Along with The Office, Louis Thereoux’s Weird Weekends was my favourite programme as a teenager. In fact, I think Louis might be the first DVD I ever bought. Up until that point, I thought documentaries had to be super-serious with a focus on facts and archive footage. The only ones I saw were in class, typically on Hitler or the role of enzymes in bread making. (Food Tech teachers were big fans of educational videos.) It wasn’t until Theroux that I realised docs could be entertaining and involving.
The engagement came from the presenter and the format. Each episode involved Louis exploring a different sub-culture with a view to adding extra dimensions to our understanding. Theroux’s approach to this examination was what really sold the show though. Appearing like a +1 at a wedding, Louis would shuffle into these worlds, seeming embarrassed there. For a TV personality, he was refreshingly ordinary. His grounded nature meant people felt able to open up to him. Just as Nick Carraway has the ear of Jay Gatsby, Theroux’s quietness meant his subjects fill the space with talk. Talk that is often revelatory. For all the bumbling schtick, Theroux’s mind worked in fluent formation, allowing him to gain trust quickly; a prerequisite for investigative journalism. ‘Confidence trick’ seems like a misnomer for someone who doesn't shout confidence, yet the term is apposite:Theroux’s very lack of confidence is the thing that allows him to make off with the spoils. It was only on watching the documentary that his subjects probably realised they’d underestimated him.
Theroux has remained in documentaries ever since, yet his approach has changed from his humble beginnings. After Weird Weekends Theroux moved into celebrity study, observing the perverse creatures in their natural habitat, sometimes even taking residency with them. After this, he changed focus and honed in on law and order, seeking to work out the causes and consequences of incarceration. The tone of the shows have become darker, a necessity given how the subject matter has too. Theroux’s work is less wacky and salacious now, looking instead at what others turn away from: alcoholism, dementia and anorexia. These topics are less fun and frothy, which is why they require journalistic rigor; if they’re ignored our empathy is at risk. To care for someone is to understand them. If you never see these lives, then reductive stereotypes persist.
This week I’ve been reading Louis Theroux’s memoir Gotta Get Theroux This. Within it, Theroux describes himself as a nervy teenager, lacking the hutzpah of his peers. After Westminster School he went to Oxford University. Instead of sowing his wild oats, Theroux worked hard to get a First-Class degree. With his mum at the BBC and his dad a travel writer, achievement was in his family, something at times Louis wished he could avoid, settle for care-free mediocrity, but the need of success was in him.
After university he wanted to go out alone. By blood, he was happy to be allied with his parents, but not by career. He took a punt and went to work on a San Jose newspaper. The way Theroux describes it makes the decision sound more like a Dave Gorman adventure than a thought-out plan. It was here though that he learnt how to be a journalist, and where he would eventually gain the recommendation that would take him to Spy magazine, America’s answer to Private Eye. Although the periodical was in decline, it gave Theroux a taste for comedy, a genre that he seriously considered going into. The comedy bug disseminated around the body further when he was picked up by Michael Moore to perform political pranks on TV Nation, a precursor to Sacha Baron Cohen.
Part-funded by the BBC, Auntie liked what they saw and signed him up for his own documentary series. Going from a supporting artist to leading man was a frightening induction, one Theroux admits to being nervous over. Through the expert advice of producers and crew though, he grew in confidence and became an award-winning broadcaster. In this world of ‘talent’ and individualism, the team is often neglected. Theroux is at pains to state that he often feels embarrassed when he is garlanded, as though he has done all the work. In fact, you learn in his memoir that a lot of work takes place before Theroux arrives ‘on set.’ His teams recce a subject first to find out whether it is going to be worth an hour-long documentary; they’re also there to fight his corner with commissioners and support him during the shoot.
There is one illuminating anecdote he tells us about a recce his team took to Jimmy Savile, prior to Theroux interviewing him. When Savile showed them around his home, he described the bedroom as ‘the altar,’ explaining ‘that’s where the sacrifices happen.’ When Louis turned up and Savile took him around, Saville again said it was called ‘the altar,’ but because it was his peaceful place. The recce allows his team to determine the worth in a documentary; it also can prove insightful when comparing the answers off-camera to those on-camera.
In terms of Savile, Theroux re-visits his ghost throughout the book. At one point Louis describes their relationship as mutually parasitical: Savile needed Louis to jump-start his career; Louis needed Savile because he was good copy. Although Louis did challenge Savile on allegations of paedophilia, the DJ talked himself out of the noose. By cultivating a persona that was so outlandish, it made him difficult to pin down. If you keep on being ridiculous, people won’t judge you by normal standards; you change the bar, so you’re judged by your own.
The part I really loved about this book was Theroux’s meditation on storytelling. Documentaries, you think, should be antithetical to this: they should report fact and be true to the rhythms of life. However, anything that is for public consumption has to be engaging; therefore tension, conflict and journey are imperative. Theroux talks about this candidly, admitting the times when he failed to build towards a satisfying conclusion. He’s also honest about himself, conceding the times when he’d been selfish and distant with his own family.
Theroux has made a living out of putting other people’s lives under the microscope; he is as adept with his own, making Gotta Get Theroux This an ironic title. The book is never a chore to endure; it is an illuminating account of a life spent understanding others. As Atticus says in To Kill A Mockingbird, ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’ Here, Theroux does for us, what he does to others: we climb in and appreciate him even more.
Gotta Get Theroux This is available in all good bookshops.
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