Ex-BBC bosses investigated over Savile links

London: Police are investigating three former BBC bosses from a flagship 1980s TV programme after victims claimed the men were in league with Jimmy Savile.

The former ‘key personnel’ were named to police after the alleged victims had reported their ordeals to a charity.

Scotland Yard is preparing an ‘arrest strategy’ to target living accomplices of the late paedophile presenter.

The hitlist includes former BBC employees accused of colluding with Savile, including one who allegedly raped a beauty queen.

Pete Saunders, of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said: “We have had several allegations about people abused at the BBC but not by Savile himself. We have been told of three key personnel on a flagship BBC programme from the 1980s.” The callers were directed to the police, he added.

Separately there have been accusations Savile ran a “gang of four” at the Top of the Pops programme, said to be staff including a cameraman.

Police say 300 people — all but two of them women — now allege they were victims of the DJ and those in his circle.

Metropolitan Police Commander Peter Spindler said: “The vast majority are about Savile but there are others. We are preparing an arrest strategy.” Referring to Savile’s alleged accomplices, he added: “We will come for them.”

The NSPCC has received 170 calls directly relating to Savile which have been passed on to police.

Mark Williams-Thomas, the former detective whose ITV documentary triggered an avalanche of revelations about Savile, predicted: “The true figure [of victims] is going to be closer to 500-plus. There are people in significant standings in the community who will hopefully be sleeping very uncomfortably — and who will in due course be subject to criminal investigation.”

The Mail revealed three weeks ago how a former beauty queen, named Sandra, had told police she was raped by one of Savile’s BBC staff in a studio storeroom in 1970 when she was 23.

The same man was named by other women as having procured girls for Savile to molest. Now retired, he has denied the allegations to the Daily Mail. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency has been asked to examine whether anyone named by victims is still working with children.

These could include BBC staff and even doctors from hospitals where Savile abused patients during his high-profile charity work. No NHS chief has yet apologised to Savile’s victims.

Savile was never charged. But there were seven police investigations, including one into an alleged attack in his caravan at BBC Television Centre in London.

Judith Folker, 68, who was working in The Retreat pub in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, said two London policemen came in one night in July 1985. “Jimmy Savile came up in conversation and the police said there was enough evidence to prosecute him on child sex offences but that they had been told from ‘on high’ to leave it,” she added.

“They didn’t say why they had been told not to but they weren’t happy about it.”

The police forces involved say they dropped the investigations due to lack of evidence or because victims did not want to take it further.