See you Jimmy

Savile, a Yorkshireman, bought his house in Glencoe nine years ago, having loved the place since he cycled through it as a teenager in 1942. "It was a voyage of discovery, and this was Shangri-La," he says.

Savile comes here about once a month, and was delighted to champion Glencoe for The Scotsman's Seven Wonders series. Thanks to his support, Glencoe was named one of Seven Wonders of Scotland in the poll, which attracted more than 50,000 votes.

"It's not scenery. It's a feeling," he says.

Inside his Highland hideaway, Savile sits in a threadbare tracksuit on a mouse-eaten leather chair and gazes blissfully at the snow-covered peaks of the Three Sisters.

"Look. At. That." he says, with that peculiar intonation which puts a full stop between each word. "Imagine waking up in the morning and seeing that."

A wood-burning stove is blasting out heat but the house is spartan, with white walls and a plain wooden floor. There's a claymore hanging from the wall, which commemorates his stint as Honorary Chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games.

Sir Jimmy has been the world's first DJ, a coalminer, a wrestler, an entrepreneur and the face of Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It. He has raised more than 40 million for charity and worked as a volunteer hospital porter for more than 40 years.

As a child in Leeds, he was the youngest of seven. He nearly died when he was two, and his mother prayed to Margaret Sinclair, an Edinburgh nun who died serving the poor. Savile often spends an hour at St Patrick's Church in Edinburgh, where Sinclair is buried. "It's a good idea to have a rudder," he says

After leaving school at 14, he wanted to go into the air force, but was conscripted into the mines. "I could recognise every star in the sky and I still can, but I ended up a mile underground. I would look at that black stuff, put my hands on it and think, 'I'm the first person to touch this for 87 million years.' So everybody thought I was a bit peculiar."

At 19 he was caught in a huge explosion, which shattered his back and broke his legs. He was told he would never walk again. "I'm a bit logical. I lay down in a lot of strange places, buses trams, shops, in the street. It took a couple of years and I found if I didn't abuse my back it didn't give me a problem."

While he was still on sick pay, he hit on the idea of holding a "record dance" using a wind-up gramophone rigged up to a radio. "I borrowed eight records for about two hours and I got 12 bob. It was the world's first disco. That was really the start of it all. I realised then I was a millionaire. I knew it was out there somewhere."

When he started earning good money, Sir Jimmy vowed his mother, whom he still calls The Duchess, could have "anything she wanted". But it was never a role she felt entirely easy with. "She was a definite character. She was convinced all her life that I was a thief. She couldn't believe anybody would pay a penny to look at me and every time I'd go home she'd say, 'Be careful.'"

Savile landed a job on Radio Luxembourg, then on Radio 1, and on into television, where he came up with the names for both Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It

"Once a TV producer said to me, 'My kids really want to throw custard pies at their teacher.' I said, 'That's out of order. It was violence. What sort of example does that set to kids.?'"

He has been both hugely successful and always strangely out of step. He says he took his first drink on the day he drew the old-age pension. And he was the only person in the 1960s looking forward to getting old. "I was big on pensions because you couldn't guarantee you had a future. I finished up with the best part of 200 pensions. It was great fun. My gamble paid off."

In person he's exactly as he is on television - sharp and funny, yet obscure and somewhat disconcerting. He is bursting with good health but has decided that, after running 217 marathons, it's time to stop: "If something happened, people might think it was not good to exercise. I don't want to go a bridge too far."

In January he will be filming Jim'll Fix it - Now and Then for UK TV Gold. He's just done a fashion shoot for iD magazine. "That thing keeps ringing," he says, prodding the phone. "It's, 'Will you? Can you?' I fend them off. It's an honour, but I wouldn't mind if it stopped."

He loves ambushing people. He asks me to ring my mother, then takes the phone and tells her I've come for a job at 'The Golden Hands Massage Parlour.'

"She says you can give her a reference."

Later, it's Sir Jimmy's 80th birthday party at the River Coe Bistro. It's a relaxed and riotous evening, with mince'n'tatties, wine and whisky, and guests including the mountaineer Hamish McInnes and the folk singer Moira Kerr. "I love it when Jimmy comes up - he's always got some good stories," she says.

