A weekly newspaper in the East Midlands has uncovered new suggestions of a TV industry cover-up over the activities of shamed star Jimmy Savile.

Police say they have identified more than 200 potential victims of sex abuse by the late presenter while the BBC has launched two inquiries.

Now it has emerged that bosses at a regional ITV station were told about Savile groping a child on its premises during the 1980s but dismissed the complaint.

The claims were published in yesterday’s Lincolnshire Echo after an exclusive interview with the former Yorkshire TV newsreader Alan Hardwick.

Alan, who now lives in Lincolnshire, told the paper he had seen the Jim’ll Fix It host pinch a girl’s bottom during a visit to the building in the late 1980s.

He said: “I went into the studio and standing with his back to me was Jimmy Savile with about half a dozen girls with him. They were probably 12 or 13.

“They were about to go on set so I decided I would speak to Savile later but before I left he squeezed the bottom of the little girl to his right who he had

his arm around.”

Alan left the studio and raised the issue with a manager, who said that the girl must have been a relative of Savile’s and that he was just being friendly.

He added:  “I mentioned it to other people in the industry and at the BBC and I was laughed at because they all said, ‘Don’t you know that Savile likes them young?’ I felt a bit of a fool.

“I have no doubt whatsoever there has been a massive cover-up. It appears, at least to me, that bosses thought ‘we are not going to jeopardise the career of

a man who draws in audiences of tens of millions’ and that, I believe, is why the truth never got out.”

An ITV spokesman told the Echo: “We would urge Mr Hardwick to contact us with details relating to the serious allegation he makes.

“We take any allegations of criminal activity within ITV / YTV, or to the knowledge of ITV / YTV, very seriously and would immediately contact the police in such cases, and follow up with our own inquiries.”