Smile for the Camera

No politician pandered to the media's appetite for personality more than Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith during the 1970s and 1980s. With his remarkable girth and regular appearances on the chat show circuit, blurring the lines between politics and show business, Smith was a larger-than-life character in a landscape of dull, grey men. Yet 'Big Cyril' was anything but the gentle giant he sought to portray. He was a serial child abuser who used his extraordinary profile to conceal predations on a spectacular scale: systematically grooming and sexually abusing young boys, often in care homes he helped to establish. Smile for the Camera is a deeply troubling story of a truly shocking abuse of power, and asks urgent questions of those who allowed Smith to get away with it.