How much hot air can you get for £6.5m quid? Or to put it another way, how much whitewash can you get for the same sum? The answer to both questions is: As much as you fancy.

I’m talking about Dame Janet Smith’s report into the sexual abuse of children by celebrity performers at the BBC. It’ll take you a while to read all the 1,000 pages of it going into three volumes. We’d be better off using it as a doorstop, for all the use it is.

Dame Janet tells us that at least 72 children were sexually abused by Jimmy Savile, between 1959-2006, while he was working for the BBC - including eight victims who were raped, the youngest when she was only ten. Some of these crimes were perpetrated while Savile was live broadcasting, on Top of the Pops, for example. The report says that Savile and Stuart Hall used their fame and positions of celebrity to engage in "monstrous behaviour". And it states that the Corporation missed at least five opportunities to stop the abuse.

The report confirms that members of BBC staff were aware of Savile's abusive behaviour and that they should have reported it to their managers, but none did. This deserves to be said again: a total of 117 members of the BBC staff were aware of specific complaints by victims, but not one of them spilled the beans. Dame Janet insists: “There is no evidence any senior member of staff was aware of Savile's conduct, and there is no evidence the BBC as a corporate body was aware of Savile's conduct.”

If you believe that, you’ll probably also have no trouble believing that Elvis will be coming back from his hideout on Mars, a week next Saturday.

The report says that there was “a culture of deference” towards celebrities described as “talent” at the Beeb. So we’re supposed to understand that the managers knew nothing of the culture that was going on around them every day and for which they were responsible – and well-paid. The report concludes: “The BBC made no real attempt to grapple with the problem of how to protect young people.”

How could the managers know nothing when folk in the street had heard tales of Savile’s abuse as early as the 1950s? We all heard “tales” about him. When I was at school in Leeds, some of us used to bunk off at lunchtime to the Mecca Locarno where Savile ran a disco. Schoolgirls told of his strange ways all the time. So did patients and staff at St James’ hospital, Leeds Infirmary and Killingbeck hospital where Savile worked as a porter. In the Yorkshire parlance of the day, we all knew him as “a funny b****r”.

I have a personal anecdote… In 1985 when I was a country parson, I wrote a book and my publisher took me out to lunch in York to celebrate. We talked about this and that and I asked him: “What else are you publishing?” He gave me a dark look and said: “Jimmy Savile has just produced a memoir for us. You want to steer clear of him, though. A few weeks ago he came into my office and said: ‘Now then, here’s the book. That’s my part of the bargain. You get me a little girl about 12’.”

My publisher said: “That left me in an odd position. If I’d tried to do anything about it, he would have told me he’d only been making an off-colour joke.”

Like Dame Janet’s report – some joke!