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James Wilson Vincent Savile (1926–2011) was one of Britain’s most recognizable radio and television personalities. He hosted BBC programs including Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It, worked as a Radio 1 disc jockey, ran marathons and cultivated a public reputation as an eccentric but extraordinarily successful charity fundraiser.

That reputation concealed decades of sexual abuse.

After Savile died on October 29, 2011, an ITV investigation prompted hundreds of people to report assaults. The Metropolitan Police–NSPCC investigation received information from approximately 600 people, about 450 of whom described abuse by Savile. Investigators formally recorded 214 alleged criminal offences across 28 police-force areas, committed between 1955 and 2009. Most complainants were children or teenagers, although adult women also reported assaults.

The allegations involved:

• Rape and attempted rape
• Indecent assault and other sexual assaults
• Girls and boys, including children younger than
  ten
• Hospital patients, psychiatric patients and
  people with disabilities
• Children appearing at or visiting BBC studios
• Young people in schools, children’s homes and
  detention facilities

Savile exploited access provided by the BBC, charities and hospitals, particularly Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor Hospital. His celebrity made employees reluctant to challenge him and made many victims believe that the authorities would not believe them.

The official HM Inspectorate of Constabulary review found serious failures in how information was recorded and shared. Only five allegations were identifiable in police records before Operation Yewtree, even though other people said they had attempted to report him. The review specifically identified a cultural reluctance to challenge famous people. Read the official HMIC report.

Because Savile died before the investigation, he was never tried and convicted. Nevertheless, the British government’s Forfeiture Committee records that the Director of Public Prosecutions concluded that prosecutions should have occurred during his lifetime.

How Savile was knighted

Savile received two principal British honors:

• Officer of the Order of the British Empire—OBE: awarded in the 1972 New Year Honours for
  charitable services.
• Knight Bachelor: announced in the 1990 New Year Honours for
  charitable services, after which he became “Sir Jimmy Savile.”

A British knighthood is formally granted by the sovereign, but the monarch does not ordinarily investigate or personally select every recipient. Names pass through the government’s honors system and are submitted to the monarch on ministerial advice.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admired Savile’s fundraising and repeatedly supported official recognition for him. Contemporary reporting and government papers indicate that reservations had previously been raised about his suitability. By 1990, however, the recommendation succeeded, and Queen Elizabeth II formally knighted him.

The honor cannot technically be “stripped” from Savile now because membership of the relevant order ended automatically when he died. The government has nevertheless stated that, had he been convicted while alive, forfeiture proceedings would have begun. See the British government’s statement on Savile’s honor.

Savile also received a papal knighthood—Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great—in 1982. After the scandal, the Vatican said it could not formally annul an honor belonging to a deceased person but that Savile’s inclusion had permanently disgraced the honor.

Savile’s relationship with Queen Elizabeth II

Savile undoubtedly encountered members of the Royal Family through investitures, charity events and his association with disability organizations. However, evidence does not establish that Queen Elizabeth II had an intimate personal friendship with him or knew about his crimes.

The most important documented connection was indirect:

1. Savile developed a considerably closer relationship with the then Prince Charles, now King Charles III.

2. Charles sometimes consulted Savile about public relations, hospitals and how the Royal Family should respond to disasters.

3. In 1989, Savile prepared detailed advice about royal public relations and disaster visits.

4. Charles incorporated some of Savile’s suggestions into a memorandum.

5. Charles wrote that he had shown it to Prince Philip, who then showed it to the Queen.

Thus, Savile’s ideas reached the Queen, but this is not evidence that she regarded him as a private adviser or knew what he was doing sexually. Correspondence examined for a documentary showed that Savile acted as an unofficial adviser to Charles for approximately twenty years. It reportedly contained no indication that Charles or other royals knew of his crimes. The surviving correspondence is summarized here.

The surviving evidence supports criticism that Savile’s royal connections enhanced his respectability. They allowed him to present himself as a man trusted by the establishment. It does not, by itself, prove that the Queen protected him or participated in covering up his abuse.

His much closer connection to King Charles III

Although you asked about Prince Andrew and the Queen, Savile’s strongest documented royal relationship was with Prince Charles.

They reportedly met through wheelchair-sports and charitable work during the late 1970s. Savile visited Charles’s official residence, advised him on public relations and was sometimes treated as an informal intermediary. Charles called him someone who understood ordinary public opinion and asked for advice involving the Duchess of York.

