The encounter with this tall white-haired man lived with me throughout my teenage years, ejaculation was painful and, on several occasions, the pain like toothache, a dull pain which you noticed most at night when trying to sleep. I believed that this was Gods way of punishing me for being so wicked.

My family moved to the other side of the city shortly afterwards, and I thought that this was a good thing as I would not be likely to meet him again. We now had a television set and I now discovered the identity of the tall man; he was on Top of the Pops and Saturday night family show Jim l fix it.

He was Jimmy Savile.

I continued to suffer with the injury to my testicle, but felt I needed to keep this secret, admitting to this injury would raise questions I did not want to answer from my parents, doctor etc. so I suffered in silence. As a result, the injury was never reported.

The new house attic bedrooms were just as cold in winter as the previous house, wearing clothes and even coats to bed was the norm, there were a few hot water bottles but by the time I needed one, they were already in use, it was a simple thing to resolve, have a search around in my sibling’s beds until I found one to re fill, usually I would search my brothers beds, however on one particularly cold night my search had come up blank.

I discovered that my sister had masturbated herself to sleep and still had her hand in her knickers, this immediately took me back to Savile’s car with his, and later my hand inside the young girl’s underwear. I was aroused and retired to my room.

I gave up my religion when I reached sixteen and could drop church and other meetings, this was against my parents’ wishes but as an adult, they could no longer demand I attend.

In my teens, I met a girl who became my fiancé and then some years later, my wife. Sex within marriage should have been a pleasurable experience, however I still suffered the toothache type pain afterwards, sometimes for days.

I could not watch Savile on TV, I did bump into him several times in my thirties and forties in the city, he had taken to wearing a disguise comprising a fake nose and large glasses, but it did not provide much cover, he stood out in a crowd due to his hair, height, and choice of clothes. He either did not recognise me or chose to ignore me each time.

I considered tackling him on one occasion when I saw him in a fish and chip restaurant on Street Lane, North Leeds, however he was a professional wrestler, and I was an unfit middle-aged man. He was also one of the most famous celebrities in the UK at the time, so I felt that any complaint I may raise, without absolute proof, would not be considered seriously.

Some years after the injury I became ill, I suffered with horrendous back ache in my lumbar region, over several days this pain moved to my side and then to my injured testicle, then abated. However, it kept coming back and with increased frequency. Eventually I went to my GP, he looked me over and noted my left testicle was twice the size of the other and asked how long it had been like that, I replied, “since I was 12 years old” and he moved on, he diagnosed I was suffering from a trapped nerve and prescribed pain killers, a board in the bed and rest.

The pain, and frequency of recurrence increased over the months and I booked sessions with a chiropractor, he again examined me, noticed the testicle, and asked what my GP had made of it, I gave him the same answers and he moved on. The sessions helped, but the problem got worse.

I was now not hungry, I would leave for work without breakfast, not eat lunch and put off my evening meal until late, after eating I was so bloated, I could not sleep, some weeks passed and I started to lose weight, then I started to vomit up the meal several hours after eating, undigested.

I was no longer fit for work, and was now visiting my GP weekly, no one could explain the symptoms, by this time, my left testicle was hot to touch and very sensitive, I was losing weigh fast and could only keep liquid foods such as soup down, eventually I woke to find I was yellow, jaundice had set in and even the whites of my eyes had changed to yellow, the GP made a visit and diagnosed Hepatitis C she notified the authorities, who arrived to take statements from me with a view to who I had been in contact with.

A few days later, the doctor returned for a check-up, I was still yellow, she told me to report to A&E where I was admitted to hospital as a suspected kidney disease patient. It was close to Christmas and I was in hospital having lost over three stones, passing urine which burned on the way out, so yellow I was unrecognisable when visitors arrived, and if I passed a stool, it was white.

At that point, a lump was detectable in my throat, it was doubling in size every two days and there was obvious concern, I was starved from midnight for a biopsy the following day, which was cancelled. This went on for over a week, starved every night and cancelled every day, eventually I could not speak, the lump was so large. The consultant must have pulled strings because that afternoon I was taken into theatre and a biopsy was taken.

It was Friday, 21 December 1991 when a new consultant arrived to speak to me and my wife, he started to say that I would need to take a course of medication that would make me unfit for work for a period, that may make me feel very ill, but he was confident I would make a recovery, I pushed him on the point and he admitted that he was talking about chemotherapy, that the biopsy had shown I had cancer, that the type of cancer was testicular and that as it had been diagnosed so late, tumours had grown in my abdomen so large that my stomach and other organs could not function, this explained the back ache, the inability to eat, the jaundice, the burning urine and the white stools.

