The Reckoning has left viewers shuddering with disgust at the vile exploits of paedophile Jimmy Savile, and episode 4 showed some of the most disturbing scenes yet – when he molested a dead body.
The scene, which is about 40 minutes into episode 4 if you wanted to avoid it, shows the Jim’ll Fix It star hovering outside the mortuary in Leeds hospital.
In an extremely disturbing, but mercifully short scene, actor Steve Coogan reenacts one of Jimmy Savile’s most sickening crimes – the abuse of corpses.
And the four-part drama was originally going to feature a shot that the actor refused to do. Here’s everything you need to know.
***Warning: disturbing information from episode 4 of The Reckoning ahead***
What happens in the ‘disturbing scene’ with Jimmy Savile and a dead body?
In episode 4 of The Reckoning, viewers see an elderly Jimmy Savile hanging around the mortuary at Leeds hospital. He approached porter Victor pushing a trolley with a dead body on top, covered with a sheet.
Showing a sickening interest, Jimmy asked who the deceased was, and learnt it was a 76-year-old lady. When he asked what she’d died of, the porter told him: “None of your business.”
After asking if the body was “going straight in the fridge”, Jimmy Savile learnt that the family wanted to see the dead body. He then hovered in the hallway, waiting for the porter to leave. Steve Coogan, portraying Jimmy Savile, then entered the mortuary and stood beside the dead body.
Wearing a clinical white coat, we then saw him removing his hand from the lower half of the female corpse. He adjusted the sheet, and left – to the obvious horror of the porter who returned at that moment.
The porter, played by Death in Paradise actor Joseph Mydell, said to Jimmy Savile: “What are you doing? Get out. Show some respect.” He later told his superior: “He was with the body. I don’t know why or what he was doing. He has no cause to do that. You have to treat a body with respect. The dead can’t look after themselves, can they? Their loved ones trust us to do it.”
However he’s told: “Without concrete evidence, there is nothing we can do.”
What has Steve Coogan said about filming this scene in The Reckoning?
Talking at a press event attended by ED!, actor Steve Coogan revealed that the necrophilia scene in The Reckoning made him “uncomfortable”. In fact, he found it “very disturbing” and asked for it to be changed.
He revealed that the controversial scene was altered after he had a conversation with director Sandra Goldbacher. He said: “It was really disturbing, what can you say? It’s as disturbing as it looks.”
At the launch, Steve Coogan said that the original scene featured a shot that the actor “didn’t want to do”.
He said: “In that morgue scene, there was a certain shot they wanted to do that I didn’t want to do. It was just a detail that I was uncomfortable with, so I had a conversation with the director and we came to an agreement on what was the most appropriate way to depict it.”
Acknowledging that the scene is horrible, he added: “You have to strike that balance – you don’t want to upset survivors and you don’t want to anaesthetise the full effect.”
Meanwhile, writer Neil McKay said he had “excellent sources” for the scene. He said: “You don’t want to cause distress or show something that’s grim. So it’s a decision and, you know, the way it’s been edited and put together, we think we found right balance. I think it would have been wrong and untrue to not show it.”
He added: “It’s the ultimate violation to harm the dead.”
Did Jimmy Savile abuse dead body?
In real life, Jimmy Savile visited the hospital so regularly he had a bedroom there. He spent much of his time in the chapel, where he was known to have abused victims such as Sam. Chillingly, the mortuary was next door to the chapel, and Savile’s bedroom was two floors up.
It is widely reported that Top of the Pops presenter Jimmy Savile was a necrophiliac – a person who has sexual interest in dead bodies.
In fact, according to The Guardian, Savile told hospital staff he performed sex acts on corpses in Leeds mortuary. A Broadmoor nurse told investigators that the late TV presenter admitted posing with bodies in lewd positions for photographs. He confessed to stealing glass eyes as momentos, and using them as jewellery.
An official investigation concluded that Savile’s interest in the deceased was “not within accepted boundaries”. One former Broadmoor nurse told investigators that Savile claimed to have performed sex acts on bodies and “mucked about” in the mortuary, posing in photographs with the deceased after placing them in lewd positions.
The nurse also described how Savile would talk about gamaroosh with the dead bodies, a slang for oral sex.
Savile had regular unsupervised access to the mortuary from the late 70s until the mid-90s. This was as a result of his friendship with the chief mortician of Leeds general infirmary, who is now dead.
Former radio DJ Jimmy Savile spent five days alone with his own mother’s dead body.
Read more: The Reckoning on BBC One: Where is Jimmy Savile’s ‘adopted son’ Ray Teret now?
The Reckoning is currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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