In late 1972, Jimmy Savile came to Nottinghamshire to head a sponsored run "up to, round and back from" a mental hospital. In the evening I found myself, aged 11, sitting directly opposite Savile, for an hour or two, in a village church hall. My mother had purchased tickets for "Dinner with Jimmy Savile OBE", at £2 each.

Throughout the sherry, soup, smoked salmon, wine, turkey and ham salad, more wine, fruit and cream, cheese with biscuits and celery, further wine, and coffee with After Eight mints, Savile was the only adult who avoided alcohol. But the air was rich with the aroma of his cigar fumes and muscle ointments.

During the meal, I precociously proclaimed myself an atheist. "There's a Boss," warned Savile (then 45 and wearing dark glasses). Although he added that he believed in "the 11th Commandment – Don't Get Caught".

Free school milk had recently ended and he got talking about the supplements he'd received at school because of his frailty. My life was a comparative breeze, he argued, and some of God's will would be good for me.

He noted that for several years he'd had to eat "sarnies" caked in coal dust, while totally alone each day at the middle bend of a pitch-black colliery tunnel (his job had been to watch for derailments at the bend). He told me it had been "crumpet-free" down there, but things changed considerably after he became "the first DJ with two record players". He advised that, when I grew up, a motor caravan with hobs would be useful for attracting "all the dollies".

He said he didn't want children, because "I don't like children", although he did give me one of his two After Eights.