“Malcolm Muggeridge – Malcolm Buggeridge!” Deputy Editor Jake Wrench bellows across the news room of the Daily Norks. “Jesus, that would be perfect for a headline exposing another dead celebrity kiddie fiddler! If only we can turn up some dirt on the old bastard – are we sure that he never met Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter?” However, speaking exclusively to The Sleaze, Wrench concedes that Muggeridge might not be an ideal candidate to form the focus of his tabloid’s follow up to the Jimmy Savile sex scandal. “Who the Hell remembers who Malcolm Muggeridge was? Certainly not the sort of people who read our paper!” he says. “Sure, he was on the BBC in the 1970s, but he’s just not going to capture the public imagination the way Savile has. Besides, using him just because we can get the word bugger into his name is a bit too random and opportunistic. We need to preserve our journalistic integrity by actually establishing some firm link between a dead celebrity and the current scandal!” The Daily Norks is in the process of trying to steal a march on tabloid rivals with regard to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse allegations, its journalists ploughing through lists of dead celebrities, searching their archives to try and find any hints of sexual improprieties on their part. “We need to keep this story going,” he says. “But there’s a real danger that it might be getting stale and the readership could be getting fed up with this focus on Savile – we need more variety, more sensational celebrity names. Obviously, they have to be dead, so as to avoid libel actions.”

According to the tabloid journalist, circulation of the paper has increased by over thirty per cent since it began running lurid front page ‘revelations’ about the alleged depredations of the late BBC Disc Jockey. “I’m telling you, Jimmy Savile was a gift from God!” Wrench told us. ”We should be giving thanks on a daily basis for the fact that he was some kind of freaky kiddie-fiddling sex fiend! That peroxided pervert could turn out to be the saviour of print journalism. I’m so grateful, that if he was still alive, I’d let him shag my teenage daughter! Well, maybe not shag her, that’s a bit off – just cop a feel, perhaps.” Nonetheless, Wrench suspects the bandwagon could be running out of steam. “Whilst Sir Jimmy has been the pervy gift that just keeps on giving, with every day apparently bringing a new revelation even more sordid than the last, it is all getting a bit repetitious,” he opines. “Every day it’s just the same old stories of Jimmy groping little girls in his dressing room, or getting young boys to puff on his ‘pink cigar’. We need new angles, new perversions. OK, there’s those necrophilia rumours, but they’ve been about for years – hang on, what if we were to ‘discover’ that he’d been having sex with dead kiddies? Jesus! That would be a game changer!” Taken with this new idea, Wrench once more bellows across the news room, to one of his sub editors: “Larry, see if you can find some nutcase who will claim that Jimmy Savile wouldn’t let her little girl rest in peace – even in the morgue! Just go through the list of regulars who keep writing in saying they’ve been felt up by aliens, one of them is bound to ‘remember’ the dead kiddie sex incident for the usual fee!”

But the angle Wrench is betting on to fuel the story’s continued popularity is that of the possible involvement of other celebrities in the underage sex allegations. “Let’s face it – that’s the main novelty factor here: the involvement of a well-known dead celebrity, so we can make all sorts of allegations without fear of libel actions,” he declares. “That’s what marks it out from all the other peado stories the public are inundated with these days. So, clearly, we need to bring more celebrities into, establish that there was some kind BBC celebrity child sex ring operating at the old Television Centre!” The problem is that, whilst official investigations into Savile have hinted at the involvement of other TV and radio personalities, and various vague revelations of sexual harassment by middle-aged female presenters, no names have been named. “There’s only so long that our readers are going to put up with this kind of teasing before they lose interest in the story,” Wrench explains. “Damn it, the only other celebrity we can name with any degree of certainty is Gary Glitter – but whilst he’s already a convicted nonce, he’s old news. That’s why we’ve decided to do our own investigation of anyone dead and male that worked at the BBC in the 1970s and 1980s and knew Jimmy Savile, no matter how peripherally!”

But identifying suitable candidates for exposure has proven more difficult than the paper initially expected. “We were at least hoping for an ex-Radio One DJ – then somebody remembered that ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton was still alive and capable of suing us,” Wrench admits. “For a while we thought we’d got Tony Hart, that camp artist from Vision On and Take Hart, bang to rights. We had what we thought was good information that he’d abused his plasticine sidekick Morph, forcing him to do disgusting stuff like transforming into a huge penis, but Morph wouldn’t talk. So far, the best we’ve come up with is an allegation that !970s sitcom regular Arthur Mullard had once looked at some woman in a pervy way and had done some heavy breathing at her. Personally, I think the fat old bastard was just wheezing as he had a heart attack. I mean, he was so bloody overweight he’d never have been able to chase after any kiddies without collapsing, let alone abuse them!”

The treatment of the Savile scandal by the Daily Norks and other tabloids has been heavily criticised in some quarters. “Frankly, it’s outrageous, the way they’re presenting this appalling story as some kind of salacious entertainment, with which to titillate their readers,” Simon Crowbar, editor of small circulation left wing journal New Democrat told The Sleaze. “Worse than that, most of these predominantly right wing rags are also using it as an excuse to attack the likes of the BBC and the National Health Service, who employed Savile at various times.” Crowbar’s publication is taking a very different line on the scandal. “Nobody’s talking about the elephant in the room – Jimmy Savile’s connections with this country’s political establishment,” he declares. “How else could he have got away with his sexual depravities for several decades without powerful friends at the highest echelons of society covering up for him?” Most specifically, Crowbar wants answers regarding Savile’s close relationships with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and heir to the throne Prince Charles. “Did Thatcher block investigations into her good friend Sir Jimmy – who, let’s not forget, was a frequent visitor to Chequers – was it her influence that got a radio DJ with no medical qualifications appointed to lead an enquiry into the treatment of vulnerable patients at Broadmoor hospital? We need to know,” he thunders. “And just why is the government so keen that the content of those letters the Prince of Wales has written to various government departments remain secret? Was he trying to ensure that Savile wasn’t investigated?”

Crowbar is keen to emphasise that he isn’t accusing either Thatcher or the Prince of having direct knowledge of Savile’s wrong doing. “They’d probably heard the rumours like everyone else, but just refused to believe them,” he explains. “Obviously, they feared that any investigations, even if they eventually cleared Savile, would have been hugely damaging to them because of their associations with Savile.” Crowbar speculates that Savile could have been part of a high-level peadophile ring, perhaps centred around the Jersey children’s home at Haut de la Garenne. “Not only Jimmy Savile, but all manner of other wealthy and influential people have been implicated in the alleged abuse there,” he says. “I have no doubt that many of them occupied senior positions in the worlds of government and commerce and influenced both Thatcher and Prince Charles in trying to cover up for Savile.” Crowbar admits that he has no actual hard evidence of such a conspiracy and that publication of his journal’s story is currently on hold following legal advice. “Look, it’s obvious there was a high-level conspiracy,” he maintains. “How else can we explain the fact the Security Service vetting Savile must have been subjected to because of his contacts with Thatcher and Prince Charles apparently failed to uncover the fact he was a nonce?”