Savile in hindsight – Louis Theroux Documentary
3rd October 2016
Last night (2nd October 2016) saw the broadcast of the long awaited Louis Theroux documentary on Jimmy Savile. Louis famously met Savile back in 2000 in order to make a documentary on the eccentric celebrity and now returns following numerous allegations of sexual abuse of women and children against Saville after his death in 2011.
Louis spent time talking to those who knew Savile, his friends and his victims, in order to gain an understanding of how he could have got away with committing seemingly hundreds of crimes undetected. Louis explained that he felt some sense of guilt that he didn’t realise what a malevolent character Savile was at the time and that he wasn’t able to do more to expose him. It appears that Louis, along with the rest of the population was taken in by his outward appearance as just a slightly odd, strange character from the telly.
Of course rumours of untoward sexual behaviour followed Savile throughout his career although nothing was ever proved or substantiated until after his death. With hindsight he does come across as creepy and somewhat predatory in many of the scenes in the original documentary (especially the scene shown where Louis questions him about the rumours of peadophilia; “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.”) but this is only when we view him knowing what we all know now to be the truth. At the time he was very convincing and whilst one can understand Louis’ feelings of guilt it appears that he was perhaps just another one of his victims; drawn in and exploited for Savile’s’ own ends, in this case, publicity.