Jimmy Saville, who died aged eighty four last weekend, was, quite simply part of my life for as long as I can remember anything. Almost since a meaningful 'zero hour' he was there: on the radio or on the television. But there was nowt zero about Jimmy.
I remember first seeing him on Top of the Tops, with that anarchic grin beneath shocking blonde hair (though his smile would always reassure) on through the treasured Saturday teatimes (depending on how the football results had gone) of Jim'll Fix It and to a hill between Leeds and Otley where I saw him training for yet another marathon. 'Hurry up, Jimmy' yelled my father cheerfully from the window of the car; 'which is the quickest way home?' was his exhausted response. I urged him to join us but that was the closest I or most people got to him.
It was on the radio where, ironically, he became alive to me in a way neither television nor, strangely, reality could achieve. His Sunday lunchtime programme, centred around a fictitious working men's club, where he would play hit records and 'score points' off you if you didn't get the names of artists and tracks absolutely correct were the best two hours of every week. The songs took you - and him - back to people and places that made you laugh and cry in equal measure as the memories came flooding back.
He once said that there was no such thing as important people, or famous people: they were all just people. Jimmy was never just that; not for me and many other ordinary folk who will miss him.
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