LONDON — Former BBC star Jimmy Savile was one of Britain’s "most prolific" sex offenders, committing at least 214 sex crimes against victims aged as young as 8, police said Friday.

Investigators released a report cataloging more than 50 years of rapes and indecent assaults. It accused the late television and radio host of using his celebrity status to gain access to vulnerable children in hospitals, nightclubs and even a hospice for the terminally ill.

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Almost all the allegations have been made since Savile’s death in 2011, even though the offences date back as far as 1955.

The revelations have triggered a scandal in Britain and prompted a string of public inquiries into how some allegations were not properly investigated while Savile was alive.

"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," the police-led report said. "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."

Savile, who raised an estimated $55 million for charity, achieved fame on BBC shows including "Top of the Pops" and "Jim'll Fix It." In 1990, he was given a knighthood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth and received a Papal Knighthood at the Vatican.

The offences span 28 police forces across the U.K. and the scale of his abuse is so vast that the report included a map and an index of the alleged locations.

The number of people Savile victimized "simply beggars belief," Peter Watt, co-author of the report [PDF link] and director of children’s charity NSPCC told ITV News.

"He is without doubt one of the most prolific sex offenders we have ever come across and every number represents a victim that will never get justice now he is dead. But with this report we can at least show his victims that they have been taken seriously and their suffering has been recognized."

In total, more than 450 have people have come forward to police with allegations of abuse involving Savile. Most but not all victims have been interviewed and to date 214 criminal offences have been formally recorded. They included 34 rapes or serious sexual assaults, according to the report. The last incident recorded occurred in 2009. His victims ranged in age from 8 to 47.

The report concluded:

“The details provided by the victims of his abuse paint the picture of a mainly opportunistic individual who used his celebrity status as a powerful tool to coerce or control them, preying on the vulnerable or star-struck for his sexual gratification. Sadly, this type of behavior is not uncommon in any society - sexual abuse, whether in street gangs, though trafficking or within families and institutions, often involves the use of powerful coercion, intimidation and manipulation to exploit the vulnerable."

In a separate development, Britain’s most senior prosecutor apologized to some of the women abused by Savile, revealing that police missed three chances to take him to trial while he was alive.

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said police had been "unjustifiably cautious" investigation four allegations involving girls as young as 14 who said they were abused by Savile in the 1970s.

He said he hoped the organization’s internal review would prove to be a "watershed" moment in the handling of child abuse cases.

In a statement, he said:

"Many people feel that for sexual offences, where it is 'one person's word against another's' and there is no or little scientific or other evidence to support the allegation, no prosecution should be brought. But this is to ignore the reality of many sexual offences which, by their nature, do not usually take place in front of witnesses and result in no meaningful scientific evidence. Taking a cautious approach to all complainants, on the ground that some might be making a false allegation of a sexual offence, can have the consequence that a prosecution for a true complaint may not take place."

Related stories:

'A steep fall' for BBC as child sex abuse scandal rocks the UK

Jimmy Savile abuse scandal stuns Britain: a who's who primer

Report: Pop star arrested in connection with Savile abuse case

A stage collapse at Toronto's Downsview Park killed one person and injured at least three others setting up for a Radiohead concert, the CBC reported, citing emergency responders.

One person was transported to Sunnybrook Hospital in serious condition while two others were being assessed at the scene, CBC said.

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Downsview Park tweeted that the concert was canceled. Show promoter Live Nation Entertainment also announced the show was canceled.

The collapse occurred at 4 p.m. ET, about an hour before venue gates were scheduled to open.

The man who was killed was briefly pinned under the scaffolding and succumbed to a "crushing injury," an official with Toronto Fire Services told CP24.

"From what I understand the piping which makes up the roof structure where lights and what not are supported collapsed down and there was workers setting up the stage at the time," Toronto Fire Services Captain Mike Strapko told broadcaster CP24.

"The big question is how and that is something we will be working closely with the Ministry of Labor on," Constable Tony Vella told reporters at the scene Saturday night.

Radiohead was scheduled to take the stage a little after 9:30 p.m., CP24 said.

The Weather Channel reported mostly sunny conditions with moderate winds of 5 to 10 mph ahead of the collapse.

Police said a considerable crowd was already waiting for the show when the stage collapsed, CBC reported.

One witness said he "saw the scaffolding around the stage collapsing in on itself and heard the sound of metal hitting metal and within five seconds it was over," CP24 reported.

The park frequently hosts concerts, and 40,000 people were expected for Radiohead's sold-out show, CBC said. The opener was to be Canadian act Caribou.

Radiohead fans expressed dismay on the British modern rock band’s message board.

“So many people lose in this,” said one post by a person calling herself Miss Modular.

“Oh no Person who died today won't get his/her life back,” said a post by spoll.

On Aug. 13, 2011, the Indiana State Fair stage fell, killing seven in a crowd awaiting a Sugarland concert when a windstorm blew in.

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LONDON - In the entertainment world, youth and celebrity are usually the key to success…but a pair of radio hosts with a combined age of 176 have been awarded top prize at an industry ceremony in Britain.

Beryl Renwick, 86, and Betty Smith, 90, were named Britain’s best radio entertainment hosts at the Sony Radio Academy Awards on Monday night.

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Their weekly broadcast on local Yorkshire station BBC Radio Humberside has been going for six years and gathered a cult following.

Full story: ITV News

The elderly pair chat with co-host David Reeves about fashion, the war and their love of Michael Buble.