The consultant, Professor Peter Selby, had in 1989 started a dedicated cancer department at St James’s hospital in Leeds, to do so his team commandeered every private room in every ward in the hospital for their patients, it was a first in the UK at the time and went on to be so successful that the Bexley wing was opened in 2006, dedicated to cancer care in the north of England, one of the largest and best-equipped cancer centres in Europe this wing even has a hotel on the top floor for visitors and patients to use and is one of the foremost centres for cancer treatment in the world.

Professor Peter Selby advised that he wanted me on his ward the next day by 12:00 and that he personally would oversee the first of four rounds of chemo he thought I would need, each round would comprise a five day stay in hospital followed by two weeks at home recovery time, these hospital periods were known as BEP’s.

I asked if I would be able to go home that evening to see my children so close to Christmas and it was agreed that so long as I was back on his ward the next day I could. I arrived home curtesy of a lift from a neighbour and saw my young children, slept in my own bed, and tried to not think too much about how this could be the last time I ever saw my home and family.

The following day, I was assessed for Chemo, and was too ill to start a BEP, instead I received a minute injection, I fell asleep and did not wake for five days.

Whilst I slept, the tumours in my abdomen had shrunk and I started to feel hungry for the first time in many months, a few days later I was sent home with steroids and told to eat and drink to try to recover my fitness that would be needed for me to have the first BEP.

It was six weeks before I was deemed well enough, and I was hospitalised for five days on a drip and given the chemotherapy, I was so weak after this that another BEP could not be started for nine weeks, overall, it took nine months to complete the course and some eight weeks later I had the final surgery to remove that left testicle.

The biopsy showed it was cancer free, but irreparably damaged, I knew how that had happened but did not comment, I was just grateful to be alive.

Whilst it may not be proven that I suffered testicular cancer because of the grievous injury I suffered at the hands of Savile, it was a coincidence that it occurred in the same testicle, that there was no history of the illness in my family and at the very least, the injury concealed the cancer diagnoses until I was close to death.

Prof Selby, some five years later, in one of the regular clinics I was attended for thirteen years for follow up, let slip that on that Friday when he first met us, he thought the cancer had gone too far and that there was little chance of any recovery, I had been one of his team’s early success stories. 

As it turns out I was incredibly lucky, Prof Selby had only started the cancer centre in Leeds the previous year, and an anti-hermetic drug, ondansetron, I relied upon during the treatment, had been licenced just weeks before, had I been ill a year earlier, I believe I would not have survived.

My business never recovered fully from my leave of absence of some sixteen months, even when I returned, I was not fully recovered and could not manage the workload, prior to this I had overseen teams of engineers all over the UK commissioning electronic systems, working long hours and staying away.

Just nine years later I was forced to sell the business for a fraction of its true worth, had I been well enough to run it correctly in order to take early retirement, I had another five years of hospital appointments ahead of me, my kidneys and liver were not functioning properly and shortly after I was diagnosed with such high blood pressure that I have to take medication for life, the blood pressure was so high it caused damage to my visual cortex damaging my sight, shortly afterwards I was diagnosed with diabetes and suffered a major heart attack.

There were other consequences, my sister on one of my hot water bottle searches woke up and quizzed what I was doing, I replied I was just looking for a hot water bottle, but I was not sure she believed me. She later told me that she had shared this experience with my younger sister, and that they had both found it very funny at the time.

Some thirty years ago, my youngest sister went for regression therapy to try to understand why her life was so out of control.

Following these sessions, she suddenly claimed that I had sexually abused her every night for three years since she was six. She genuinely believed that this abuse had occurred and spent ten years in tears every night to my parents, whom she had sworn to secrecy, for hours on the phone, Eventually, my parents, after ten years of listening to her, took it upon themselves to write anonymously to the authorities stating that my daughter may be at risk of abuse.

Social services intervened, however after interviewing my daughter, they determined no abuse had occurred.

The letter had been handwritten, and I decided to call and talk to my parents, they admitted to writing the letter following a particularly harrowing phone call from my youngest sister, they believed that no harm would be done, that either abuse was happening, and social services would deal with this, or that no abuse was happening, and no action would be taken. However, what they really achieved was to say that they did not believe I was a fit father to have children. It was necessary to sever all ties with my sister and parents from that day forward.

At the time, I was distraught, and I made the mistake of telling my co directors of the new company I had invested my retirement money and intellectual property into. Three weeks later, my fellow directors changed the names of the signatories on the company bank account, wasted the bank funds on buying stock the company did not need, placed the company into the hands of a receiver and bought the company back by paying off the debt to the bank.

Overnight I lost my income, my investment, my pension pot, and my company. I reported this to the police as in my opinion, changing signatories on the bank account without my signature could not have been accomplished without committing fraud. The police paid scant regard and told me it was a civil matter.

Following the injury to my testicle by Savile, sex had been uncomfortable and sometimes painful, once declared free from cancer, my libido was dramatically reduced following surgery to remove the injured testicle, this and the claims by my little sister, meant I lost interest in sex entirely and have not had sex now for almost 30 years.