Everyone Gets Paid: BBC wins rights to drama about sex abuse MP Cyril Smith

A Midas touch, even in death

The BBC has secured the rights to a book dramatising the life of Cyril Smith, the Liberal MP exposed as a serial abuser of young boys.

The BBC has taken an option on Smile For The Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith, by Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who outed Smith in the House of Commons as a child abuser.

The book tells how the larger-than-life MP used his public profile as a celebrity to disguise his systematic grooming and sexual abuse of young boys, often in care homes he helped to establish in his Rochdale constituency.

Danczuk said: “I’m pleased the BBC are looking at bringing the story of Cyril Smith  to life because I want as many people  as possible to understand how a paedophile was able to enter Parliament and stay there for 20 years.”  (more...)

BBC wins rights to drama about sex abuse MP Cyril Smith

Background:

Cabinet Office denies cover-up over files showing Margaret Thatcher knew of sex abuse claims against late MP

The sinister treatment of dissent at the BBC