Fat people…

Let’s face it, all really fat people are jolly and cuddly and nice. You only have to look at The Laughing Policeman, Father Christmas, Billy Bunter, and Fatty Arbuckle to realise that.

Of course that fat old policeman (he's always on our street) may not be quite what he seems and on the take, Billy Bunter was a greedy bully, Father Christmas sneaks into children’s bedrooms, and Fatty Arbuckle – king of the silent comedy – was a murdering rapist.

Which brings me to that jolly, cuddly, smiley, nice, Sir Cyril Smith chappie; a smudged blend of them all.

There was a time when good old Cyril was everybody’s favourite politician, a real character in a world when there were a lot of characters in politics. He was all over the TV; singing with Don Estelle, appearing on Clunk Click with Uncle Jim, even showing up in a Bananarama advert. Yes Cyril was one of the good guys; a self made man, working class to his corpulent, corrupt, core, and a knight of the realm to boot forsooth.

He lived with his mother (an office cleaner), his illegitimate brother and sister, Eunice and Norman, and his grandmother in a one-up one-down cottage in Rochdale. He was fond of describing himself as "illegitimate, deprived and poor". What he didn’t say was that he was an obese (which was obvious), homosexual (which wasn't), bullying pedophile, preying on the innocent boys he claimed he was helping.

Of course there is nothing wrong with being fat or homosexual, but as far back as the 1960s Smith was spanking and sexually abusing teenage boys in a hostel he co-founded, bullying them into doing whatever he demanded. That can’t be right can it? Nor can it be right that despite numerous allegations and complaints over the years the authorities did nothing about it.

I encountered Big Cyril, as he liked to be called, on a train once. I was just twenty and on my way from Birmingham to Wolverhampton. In those days trains had compartments and he almost filled it with his body, legs stretched out akimbo in front of him. The train was packed, and for a moment I considered sitting in one of the seats opposite his huge bulk. But as I went to open the compartment door he shot me such a look of warning that I changed my mind and spent the short journey standing in the corridor.

Up until that time I’d always thought him okay as far as politicians went. But I changed my mind that day. There was something unclean about him and - maybe it’s just my mind adding even more grime to the experience - he reminded me of a bloated feral rat, like the one I was reading about in the James Herbert novel that was stuffed into my pocket that day.

Of course there will be those that will defend him. Those that ask why all this only came out after his death. Those same people will probably say that the men making these accusations are only doing it for the money. I don’t care what they say. I say strip his knighthood, burn his records and books, prosecute the people who, through complicity or silence, are as guilty as he, ridicule, pillory, and tarnish his memory beyond even the glimmer of a shine.

I really hope that Big Cyril Smith is rotting in his own shit alongside his old crony Jimmy Saville in Hell, and I make no apologies for it.