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Desert Island Discs

Louis Theroux

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.413.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2019

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Louis Theroux is a television documentary maker. He has received two BAFTAs and a Royal Television Society Award for his work which includes the series Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and When Louis Met… Born in 1970, and brought up in south London, he is the son of the American writer Paul Theroux and the BBC World Service radio producer Anne Castle. He was privately educated at Westminster School and read History at Oxford, graduating with a first. He moved to the USA where he was introduced to the American documentary maker Michael Moore and started making segments on unusual subcultures for Moore’s show TV Nation. He was given his own series – Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends – by the BBC in the late 1990s and, after three series, he went on to present two series of When Louis Met…, which included Neil and Christine Hamilton, Max Clifford, Chris Eubank and Jimmy Savile. Since then, he has made dozens of documentaries, many of them in the USA. In 2016, he revisited his encounters with Jimmy Savile in the wake of Savile’s death and the surfacing of allegations of child sexual abuse. The same year, his only feature-length film, My Scientology Movie, was released. His most recent documentaries dealt with sexual assault on American campuses, mothers with post-natal mental illness, and escorting. BOOK CHOICE: Remembrance of things Past – Marcel Proust LUXURY: 40,000 piece Jigsaw puzzle CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: “Heaven on their Minds” from the album Jesus Christ Superstar Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

0:05.0

I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.

0:08.6

Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to

0:12.8

take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.

0:16.3

This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and for right reasons the

0:21.4

music is shorter than the original broadcast.

0:24.4

I hope you enjoy listening.

0:30.0

Music Music

0:46.0

My cast away this week is Louis Theroux.

0:48.4

A BAFTA award-winning documentary maker, he's been taking audiences into other people's

0:53.2

lives for over 20 years.

0:55.4

Known for his immersive approach, he shares experiences with and sometimes lives alongside

1:00.4

his subjects who frequently exist on the margins of society.

1:05.4

Audiences might tune in to see him as an Englishman abroad, his mild, quizzical TV persona

1:10.2

is usually a stark contrast to his extreme surroundings, but they tend to leave with

1:15.0

a sense of common ground with his subjects, whether they like it or not.

1:19.6

He's filmed with criminal gangs, religious and political extremists, addicts and prisoners,

1:25.1

and says, you have to get to know the people at the heart of the story.

1:29.2

Usually, that means getting to like them.

1:31.6

Louis Theroux welcomed to desert island discs.

1:34.0

Thank you for having me.

1:35.3

So you've been making documentaries for over two decades now and your subjects often live

...

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