Dame Linda Dobbs heads BBC investigation into disgraced presenter Stuart Hall

The beeb have made an announcement regarding an investigation into sex pest, and former Look North Manchester presenter, Stuart Hall.

The BBC announced on May 6th there would be an investigation into the conduct of disgraced television and radio presenter Stuart Hall. Today the corporation named retired High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs DBE as the head of the investigation.

Dame Linda Dobbs’ investigation will feed into the already established Dame Janet Smith Review into the BBC’s culture and practices during the years that Jimmy Savile worked at the Corporation.

The findings in the Stuart Hall investigation will help form part of Dame Janet Smith’s overarching conclusions.

Dame Linda has been appointed by the BBC Executive Board with the agreement of the BBC Trust. She will report directly into the Director-General Tony Hall.

Due to, what was noted as being, a ‘conflict of interests’ Dame Janet was unable Stuart Hall to her investigation. The conflict remaining undisclosed by the corporation.

83-year-old, Hall, one time anchor of now defunct show Look North for the North West, from Manchester, became a popular personality while fronting game show It’s A Knockout in the 1970s and 80s. He was also a long serving sports commentator for the broadcaster.

He has been described as “opportunistic predator” by prosecutors after he admitted  touching and kissing thirteen children from the 1960s to the 1980s. One aged under ten.

Reports suggest some victims were friends of the family, however a former BBC collegue suggested he also liked to take young women into the now-closed BBC Piccadilly Studios in central Manchester. (pictured right: The former BBC studios are now a bank)

Linda McDougall, once a producer at the BBC in Manchester, told The Mirror,

“I can’t say he was having sex with them because I wasn’t ever in there at the same time. But I always thought that they weren’t coming for cups of tea in the afternoons. Everyone knew. We all made jokes about it. You would have had to have your eyes shut to not know what was going on.”

The women visited the studios ‘medical room’ which was the nickname for Hall’s dressing room. Hall faces sentencing on June the 17th.