Former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter subsequently said Savile’s conduct around young female palace employees caused concern. According to Arbiter, Savile greeted some women by running his lips along their bare arms. Arbiter did not make a formal complaint, and no evidence has established that Savile committed sexual crimes at a royal residence. Read Arbiter’s account.

Charles’s reliance on Savile looks extremely disturbing in hindsight. Nevertheless, the available correspondence has not shown that Charles knew Savile was sexually abusing people.

Savile and Prince Andrew

Claims that Savile and Prince Andrew were close friends are much less securely documented than Savile’s relationship with Charles.

The most important connections are:

• The Lockerbie disaster: After Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed over
  Lockerbie in December 1988, Andrew was criticized for remarks suggesting
  that disasters of that scale were unusual only for the local community.
  According to the makers of a later Savile documentary, the reaction helped
  prompt discussions about how royals should behave following national
  disasters. Savile then produced his public-relations advice.
• Royal and charity occasions: Given Savile’s access to the Royal Family,
  Andrew and Savile may have encountered one another at functions. But that
  is different from proving a sustained friendship.
• The Scoop quotation: The Netflix drama Scoop portrays Andrew
  saying that he spent more time with Savile than with Jeffrey Epstein. This
  should not be treated automatically as a verbatim historical statement. It
  appears in a dramatized reconstruction and is not part of the publicly
  broadcast 2019 BBC interview transcript.

Therefore, the defensible conclusion is: Savile moved within Andrew’s extended royal circle, and Andrew’s Lockerbie controversy was connected indirectly with Savile’s advice to the Royal Family, but the public evidence does not demonstrate a close Andrew–Savile friendship comparable to Andrew’s documented relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Comparison with Jeffrey Epstein

Savile and Epstein were similar in important ways, but they were not the same kind of offender.

Their strongest similarities

Both men:

• Used prestigious associations as social
  protection.
• Cultivated powerful people who could make them
  appear respectable.
• Targeted vulnerable young people.
• Benefited from fragmented investigations and
  institutional failures.
• Continued receiving access despite rumors,
  warning signs or earlier complaints.
• Used philanthropy to build trust and open doors.
• Became symbols of how wealth or celebrity can
  discourage scrutiny.

Important differences

Epstein maintained a more organized recruitment system involving payments, recruiters, employees, private aircraft and several residences. Maxwell’s conviction supplies judicial proof that another person assisted his grooming operation.

Savile’s offending was often opportunistic and embedded within institutions. Hospitals, BBC buildings, dressing rooms and charity work gave him repeated access. The joint police–NSPCC report said investigators had found no clear evidence that Savile belonged to a formal pedophile ring, although his associates and possible informal networks were investigated.

Savile also escaped prosecution completely. Epstein, by contrast, was investigated, convicted in 2008, registered as a sex offender and then arrested on federal charges in 2019.

Did Jimmy Savile ever meet Donald Trump?

I found no reliable documentary evidence that Donald Trump and Jimmy Savile personally met.

There is:

• No authenticated photograph showing them
  together.
• No established meeting in their published
  timelines.
• No reliable correspondence or visitor record
  connecting them.
• No credible evidence that Savile attended Trump’s
  properties or events.

Searches can produce misleading results because photo-library pages automatically display popular search terms such as “Donald Trump,” even when Trump is not in the Savile photographs.

There is also an unrelated 2014 incident involving celebrity Twitter accounts. Billy Ray Cyrus was tricked into reposting a Savile photograph after someone falsely represented Savile as a relative. Articles compared that prank with a different trick previously played on Trump. That does not mean Trump met Savile. The Guardian explains the social-media prank.

Bottom line

Savile’s extensive royal access is documented, especially his unusually close relationship with Prince Charles. His connection to the Queen was principally ceremonial and indirect through Charles and Prince Philip. The evidence for a close personal relationship with Prince Andrew is weak and is sometimes exaggerated through dramatized television scenes.

Savile and Epstein were both prolific sexual predators who used establishment connections and respectable public images as shields. However, Epstein operated a more demonstrably organized recruitment and trafficking structure, while Savile exploited his celebrity and extraordinary access to public institutions. There is presently no substantiated evidence that Savile ever met Donald Trump.