The judges said they were: “A joyous, entertaining double act. They give a voice to a sector of society unrepresented on radio, and do it with a joy that puts many of their fellow broadcasters to shame.

You can see the pair discuss their nomination in this BBC website video from April.

ITV News is the British broadcast partner of NBC.

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Paul McCartney's ex-wife said Thursday a voicemail that CNN talk-show host Piers Morgan boasted of hearing had been illegally hacked.

Morgan has consistently denied he authorized the use of phone-hacking in his days as a tabloid newspaper editor in Britain. He has not offered an explanation for how he came to hear the message left on Heather Mills' mobile phone.

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The accusation has dragged Morgan into a phone-hacking scandal which has damaged Rupert Murdoch's media empire and has had wide ramifications for the entire British press.

Giving evidence to an inquiry into British media ethics, Mills said she had left a house she shared with McCartney in early 2001 after they had had a row and turned her phone off.

The next morning she said she had received about 25 messages on her phone, all of which appeared to have been listened to, including one in which McCartney "sang a little ditty of one of his songs." She said she deleted the messages.

Later that day, a reporter called her to say he had heard the couple had argued and that McCartney had left a message in which he sang to her. This, she told the inquiry, could only have come from her phone being hacked.

The inquiry was told the unnamed reporter was a former employee from the Trinity Mirror Group though not from the Daily Mirror, one of the group's papers, which Morgan edited from 1995 to 2004.

Asked if she had ever made a recording of McCartney's call or had played it to Morgan herself, Mills said: "Never."

Mills, a former model who married McCartney in 2002 and divorced six years later, said Morgan, "a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years," would have relished telling the inquiry if she had played a personal voicemail message to him.

Giving evidence in December, Morgan, who bragged about hearing the message in a newspaper column in 2006, refused to say who had played him the recorded message of the call, saying he was protecting a source.

Morgan left open the possibility that the voicemail had been played to him with Mills' approval, but Mills said Thursday that was impossible. "Never," she said. "Never ever."

Morgan also edited the now defunct News of the World tabloid at the center of the hacking scandal from 1994 to 1995, though his tenure was before the practice became rife. He has boasted that he knew about phone-hacking well before the scandal broke, but subsequently said he was referring to rumors.

Morgan has written in his diaries about a "little trick" for eavesdropping on voicemails that he heard of as early as 2001.

One former Mirror employer has told the inquiry hacking was widespread on the paper when Morgan was editor, and Trinity's chief executive has said some reporters might have secretly engaged in the practice.

The phone hacking scandal shook Britain's police, who were accused of failing to investigate allegations that Murdoch's News of the World tabloid had hacked into the phones of thousands of people, including celebrities and murder victims to get stories.

It was also an embarrassment for British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had hired a former News of the World editor as his spokesman.

Reuters, the Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

Story updated 1:15 p.m. ET: The local authority, Camden Council, said it was confident Reid "had made an error in good faith" when he appointed his wife, but said the matter was being investigated by Britain's Office for Judicial Complaints.

Story published 11:30 a.m. ET: The coroner who oversaw the inquest into the death of singer Amy Winehouse has resigned after her qualifications were questioned, officials in Britain said on Wednesday.

Suzanne Greenaway ruled in October that the 27-year-old soul singer had died from accidental alcohol poisoning.

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However, she resigned after authorities learned she had not been a registered U.K. lawyer for five years as required. It means the verdict in Winehouse's case and 11 others carried out by Greenaway could be subject to a High Court challenge.

Winehouse's relatives said they were still absorbing the implications of the news.

Greenaway had been appointed an assistant deputy coroner in London by her husband, Coroner Andrew Reid. She had practiced law for a decade in her native Australia.

Reid said Wednesday he was "confident that all of the inquests handled were done so correctly" — but offered to hold inquests over again if the families of the deceased wanted it. Greenaway had been in the job since 2009.

Winehouse's family said it had not yet decided what to do.

In a statement, the family said it was "taking advice on the implications of this and will decide if any further discussion with the authorities is needed."

The Sun newspaper, which broke the story, said the dozens of verdicts given by Greenaway would only be overturned if they were challenged in Britain's High Court.

A security guard found Winehouse dead in bed on July 23 at her home in the Camden district of north London. The singer, known for her distinctive beehive hairdos and multiple Grammy-winning album "Back to Black," had battled drug and alcohol addiction for years.

The inquest heard evidence from a pathologist, Winehouse's doctor, the security guard who found her and a detective who described seeing three empty vodka bottles in her bedroom. It appears unlikely that a second inquest would produce a different conclusion about how she died. 
 
The full statement issued by Reid on Wednesday was reported in north London newspaper, the Camden New Journal. It read: "I appointed my wife as an assistant deputy coroner as I believed at the time that her experience as a solicitor and barrister in Australia satisfied the requirements of the post. In November of last year it became apparent that I had made an error in the appointment process and I accepted her resignation.

"While I am confident that all of the inquests handled were done so correctly, I apologise if this matter causes distress to the families and friends of the deceased. I will be writing to the families affected to personally apologise and offer for their cases to reheard if requested."

Although the singer was adored by fans worldwide for her unique voice and style, praise for her singing was often eclipsed by lurid headlines about her destructive relationships and erratic behavior. Winehouse herself turned to her tumultuous life and personal demons for material, resulting in hit songs such as "Rehab" and "Love Is a Losing Game."

Msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson in London and The Associated Press contributed to this report.