Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.
Louis Theroux has named the person he considers the worst he has encountered across his long filmmaking career — and the answer is tied to a disturbing history of abuse.
Over roughly 30 years on screen, Theroux has interviewed an enormous range of people and communities, from religious groups and inmates to figures on the fringes of American politics, as well as sex workers, drug users, and people living through conflict.
Yet one programme that has taken on a particularly grim significance in hindsight is his 2000 documentary When Louis Met Jimmy, which focused on Jimmy Savile.
At the time of filming, Savile was still widely seen as an untouchable celebrity — a major British TV personality with a long track record in broadcasting.
In the years that followed, it emerged that Savile had sexually abused victims over decades — with many survivors saying they felt unable to come forward until after his death in 2011.
Theroux later returned to the subject in 2016 with Louis Theroux: Savile, revisiting what he had seen and what he had not understood at the time.
In a more recent ‘Honest Box’ video on YouTube, Theroux was asked: who was the worst person he had ever met.
At first, Theroux began: “I’ve been in prisons. I was in a maximum security mental hospital for pedophiles making a documentary.”
He said: “My mind tends to go to Jimmy Savile, basically because when I met him, I was making a documentary about him—his crimes had not been discovered.”
Theroux added: “So it’s that strange dissonance of later finding out that he’d done these dreadful things, that he’d been a serial sex offender, and not knowing at the time.
“But he’s well advertised as probably the worst VIP predator, or person in the public eye who was a predator, certainly of recent times.”
During When Louis Met Jimmy, Savile rejected accusations when they were put to him. However, in the year after his death, he was linked to the alleged assaults of hundreds of people.
Investigations indicated he could be responsible for around 200 alleged criminal offences, including rape and sexual assault, involving children as well as elderly victims.
Further details emerged in a report produced by the NSPCC and the Metropolitan Police titled ‘Giving Victims A Voice,’ which stated that 450 people made complaints about Savile relating to the period from 1955 to 2009.
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org