BBC wins rights to drama about sex abuse MP Cyril Smith

There are no plans to make the programme as of yet

Sir Cyril Smith was MP for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992 (Getty Images)

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.”

A BBC spokesman said: “We do have an option on this book but a drama has not been commissioned and currently have no plans to make it yet.”

The production is not expected to begin until the Dame Janet Smith Review into sexual abuse at the BBC conducted by Jimmy Savile and others reports. The Review, set up in October 2012, is close to completion.