Calendar Operation Yewtree

Peter Watt, of the NSPCC, said Savile was "without doubt one of the most prolific sex offenders we have ever come across".

The NSPCC says Savile hid in plain sight behind a veil of eccentricity and deceived those from children to the top - including a Prime Minister. The charity says the ITV documentary opened the floodgates, with 800 children protected from abuse because of the publicity after the programme.

I think Savile victims will be extremely angry reading the report into the failure to prosecute Savile while alive. Basically he got away with it.

• A total of 450 people have come forward alleging sexual abuse against Savile since October
• There are 34 rapes and 126 indecent acts
• Of his victims, 73% were children, with the total victim age range between eight and 47-years-old

The police/NSPCC report found Savile used his celebrity status to "hide in plain sight" with 214 criminal offences now recorded against him across 28 police forces.

Police and NSPCC: Jimmy Savile was "a prolific, predatory sex offender" who abused adults and children on an unprecedented scale over six decades.

The Crown Prosecution Service has been investigating the decision not to prosecute Jimmy Savile when he was alive. The report - which has just been published - looked into four allegations that he assaulted girls and young women in the 1970s.

It found Savile could have been prosecuted for sex offences while he was still alive if police and prosecutors had taken victims more seriously and given them more information. It added there was:

• Nothing to suggest the decisions not to prosecute were influenced by any improper motive on the part of either police or prosecutors
• However, the prosecutor should have recognised the allegations were serious and credible and built a prosecution

• There was nothing to suggest that the alleged victims had colluded in their accounts
• Despite this, police treated them and the accounts they gave with a degree of caution which was neither justified nor required

A separate joint report is also being published this morning by the police and NSPCC looking at the scale of Jimmy Savile's sexual offences.