Jim'll Fix It
I have a confession to make. I used to love this programme. I nearly wrote in to it on several occasions. And I once met Jimmy Savile personally, waited outside his flat in Scarborough to get his autograph. That, I now realise, might have been a close shave.
I'm not being flippant; I'm not in any way trying to make light of the many heinous crimes the man committed, What I am doing is asking this question. Does the bad someone has done negate the good they may have achieved?
Two things set me thinking about this. One, the Panorama report this week into Savile's work at Broadmoor Hospital. In serious need of reform, Savile was appointed by the government to help (bizarre as that now seem) because - as one former employee said - he got things done. We know now there may have been a huge price in terms of the abuse that occurred as a result of the freedom he was given. That was - is - too high a price to pay, of course. But if some good was done, should we ignore it?
The second reason for thinking about this question is the rise and fill of the Crystal Methodist Paul Flowers. Flowers was for a time the Minister at my parents' church and I once heard him preach what may be the most memorable sermon I've heard, and I've heard many - some good and an awful lot very, very bad.
Flowers did a lot of work with drug addicts in the area too; he challenged local prejudice and was on occasion inspirational whilst in the pulpit. How are the mighty fallen? Flowers has fallen from a great height and left a trail of disappointed and disaffected former friends and acquaintances in his wake.
But does that make him less of a preacher? And his sermons less impressive?
Of course, were the content hypocritical, judgemental and 'holier than thou' then we know now - that with his feet of clay - such words would be a worthless sham. But they weren't. If anything, as far as the sermons I heard go, they were anything but judgemental, anything but superior, anything but holier than thou.
Martin Luther King was a womanising philanderer; Ghandi seems to have been less than a diligent, loving father. I'm not suggesting for a minute Savile or Flowers fall into that class. But I am saying no one is perfect, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and no matter how bad, how evil someone might turn out to be we shouldn't have to deny ourselves the memory of the good times, if there were any.
And I really did like Jim'll Fix It,
I'm not being flippant; I'm not in any way trying to make light of the many heinous crimes the man committed, What I am doing is asking this question. Does the bad someone has done negate the good they may have achieved?
Two things set me thinking about this. One, the Panorama report this week into Savile's work at Broadmoor Hospital. In serious need of reform, Savile was appointed by the government to help (bizarre as that now seem) because - as one former employee said - he got things done. We know now there may have been a huge price in terms of the abuse that occurred as a result of the freedom he was given. That was - is - too high a price to pay, of course. But if some good was done, should we ignore it?
The second reason for thinking about this question is the rise and fill of the Crystal Methodist Paul Flowers. Flowers was for a time the Minister at my parents' church and I once heard him preach what may be the most memorable sermon I've heard, and I've heard many - some good and an awful lot very, very bad.
Flowers did a lot of work with drug addicts in the area too; he challenged local prejudice and was on occasion inspirational whilst in the pulpit. How are the mighty fallen? Flowers has fallen from a great height and left a trail of disappointed and disaffected former friends and acquaintances in his wake.
But does that make him less of a preacher? And his sermons less impressive?
Of course, were the content hypocritical, judgemental and 'holier than thou' then we know now - that with his feet of clay - such words would be a worthless sham. But they weren't. If anything, as far as the sermons I heard go, they were anything but judgemental, anything but superior, anything but holier than thou.
Martin Luther King was a womanising philanderer; Ghandi seems to have been less than a diligent, loving father. I'm not suggesting for a minute Savile or Flowers fall into that class. But I am saying no one is perfect, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and no matter how bad, how evil someone might turn out to be we shouldn't have to deny ourselves the memory of the good times, if there were any.
And I really did like Jim'll Fix It,
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