Jim Davidson claims 'police killed Freddie Starr' after 'false sex allegations'

Comedian Jim Davidson believes the false sex allegations aimed at his pal Freddie Starr are what killed him.

“Freddie would be alive now if it wasn’t for this,” said Davidson.

Both comics were caught up in a police probe into historic sex allegations against celebrities following the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal.

Jim, 68, said Freddie told him he had been “accused of fiddling with a girl in the back of a Transit van outside the Cavern Club in 1968”.

Starr told police they were “mad because Transits didn’t come out until 1971”.

In 2014 the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to bring charges against him due to insufficient evidence.

After losing a libel action against his accuser he emigrated to Spain where he died broke and alone in his Marbella home in 2019 aged 76.

Davidson said of his pal: “They kept him in a cell and got a psych in to make sure he didn’t kill himself.

“He didn’t need to kill himself. The police killed Freddie Starr. The police and the media killed our greatest entertainer. Freddie would be alive now if it wasn’t for this.

“He wanted it to be clear, without any doubt, that he wasn’t involved in any of that. And I don’t think he was. Nobody who knew Freddie thinks he was.

“The lady apparently said that in the dressing room of a show called Clunk Click – which was a Jimmy Savile show and Freddie was a guest – that Freddie smelt of alcohol.

“Freddie never had alcohol in his life. So they went back to her and she changed the story to say he smelt of cheap aftershave.

“He’s gone now and there’s this stain hanging over him.’”

Davidson, whose catchphrase was ‘nick nick’, himself faced 11 sex assault allegations which he vigorously denied and was never charged.

The former host of The Generation Game and Big Break said he feared his own arrest would end his career.

“There were times where I thought it’s a dead end ahead,” he said.

“The QC said if I was charged it would be 18 months before it got to court – 18 months with no money.

“So I was worried where the money would come from and how it would affect my marriage.

“One day I thought, ‘f*** it, there’s no positive outcome to any of this, they’ve made their minds up’.”

In an interview on the Ustreme streaming channel ahead of a forthcoming documentary Yewtree 10 Years On: My Story, Davidson said the period was `the darkest in my life’.

Operation Yewtree, launched in 2012, saw BBC presenter It’s A Knockout host Stuart Hall convicted of 15 indecent assaults and ITV weatherman Fred Talbot found guilty of sexually assauting two boys.

But many celebrities who came under suspicion – including Sir Cliff Richard and DJ Paul Gambaccini – were cleared without being charged after long investigations that blighted their lives.

Sir Cliff was not even arrested.

Davidson won Celebrity Big Brother a year after his arrest which he said `made me think the majority of the public were on my side’.

But he no longer poses for pictures with women fans he does not know.

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk