Former EastEnders star Danniella Westbrook emotionally opened up about her

chilling encounters with revealed Jimmy Savile. The Sam Mitchell actress, 50, recently

explained the late Savile once asked her to sit alongside him while she was appearing

on an Irish chat show – which she refused to do. Speaking in a new interview, she recalled: ‘I went to do a show in Belfast on a chat show and they tried to sit me right next to Jimmy Savile. ‘He was like, “Come here, Danniella, you know me, sit next to me”. And I said, “I wouldn’t sit next to you if I was dying”‘. She added: ‘I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die ­because I thought of all of the shame. I thought everything would come out about me and what he’s put me through and different things he’s done.’ TV presenter Jimmy Savile sexually abused hundreds of people throughout his life.

In October 2012, the Metropolitan Police launched a formal criminal investigation into over 400 separate lines of inquiry around historic allegations of child sex abuse by Savile over four decades. Savile came into contact with the male and female victims – who ranged from young children to adults – primarily through his work for the BBC and NHS. In January 2013, a report into allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy Savile under Operation Yewtree by the Metropolitan Police Service and the NSPCC was published under the logo of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Among its conclusions, it stated: ‘It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fundraising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades. ‘For a variety of reasons the vast majority of his victims did not feel they could speak out and it’s apparent that some of the small number who did had their accounts dismissed by those in authority including parents and carers.’