Peter Weir says Jimmy is just "one of the boys" in Glencoe, and used to help serve sandwiches to coach parties: "I used to say, 'I'm the real Sean Connery but he's only a lookalike Jimmy Savile.'"

When the conversation turns to ghosts, Jimmy sits murmuring "rubbish", adding: "Have you got any ghosts that look like lap dancers?"

He's prone to such comments, but his relationships have always been a mystery - so next day I ask him why that is. "You've asked me a question. So I'll tell you. I love getting married. But only for about two hours.

"And I don't want any kids running around here. Not mine or anybody else's. Most people like to extend their lineage but I'm not like that. I have a wandering existence.

"For me, I don't need a permanent person with me all the time but I have temporary people around me all the time. I'm not around long enough anywhere to be a pain in the arse."

He has homes in Leeds, Bournemouth, Scarborough, Regent's Park, and a caravan in Devon. He often sleeps in a room in Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

"Hospitals for me are better than clubs. I can drop in any time of the day or night and there's always someone to talk to. It's like having your own private playground.

"I've been on 52 cruises. You go to Southampton, get on a nice ship, they move the scenery every night. I've been everywhere 20 times, so I don't bother getting off, when everyone gets off I have this 100 thousand tonne ship to myself."

He relishes the company of new people but, he says: "I wear them out in two days." He says that when he made the Louis Theroux documentary When Louis Met Jimmy in 2002 "I had a great time but he kept disappearing. I said, 'Where's he gone?' They said, 'To get away from you.'"

I ask him if he's planning to slow down and he laughs, lying back in his chair, puffing away on his cigar and gazing at the snowy mountains. "Look... How. Much. Slower... Could. I. Get?"

But he isn't completely at rest even here. A mirror hanging from the ceiling reflects coaches as they turn into the glen. The drivers know that if the Saltire and the White Rose of Yorkshire are flying, Jimmy will give them a wave.

"You see," he says, watching the smiles on a passing bus. "I'm a character. I enjoy it. They enjoy it. You can't ask for anything more in life.

"I'm not an entertainer. I'm not a star, because a star performs. But I'm quite happy to be a well-known service industry."

"I am never bored. Never in my life.

"A lot of people think I'm odd. But I don't think I'm odd. I'm 100 per cent natural. I just get on with it.

"Today. Is. Saturday."

1 CUBS ON A ROLLERCOASTER

THE clip of the second Sutton cub scouts trying to eat lunch on a rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach is regularly voted one of the funniest of all time. The cubs, who wrote to Sir Jim in 1980, ended up splattered with sandwiches and milkshakes.

2 SIR CLIFF EMERGES FROM A MANHOLE

REQUESTS to meet pop stars were always a favourite, and stars including Kylie, Madness, Bjork and ABBA appeared on the show. But the producers liked to have a twist, which is why in 1975 they arranged for Cliff Richard to surprise a female fan by appearing from a manhole outside her house.

3 DOCTOR WHO

Eight-year-old Doctor Who fan Gareth Jenkins became the star of a mini episode called A Fix with Sontarans in February 1985. Not only was Gareth rewarded with a Jim'll Fix It badge, he was also given a "mezon gun". The episode is included on the DVD of The Two Doctors, but it is not considered to be canonical by Doctor Who fans.

4 MARGARET THATCHER

THEY could have asked to blow up cooling towers, burn a million pounds or fly with the Red Arrows, but a group of earnest young people wanted to meet Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition. Sir Jim accompanied them to the Houses of Parliament in 1977.

5 BIG BROTHER

WHEN Sir Jim popped into Celebrity Big Brother in January, George Galloway greeted him with a hug, and Michael Barrymore cheered: "Now then, now then... jangle, jangle." But US stars Traci Bingham and Dennis Rodman were perplexed. Bingham thought Sir Jimmy was "kind of like Santa Claus". Savile said later: "The big fella didn't know what to make of me. He said, 'You're my brother.'

"I told him, "Well, my mother must have had a bike."