His dark materials | 4 June 2015

Have you heard the one about girlfriend-killer Oscar Pistorius not having a leg to stand on? Or what about the Germanwings knock-knock joke? If you find gags like these funny, you could come and stand with me on the terraces at Brentford FC. When we played Leeds United earlier in the season, we chanted at them, ‘He’s one of your own, he’s one of your own, Jimmy Savile, he’s one of your own.’ The general public has never wasted much time making up jokes about tragic public events.

Making light of high-profile tragedies is a perfectly understandable human reaction, even if it might be frowned upon by some. And what about those who seek to turn topical events into serious art? Is that any more noble than making a cheap joke? It’s a question that’s worth asking in the light of the fact that a new play at London’s Park Theatre is about to exhume the aforementioned Savile, while details of the full extent of his criminality are still emerging.

An Audience With Jimmy Savile tells the story of the cigar-chomping perv’s crimes, which included attacks on hundreds of children and women, from the point of view of one of his victims. With its controversial subject matter and a household name, the impressionist Alistair McGowan, in the title role, the production seems ripe for a tabloid-stoked outcry. Yet its author Jonathan Maitland, a journalist with 30 years experience who currently works for ITV’s Tonight programme, tells me it is not too soon for a Savile play and there is yet to be a serious backlash.

A quick check online shows that he seems to be right. There’s an e-petition, one of those digital moron magnets, calling for the production to be scrapped that has so far attracted only a couple of hundred signatures.