Pavarotti: Jimmy Savile's Great Mate.......

 The newsagents  window is  always  an illuminating portal  into the hidden economies of any  town and  Blackpool is no exception. Cash only bedsits, puppy farmers, massage services, and of course jobbing entertainers. 

I think I took this picture in 2000, probably struck by the incongruity of what I first thought was Pavarotti himself advertising in a newsagents window.

Like a lot of what you see through the viewfinder it worked in context, but not out of it, so it got relegated to the reject pile..... until Jimmy Savile died in 2011 and I read a BBC news report which had interviewed some of the mourners at his funeral in Leeds.

One of the first people in the queue gave his name as Roy Pavarotti Hunter.

By strange co-incidence I had only the previous day been rummaging through piles of slides and I instantly remembered him.

The article then went on to describe Roy's relationship with the then saintly Savile.

Mr  Pavarotti Hunter, a former maintenance man at Leeds General Infirmary, the hospital where Sir Jimmy worked as a voluntary porter and for which he raised money, Mr Hunter said: "He was my great friend, was Jimmy. He was a great guy.

"Passing through, I'd have a talk with Jimmy when he was shoving empty trolleys back. He was friendly with everybody."

Mr Hunter also recalled seeing Sir Jimmy DJ at the Mecca ballroom in the city, imitating his MC patter before copying the goose-scaring guttural honk that Sir Jimmy somehow turned into a trademark. "I was there." 

Roy's still available for booking if you need him, but I suspects he keeps the Savile anecdotes to himself these days.