I remember the senior investigating officer
from the Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard,
he got hold of me and he said,
"We reckon there's probably about 30 victims."
I went, "No." I said, "500 victims."
I said, "That's probably what it's more like."
I think when I initially joined the police service,
I probably did what a lot of young people wanted to,
was drive fast cars on blue lights.
And then I quickly realised, actually,
that whilst that was fun for a short period of time,
it wasn't really where I wanted to be.
I wanted to become a detective
and I wanted to investigate major crime.
And that is where I went.
Within two years, I was in the divisional control room,
answering the phones, assigning units.
And that gives you a great opportunity
because what it teaches you, is about managing
developing cases, stories as they happen, incidents.
And then quickly after that, I moved into a vulnerable unit,
which was looking after the most vulnerable in society
in our area, which was young children,
and then moved into child protection and then on to CID.
[INTERVIEWER] Why did you leave the police?
I'd got to a point where I'd done everything
I wanted to do.
I dealt with very serious crimes, child abuse,
horrific offences against children, murders.
I worked across the family liaison officer
for many, many murders, and it took its toll.
I think I'd got to a position where I either stayed
in the police service for the rest of my life,
my career, or I took a challenge and did something else.
And I moved on from being a police officer
to being an investigator, which is what I do now.
[INTERVIEWER] What's the difference
between being a police officer and being an investigator
working in a private capacity?
Well, the massive difference between being a police officer
and being an investigator is I can't arrest people.
But as a police officer, of course you have certain powers.
I don't have any powers now.
My biggest power I have now is the power of persuasion
and my mouth and being able to communicate with people.
And in fact, a lot of the cases I do now,
I have to get to a point where I get enough evidence.
I give it back to the police
and then say, "Look, please investigate.
Please take this on to another level."
But there is an advantage of being an investigator,
is that some people do not like talking
to the police and therefore, sometimes people
will tell me things that they wouldn't tell the police.
[INTERVIEWER] All these horrible things
are taking their toll is what you said.
Why then did you decide to keep investigating
in your private life?
I'm passionate about what I do.
I wake up every morning driven in the job that I do,
to go and try and get people answers,
try and solve cases.
But I'm clever about how I do it as well.
You know, I use little tricks that perhaps
I couldn't get away with in the police service.
There are things that I do that would be not criminal,
but certainly wouldn't be ethical.
I'm always on the right side of the law,
but very close to it.
We'll often put listening devices into people's houses
and listen to them in order to hear what's going on.
We might even make a phone call to them.
Sometimes we'll put a listening device
into a house, we'll then put a call into the house,
generate some kind of discussion.
So it may well be that we phone up saying,
"I want to talk to such and such in relation to a murder."
That will obviously generate a conversation,
once we've put the phone down, within the house,
and then we can listen to what's being discussed.
We'll often use couriers, so we'll send couriers to houses,
and couriers will then enable us
to get a forwarding address,
because people are often not suspicious.
You know, Amazon parcel turns up to Mr Jones
at a certain address and the person opens the door
and says, "Oh, he's not here anymore.
He lives at such and such." Brilliant.
The other things we do is sometimes put trackers in parcels.
So it may well be that we send a parcel to an address,
but we know that that person's not going to tell them
where they are now. But they will go and see that person,
particularly if they're on the run or wanted.
So that tracker then goes in the car with them,
and then we can see where they take
that parcel to the individual.
And then we've got them that way.
We do a lot of surveillance on people.
So we'll watch them, we'll film them,
we'll follow them on foot.
Following people on foot is always very interesting.
I always say to people, if we're doing surveillance
and perhaps it's somebody that hasn't done
much surveillance before, is "just be normal.
They are not suspicious of you."
It's amazing what people do.
[INTERVIEWER] What was probably the biggest case of your career?
So I'm travelling back from Lyon
and I speak to my producer.
I was over there filming, and he said,
"Have you ever heard anything
about Jimmy Savile as being a predatory paedophile?"
And I went, "No." I said, "He's weird."
I said, "He's really weird, but I've never heard that."
He said, "Well, he was investigated by the police."
So I said, "Okay, well, I'll have a look and see."
Jimmy Savile in his time was probably
the most well-known, famous individual
as far as television goes, in the country.
At the time of his height, there was only two broadcasters.
There was ITV and BBC,
and he was massive. He was untouchable.
And so the fear that existed around him still remained
even though he'd died. He had a legacy about him.
And so they were incredibly nervous, particularly nervous
about trying to do something about someone who's dead,
he wasn't able to defend himself,
and I totally understand that.
Anyway, I established that he was investigated
by the police, by Surrey Police,
which was actually my force,
but it was after I left, otherwise I'd have known about it,
but it was after I left.
Anyway, it gets to a position where BBC Newsnight
decided that they were going to make a programme.
And that's who I'd been filming with,
'cause I used to do reports for them.
And they then decided that they weren't gonna do it.
And quite simply, because they decided
that the police had carried out
their investigation correctly.
There wasn't any criticism to be applied
to them that they knew of.
And therefore, there wasn't a story in it.
I immediately thought, "What are you on about?
Course the story is not that whether the police
did the investigation or how they did it,
but that Jimmy Savile is a paedophile. That's the story."
