Childhood's End

It wasn't finding out there was no Father Christmas, or hearing my father use the 'F' word at a long pub urinal when he was talking to my Uncle Les at a family wedding, little realising I was further along in earshot (he's never to my knowledge uttered a single profanity in the family home, despite forty years in the glass factory, where I'm sure it was obligatory...a man of principle).

No. The day my childhood truly died was just a few weeks after the man in question did the same - Jimmy Saville.
To understand the collossal impact of him you have to have grown up in the late 60s/early 70s. He was the wacky presenter of Top Of The Pops, already standing out as a bizarre cigar-toting peroxide bug eyed one-off amongst his bearded Blue Peter presenter-type colleagues.
And then there was 'Jim'll Fix It' -  a TV show where he used his God-like influence to make kids' dreams come true, with a wave of cigar smoke and a winning charm. The most striking thing about him is that he just "was". Other celebrities had achieved fame through some skill or role (though these days, the situation has reversed itself, with deplorable people lunging straight at celebrity status, thinking the rest will fill itself in as they go along), but Jimmy's skill was being Jimmy Saville. A role he excelled at - the millionaire with the common touch, a charmer of young and old, rich and poor, who consorted with royalty, government ministers and celebrities. A psychedelic Mother Theresa who devoted his life to charitable works, at the personal expense of wife and children and the rest, tirelessly jogging the length and breadth of the UK to rase money for sick kids.
When he died I was truly upset, feeling we'd lost a decent altruistic and unique human being.

Everybody knew him, or felt they did. He was a benign mischeivous sprite who could go anywhere and was welcome everywhere, because for him the normal rules didn't apply. He'd "effortlessly" rewritten them, then sat back smoking a big cigar like he owned the planet.
Maybe he'd observed how people in foam-rubber animal suits at theme parks could grab, tickle and do as they pleased, and transformed himself into the human equivalent. A simple trick, but one which gave him an All-Areas Pass to the highest echelons of Society and Power, and once invited in there, they were all guilty by association, for how could they admit they'd willingly welcomed in The Beast?
Fame and Privilege are mere suits to put on, but the truly evil weild a power that transcends the acting and is bone-marrow deep. Like Rasputin, The Mafia and The Krays before him, Saville part charmed and part intimidated his way in. They would now have us believe that like a vulgar gatecrasher at a Society Ball, he was tolerated rather than cause a scene ejecting him.
Princes, Heads of State and Media Moguls didn't have the slightest idea that he was preying on the sick, vulnerable and innocent like a depraved peroxide vampire. Which means they either are woefully unfit for the positions they hold, or that they knew all along and didn't really care, after all it was only us at risk.
Now howzabout that then guys and gals?