Jimmy Savile scandal spreads as 70s TV funnyman Freddie Starr arrested

COMEDIAN Freddie Starr was arrested last night as the fall-out from the sex-abuse scandal surrounding Jimmy Savile deepened.

Metropolitan Police said they had arrested a Warwickshire man yesterday afternoon as part of Operation Yewtree, the name given to the investigation into allegations surrounding Savile.

“Officers working on Operation Yewtree have this evening, 1 November, arrested a man in his 60s in connection with the investigation,” a spokesman said.

“The man, from Warwickshire, was arrested at approximately 17:45 hours on suspicion of sexual offences and has been taken into police custody locally.

“The individual falls under the strand of the investigation we have termed ‘Savile and others’.”

The arrest of 69-year-old Starr, who made his name during the 1970s as a comedian and singer, comes little more than a week after he volunteered to speak to police over sexual abuse allegations.

He is now the second person to be arrested in connection with the Savile abuse scandal. Shamed singer Gary Glitter was questioned on Sunday by police. Glitter, born Paul Gadd, has since been released on bail until the middle of next month.

Starr has repeatedly denied claims by one of Savile’s victims, Karin Ward, that he groped her in a BBC dressing room when she was 14 years old.

He initially denied ever having met Ms Ward, but later said he was mistaken after programme footage emerged showing the pair together on screen.

The entertainer lives in Warwickshire with his 34-year-old fiancée, Sophie Lea.

Speaking outside his home last week, Starr said: “I have said from the word go that I wanted to be interviewed. Everybody, the press, the police, people at the BBC, they knew that things were going on with Jimmy Savile. Everybody is guilty of this. You can put the finger on everybody at the BBC.”

Last month, Starr labelled Ms Ward a liar and accused her of picking his name “out of a hat”.

He added: “I’m being persecuted by the press saying that I have been with underage girls and I haven’t – never will I go with underage girls.

“I’m totally innocent, totally innocent. I would never go with a girl like that. I hope they question me, I want to clear my name. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Ms Ward has alleged the encounter with Starr took place at the time of an appearance on the television show Clunk Click with Savile in the 1970s.

She said she had also been repeatedly assaulted by Savile and alleged witnessing Glitter having sex with an underage girl in the dressing room of the Jim’ll Fix It host.

Ms Ward said: “In the dressing room, Starr was surrounded by young girls who doted on him, hanging on his every word.

“He was a very big star, almost as big as Jimmy Savile. So how cool was that to be in the same room as Jimmy Savile and Freddie Starr?”

Ms Ward added that she had been “horribly humiliated by Freddie, who had a bad attack of wandering hands and groped me”.

The earlier arrest of Glitter was made about 7:15am last Sunday at an address in central London. He was later seen leaving Charing Cross police station shortly before 5pm that day.

The former pop star was jailed for four months in the UK in 1999 after admitting to possession of 4,000 hardcore photographs of children being abused.

Seven years later he was sentenced to three years in jail by a Vietnamese court for sexually molesting two girls.

Glitter has consistently maintained his innocence on both charges.

Scotland Yard detectives are investigating more than 300 alleged victims of abuse as part of the ever-expanding Savile case.

Those victims have been separated into three lines of enquiry; those who were abused by Savile, those who were abused by Savile and others, and those who were abused by others.

Police have described the cigar-chomping Savile, who died last year at the age of 84, as one of Britain’s most prolific sex 
offenders.

The sexual abuse allegations have rocked state-funded broadcaster BBC to the core.

BBC director-general George Entwistle and other senior executives will be questioned by a barrister as part of an independent inquiry into the broadcaster’s decision to axe a Newsnight special last year about sex-abuse allegations surrounding Savile.

The inquiry is being led by Nick Pollard, former head of Sky News, who will investigate whether there were failings in BBC management’s decision to drop the Newsnight story.

Mr Entwhistle said he had launched the inquiry to shake off the “clouds of suspicion”.

Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, has similarly maintained that he is dedicated to finding out the truth about the scandal, vowing there would be “no covering our backs”.