So I said, "Can I run with it?"
So I went to ITV and I said, "Look, I've got this story."
And of course their response was, "Yeah,
how on earth are you gonna tell that?"
And I said, "Listen, it needs to be told."
And at this point, he'd just died.
And I said, "Listen, there's something here.
There is definitely something here."
And the exec producer at the time said,
"Well, listen, Mark. Why don't you give it a run?
Have a look at it."
And I very quickly started to realise
that actually, there's a lot of people out there
who'd been talking about him online.
So I started to speak to these people,
track these people down and they'd tell me information.
And one of the things about being an investigator
is that, talk to everybody and when you talk to them,
say, "Is there anybody else I need to talk to?"
And then follow up on them.
And then before you know it,
you've started with three or four people
and you've now suddenly got 14 or 15 people.
Go to them, ask them, and that's what we did.
We started to track down all these people, talk to them.
And slowly, we started to build up a picture
that he had sexually abused quite a number of children.
And obviously, they were now adults.
We went back to ITV and said this
and ITV, again, incredibly nervous,
and I totally understand why, but as the evidence
started to build up and it got stronger
and stronger and stronger, we said, "Listen,
we have to get this out there.
We have to let the public decide."
[INTERVIEWER] What did it feel like
to be investigating something like that?
This is Jimmy Savile who hung out with the prime minister,
and you're finding out these things and you're going,
"I know that this man's a paedophile,
and he's still held up as this figure."
What did that feel like?
I think, whilst I started investigating him,
in the early days, my mum phoned me up and she said, "Mark,
do you really think you should be doing this?"
There was a big story on the BBC, BBC Leeds covered it
and talked about me doing this programme.
And there was a phone-in and I listened to the phone-in
and people were being really horrible about me.
How dare I say something about this man.
He's died, he can't defend himself.
I remember my mum saying, "Mark,
do you really wanna take this on?"
And I've had an incendiary device sent to me.
Somebody sent me an incendiary device,
which was sent to myself at ITV in Birmingham,
which is where all the post goes.
And I remember getting a phone call one day saying, "Mark,
there's an incendiary device that's been sent to you."
And I remember thinking to myself, "Right, okay,
what does that mean?"
And they got the police out there.
They got the fire brigade, and they'd worked out
that it was capable of causing
some quite significant damage.
We don't know who sent that.
We don't know where it came from,
but anybody that knows me knows that you give me
something that's difficult to do.
You tell me I can't do something,
and I'll do it, and I'll do it, and I get a result.
And I remember being so determined to do it.
Even when it was difficult.
We had real challenge to get it commissioned.
ITV were amazing, but it was really difficult.
And I remember saying to my producer
on the Tube, "We can't let this go.
We have to get this out there."
I remember at one stage, I was thinking,
"Do you know what, if I can't get the broadcaster
to go with it, can we finance it?
Can we get a rich person to finance it
so we can get it out there?
It really was, we'd put our lives into it.
And I remember saying to her,
and to a number of other people,
"If we get this right, then it will make
a massive change and difference.
But if we get it wrong and people don't believe us,
we'll never work in telly again.
We'll just be ostracised from everything that we do."
And on the day of broadcast, it was a defining moment.
And it was a defining moment that's been related to
by many commentators since,
is that it changed
really the outlook of television, of current affairs.
And it was probably the biggest tidal change
that's occurred by revealing that this man,
who was untouchable,
was quite clearly a predatory paedophile.
And the accolades that we received the following morning
from the press was phenomenal.
It then resulted in a huge police investigation.
I remember the senior investigating officer
from the Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard,
he got hold of me and he said,
"We reckon there's probably about 30 victims."
I went, "No." I said, "500 victims."
I said, "That's probably what it's more like."
And don't forget, I'd been investigating
Savile now for a year.
And he went, "Gosh." He said, "Well, okay.
I can't challenge that, Mark."
He said, "You've obviously been working on it. Let's see."
Fast-forward 12 months, over 500 victims came forward
and it sat on the front pages,
the national front pages, for 41 consecutive days.
It led to the director-general of the BBC resigning.
It led to my programme and myself being mentioned
in the House of Commons,
in relation to the impact of the programme.
And it subsequently changed the way the police,
the prosecution service, children's services work in the UK.
It gave a voice to so many people,
and it didn't just lead to, you know,
significant other personalities, celebrities being arrested
and prosecuted, the likes of Rolf Harris, Max Clifford.
But it also resulted in a tidal wave effect
up and down the country, and indeed around the world.
There were people who came forward and talked about it
and led to the local builder, teacher, Scoutmaster,
up and down the country being arrested.
And I firmly believe that it had a massive impact,
moving forward, in generating
a view of confidence in victims to talk,
that ultimately, finally brought down Weinstein and Epstein.
[INTERVIEWER] You must be immensely proud.
Yeah, I am. People say to me, you know,
"What you did was incredible."
And my response to that is, "I just did what I do."
I don't think I did anything special.
I just worked hard to get it.
The people that created the tidal effect for Savile,
which has knocked on around the world,
are those five brave women
who allowed me to tell their story.
And if it wasn't for them,
I wouldn't be here now telling you about Savile.
And I genuinely believe that Savile
would never have been exposed.