Louis Theroux reveals little known consequence of his controversial interview with Jimmy Savile
Louis Theroux has spoken about a consequence of his interview with Jimmy Savile for his 2000 documentary series When Louis Met...
During the show, the documentary filmmaker directly questioned Savile over whether he was a paedophile, with rumours having swirled around the TV presenter and radio DJ for years.
Theroux received a long-winded and roundabout answer in which Savile said 'I know I'm not', but given the torrent of evidence which came to light about him shortly after his death in 2011, it's clear that such denials were entirely false.
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A huge amount of evidence and testimonies detailed how over the course of decades Jimmy Savile abused hundreds of people, including vulnerable people and children, and used his position to gain access to those he could abuse.
Speaking on the Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware podcast, Theroux said that his interview with Savile for the When Louis Met... series had the consequence of making other potential people who could feature on the show reluctant to come on.
The presenter claimed agents were worried about their clients being interviewed by him after a paedophile, and he had to prove his interviews 'wasn't just out to get them'.
Speaking about the When Louis Met... series, Theroux said an unspoken part of the show was that he was largely speaking to people who were 'on the downside of their careers'.
He said: "Back in the day, just to roll back, the first things I did involving celebrities, we would say, we want 10 days.
"This was the aforementioned Jimmy Savile. Paul Daniels was one, the magician and his wife, Debbie McGee. Neil and Christine Hamilton. It was very, very hard, and quite quickly we ran out of road.
"Actually, it was never kind of made explicit, but we were largely dealing with people who are on the downside of their careers. It's not a nice term."
When asked if his guests 'came on your show instead of going on Strictly', Theroux said that those early interviews were before the likes of Strictly, I'm A Celebrity and Celebrity Big Brother.
Savile did appear on the latter, showing up to the Big Brother house in the celebrity edition shown in 2006 where he made a number of strange comments, such as telling basketball player Dennis Rodman 'I have a violent temper but you have nothing to fear from me', and said he would 'marry all of you ladies for at least 24 hours'.
Theroux said that when these shows came along some potential interviewees realised they could re-launch their public profile by going on them instead of talking to him, and he had to 'show people that I wasn't just out to get them'.
"When reality TV came along and celebrities realised they could appear on things and they didn't have to tolerate a BBC inquisitor being impertinent then quite clearly, they would choose to do that," Theroux told the podcast.
"Plus, as the show 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.’ And I remember one or two of the celebrity's agents were like, ‘that's not a very nice thing to be asked.’
"It became almost like a brand of being washed up [and I] feel like it was a long road of trying to show people that I wasn't just out to get them, that I was up for having conversations that felt fair and humane.
"Or at least that's what we were aiming for, was not to show people up, but to absolutely just tell the truth in a way that might not be necessarily prohibitive."
Topics: Louis Theroux, Documentaries, TV and Film, Jimmy Savile
Joe Harker