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Former Sex Pistols and P.I.L. frontman Johnny Rotten told Piers Morgan about a BBC interview in 1978 banned by the network in which he admitted BBC broadcaster and notorious pedophile Jimmy Savile was on his “kill list.”
In a newly resurfaced interview from September 2015 going viral on social media, Rotten AKA John Lydon told Piers Morgan’s Life Stories he believed the network had helped cover-up Savile’s sordid acts.
@chickendingo #jimmysaville #johnnyrotten #chickending #bbc #disgusting ♬ original sound – Kevin 
Rotten’s 1978 interview with the BBC, which was previously unaired, was featured in a P.I.L. album and played for the Piers Morgan’s Life Stories audience.
Here’s a transcript of Rotten’s banned 1978 interview in which he said Savile was on his “gonna” list:
Interviewer: So who else is on the “Gonna” list?
Johnny Rotten: Oh it’s endless believe me. I just want to make a film of it. On film, I’d like to kill Jimmy Savile. I think he’s a hypocrite. When I write that he’s into all kinds of seediness that we all know about but are not allowed to talk about. I know some rumours. I bet none of this’ll be allowed out.
Interviewer: I shouldn’t imagine libellous stuff would be allowed out.
Johnny Rotten: Nothing I said is libel.
Following the tape, Piers highlighted Rotten’s prophetic words in light of the revelations about Savile, the BBC DJ and Top of the Pops presenter who died in 2011 and was believed to have abused hundreds of victims, including children as young as eight years old.
“Put aside the rhetoric you were using. The fact that in 1978, at the height of the Sex Pistols Explosion, there you are, saying about Jimmy Savile: ‘He was into all kinds of seediness, that we all knew about, weren’t allowed to talk about it, I know some rumours.’ For you, you had heard the kind of thing we now know about him? Or stuff like that?”
“Yeah. I think most kids did too,” Rotten told Piers. “Most kids wanted to go on Top of the Pops, but we all knew what that cigar muncher was up to. But I’m very very bitter that the likes of Savile and the rest of them were allowed to continue.”
“Did you ever try to do anything about Savile?” Morgan asked.
“I did my bit. I said what I had to,” Rotten responded, going on to say he faced backlash from the network after the interview.
“Did they air that?” Morgan asked.
“No. It just got suppressed. For legal reasons,” Rotten said. “I found myself being banned from BBC Radio there for quite – well, for my contentious behavior.”
“I mean, it’s shocking… that he got away with it for another thirty odd years,” Morgan stated.
“Yeah. Not only him but a whole bunch of them. And these are the purveyors of good taste, huh?” Rotten told him.
Rotten, who also has US citizenship, previously declared he’d voted for President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2020, saying he was “an individual thinker” as opposed to “delinquently senile” opponent Joe Biden.
Rotten’s criticisms of the BBC are once again being shared widely on social media and are reigniting the debate around the media’s role in covering up abuse and protecting powerful individuals.
