Knocked-out

It was with considerable shock and sadness when I learned today that Stuart Hall had pleaded guilty to 14 charges of indecent assault against 13 girls over a 20-year period.  His pleas were only detailed now after reporting restrictions were lifted as he appeared at court again. Though mud sticks, I stuck to the 'innocent until proven guilty' idea.  I used to enjoy his match reports and interviews on Radio 5 Live, waxing lyrical about Everton's 'school of science' or the People's Republic of Wigan.  I remember an affable profile of him in a newspaper awhile back.  Always cheery and slightly eccentric.  His worst crime had seemed to be the bit of lèse-majesté on It’s a Royal Knockout. The Jimmy Saville scandal has brought a shaking of the rotten media timbers and seeing the woodworm fall out. Admittedly, Hall’s behaviour wasn’t as bad as Saville’s but then few could top such sustained depravity. Hall is “opportunistic predator” and, through his lawyer, confessed that his disgrace is complete, for everything he has achieved is warped because of his paedophile activities. He has contested the rape claim from a 22-year old and that has been left to lie on file but what he has done anyway is heinous. What was very frustrating when it became clear the monster that Saville was, despite his name blackened, his tombstone removed and his legacy essentially destroyed, was that he escaped justice. Thankfully, Hall will certainly face it, starting with signing the sex offenders’ register, followed by prison and the stripping of his OBE.
The BBC were right to immediately suspend him from their sports coverage, so although some (on the right) who detest the BBC - believing that it uses a licence fee (tax) to advance a left-wing, progressive agenda – will deploy this as a stick to beat the Corporation, that fact that such deviance was not exposed (as with Saville) by newspapers just proves that the flawed media culture was everywhere. I must say when one radio presenter said the Leveson report would stop journalists breaking stories such as about Saville, it defied logic as they didn’t break such stories when he was alive and they had maxed-out sense of impunity full stop. If newspapers want to criticise, they should look in the mirror first.