John Lydon has claimed he was banned from the BBC after speaking out against Jimmy Savile.
The former Sex Pistol was referring to an interview he’d given in 1978, during which he had said that Savile was “into all sorts of seediness. We all know about it but we’re not allowed to talk about it. I know some rumours.”
Speaking to Piers Morgan for his Life Stories show, he said: “I’m very, very bitter that the likes of Savile and the rest of them were allowed to continue. I did my bit, I said what I had to. But they didn’t air that.”
He continued: “I found myself banned from BBC radio for quite a while, for my contentious behaviour. They wouldn’t state this directly; there’d be other excuses.”
The band were already in the BBC’s bad books before Lydon’s Savile comments: God Save The Queen received a total ban on radio play from the corporation in May 1977. Lydon didn’t go into the specifics of what the ban entailed, although he said: “Weren’t I right? I think most kids wanted to go on Top of the Pops but we all knew what that cigar muncher was up to.”
Lydon also talked about the death of his bandmate Sid Vicious, who took a fatal overdose of heroin in 1979. “Sid was my mate and all that, but I watched him slowly destroy himself,” he said. “I’ve got to be honest – it came as no surprise.”
He added: “It wasn’t overwhelmingly catastrophic he killed himself. Most people who mess about with heroin, they lose their souls way earlier, it’s just waiting for the body to keel over.”
- The interview will air on ITV at 9pm, Friday 25 September.
