Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: Jimmy Savile, Louis Theroux, Celebrity
Anish Vij
Jimmy Savile gave a chilling response when Louis Theroux asked straight up if he was a paedophile.
This was back in 2000, when the prolific paedophile featured on Theroux's When Louis Met… series and with the benefit of hindsight, the warning signs were there.
Watch below:
Having previously called the former DJ his 'childhood hero', Theroux was on a mission to follow him to shed some light on the rumours.
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In a clip from the documentary, Theroux asks Savile directly about whether or not he was a paedophile and his response was awfully evasive.
Savile replied while the duo were driving around: "[We] live in a very funny world. And it's easier for me, as a single man, to say 'I don't like children' because that puts a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt.... How do they know whether I am [a paedophile] or not?
"How does anybody know whether I am? Nobody knows whether I am or not. I know I'm not."
What a long-winded way to lie.
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During the doc, Savile also showed the filmmaker his strange routine when entering his flat, which he bought for his mother before she died.
He explained that he stayed in the flat with her corpse in an open casket for five days, and said that the pair ‘never argued’.
When he walked into the home, he claimed to always say, ‘all right, darling?’
But this wasn’t the only strange thing about him, as Savile had always proved to be a weird and eccentric character.
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However, the severity of his deprivation was only exposed in 2012 after ITV began an investigation into reports that he was a sexual abuser.
Police later said Savile had committed 214 criminal offences which took place in hospitals and other areas.
Reflecting on his part in the original documentary during a second in 2016, Theroux said: "I've watched it since the revelations came out and I'm struck by how much is there. It's very far from soft journalism.
"We all knew he was doing some act. He would more or less invite people to believe he had secrets."
Speaking on the Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware podcast, Theroux admitted: "As the show [When Louis Met...] went on, who wants to be like, ‘well we've done Jimmy Savile and we've done Paul Daniels, so we'd love to do you.’
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"And I remember one or two of the celebrity's agents were like, ‘that's not a very nice thing to be asked.’
Additional words by Britt Jones.
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