The tarnished memories of youth

How's about that, then?  

That's what we all used to say, in doing our Jimmy Savile impressions.

It might have been at school, the morning after Top of the Pops (ask your parents, kids) when we would have seen Savile introducing Gary Glitter or any number of well known entertainers. 

Or we'd have discussed Stuart Hall's raucous laughter during 'It's A Knockout'.

My one Gary Glitter LP is still in the loft, with the rest of my vinyl collection that I can't bring myself to unload, even though I know I really should. 

It turns out that a lot of the famous people of my youth were perverts and paedophiles or both.

All these years on and the truth is now out there and my fond memories of more innocent times are fractured. 

I sang along with and laughed at people who committed terrible crimes.  It is the final end of the innocence. 

It is nonsense to suggest that there were no perverts around before the advent of the internet and the permissive society.

Even as a young boy, I knew of a local scout leader who enjoyed the company of young boys in ways that we did not feel necessarily fitted in with the more traditional things they did.

We had heard the stories and it came as a surprise when he was sent to prison because, well, some people were just like that.  He was just a harmless old child molester.

I kid you not, that was the gist of how many people felt.

I don't know if I felt physically sick at the time but I do now every time a new pervert comes to light.  What drives these people to such awful things?

And you don't really know how awful some of these things are until you actually read some of the court documents.  For instance, the crimes of the Lost Prophets singer Ian Watkins were so vile, so utterly perverted and downright evil, I wish I hadn't read them at all. For someone like me, implacably opposed to Capital Punishment, to feel I'd like to be his hangman bears testament to that.

Meanwhile, parts of my childhood memories have been tarnished by the sick deeds of others but the vast majority haven't.  And it's actually a good thing that the bad guys are finally being outed, even if some like Savile have escaped justice.

And it's probably a good thing that, thanks to modern technology, that bad people are being rooted out.