ‘show the trust that Prince Charles put into Jimmy Savile’. Picture: Getty

“The consequence of that was that it gave him a seal of approval in the eyes of the British public,” Deacon said. “It consolidated our trust in him. We’re not suggesting for one moment that Thatcher or Prince Charles knew what he was really up to. Nonetheless, that seal of approval meant that the weight of his respect and trust was a planet compared to the tiny voices of the women that popped up every now and then.”

A spokesperson for the Prince didn’t immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

“He was duped like we all were,” Deacon said. “The letters show the trust that Prince Charles put into Jimmy Savile. He was trying to appeal to the British people, trying to modernise. And he saw Jimmy Savile as his conduit to that. In hindsight, that was catastrophic.”

This story originally appeared on Fox News and is republished here with permission