Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 49 total)
  • Louis Theroux: Savile
  • chorlton
    Free Member

    Anyone else watch this? Showing his old documentary on Savile and Louis interviewing some of his victims and people who worked with him. Was very good.

    Doh wrong bit of forum.

    pondo
    Full Member

    Recorded,not yet watched – Louis is class.

    mitsumonkey
    Free Member

    Yes I watched it, in some parts where they played old footage of him and saville (the pizza place) I thought Louis looked starstruck, almost revelling in Jim’s company. Also the way Saville carried on around young women really was wierd, especially on the BBC visit with Louis.
    Incidentally I know a girl who Saville invited into his Rolls Royce when she was about 7 or 8, she said he sat her on his knee but nothing else happened, she didn’t believe the story when it broke after his death. I’ve also heard a story 3rd hand which supposedly came from his ex driver who used to pick up a young lad with learning difficulties on Friday night drop him off at Saville’s flat and then deliver him back home on a Sunday.

    MoreCashThanDash
    Full Member

    Felt Louis felt some guilt at not realising first time round. Really interesting watch.

    Aunt and a cousin both new him at Stoke Mandeville and always said he was a horrible man. Now we all know why. £30 million in fund raising blinds a lot of eyes.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    I think this radio interview in the early 90’s made me think Saville was a *very* strange human and incredibly evasive about anything in his personal life. I remembered it for years when none of the others really made an impression. I genuinely think if we’d had social media then it would have triggered all of the allegations etc to come out – main stream media still behaved as if he was a saint but this showed a completely different side to him which they ignored.

    http://www.channel4.com/news/how-jimmy-savile-revealed-all-in-the-psychiatrists-chair

    Drac
    Full Member

    Lots of experts out there now, isn’t hindsight an amazing thing.

    Pigface
    Free Member

    An old colleague from television days is a Leeds resident and had met Saville a few times, he described him as a wrong un and a deeply unpleasant man.

    Saw the original Theroux documentary and what struck me was that Saville was utterly bonkers.

    Will watch the new one tonight.

    zippykona
    Full Member

    I still can’t believe Rolf Harris is a bad un.
    My mate had a girlfriend who worked in a vets that Rolf used to visit in the early 90s. She hated him and we couldn’t figure how you could hate the nicest man on the planet.
    Hindsight again.

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    The original documentary is a revealing study about how celebrity does change how your behaviour gets judged by others. LT was probably harder on him than the average interviewer, so he has little to feel guilty about.

    lunge
    Full Member

    Good watch and very insightful. It appears Saville was hiding in plain sight, with hindsight you could see the signs yet but at the time it was just Jimmy being Jimmy.

    Watching his old assistant defend him was very odd too.

    jon1973
    Free Member

    £30 million in fund raising blinds a lot of eyes.

    Interesting really how people like Savile make such a huge deal over their charity work, which kind of suggests he was doing it all for the wrong reasons. In contrast, I didn’t realise until he died that Jeremy Beadle raised around £100m for charity during his life.

    ScottChegg
    Free Member

    Lots of experts out there now, isn’t hindsight an amazing thing.

    Not really hindsight. Private Eye was saying for 20 years that Savile was messing with kids. Same with Cyril Smith. No-one took them seriously, no mainstream press would touch it

    What they wanted was to be sued for it, and get it all out in the open in court. But the blind eye was used instead.

    Drac
    Full Member

    Really it is.

    Oooh! Look at his behaviour, look at what he said.

    Funny how the same experts never spotted it the first time.

    BobaFatt
    Free Member

    I remember the original doc, not watched htis yet, but I remember him telling a story of how they gave a guy a right doing over at a club he worked at in the early days. He came over as quite an unpleasant man.

    Don’t mention the duchess

    warton
    Free Member

    I watched half of it, then turned it off. nasty man, didn’t enjoy watching footage of his arrogance.

    my mates stag do was Jimmy Saville themed, 15 years ago. we all went to Prague as Jimmy. His best man sent a picture to him, and my mate and his wife got a hand written card from him. it’s in the bin now…

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    My mate had a girlfriend who worked in a vets that Rolf used to visit in the early 90s

    You know what makes me furious about Rolf Harris. 19 series of Animal Hospital. NINETEEN. Not once, not even once when faced with some mangled pile of fur, gore and broken bones did he say to the vet ‘Can you tell what it is yet?’

    Not seen the Theroux doc yet – the only feedback I’ve heard so far is ‘too many reaction shots from dogs’. When he was interviewed by Richard Herring a while back the subject was covered very well though – both that original documentary and Max Clifford who was in the same series and reflecting on the ways they both used threats so effectively.

    IainAhh
    Free Member

    I didn’t really intend watching this … but did.

    I watched the original documentary and thought afterword’s Savile was a seriously dodgy bloke. I like Theroux did not realise how truly nasty and manipulative he actually was. Cringe worthy watching the footage again.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Will watch. Theroux is a quality film maker.

    im. it’s in the bin now…

    Indeed. Saville is in Peter Kays Amarillo video for Comic Relief. Many things we cannot change unfortunately.

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    Maybe for some. Not for others.
    As I mentioned the last time this came up, he was reported by two nurses I know. Both were rapidly fired (within a couple of weeks), one never worked again as she was stuck in the area with kids/husband. The other ended up in NZ. This was near enough 30 years ago.

    nickc
    Full Member

    Read an article about it the other day, and LT had expressed quite a bit if guilt about how he was indeed a bit starstruck and had befriended Saville subsequently. He made this in order give some context to it.

    As Dead points out, many many folk were taken in. awful human

    DezB
    Free Member

    Lots of experts out there now, isn’t hindsight an amazing thing.

    I don’t think it is hindsight either. I was talking to my son about it, because kids of his age know the name, obviously, but not what Savile was like. I remember really despising Savile and his attempts to be funny in the original documentary – the way he used to think he was being clever with his answers, but ended up sounding like a complete idiot.
    The reason there was so much interest in the documentary back then, was because people wanted Louis to reveal something about Savile. That’s partly why Louis feels guilty about it now, imo.

    Drac
    Full Member

    Maybe for some. Not for others.

    No not all.

    I watched the original he was very odd and skin crawling but astute too.

    I’ll be watching last night’s later today.

    nickc
    Full Member

    LT has said that he’d heard rumours about Saville both from journalists and others who worked in the industry but had felt at the time he couldn’t substantiate any of them, but that he was sure that he felt Saville had a “secret at his centre”

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    It’s (unfortunately) one of those things, lots of people “know” but have no evidence sufficiently robust to do anything about it, just lots of hunches, feelings and “nearly” evidence, a much smaller group have actual evidence but are too unimportant or thin on the ground to be taken seriously, or are afraid of the repercussions if they get found out as a whistleblower or are small/unimportant enough to be steamrollered or discredited if they do say anything.
    All compounded by the people at the top watching all the money come in, who are also afraid of the repercussions of getting found out, but for completely different reasons.

    It’s happened before, i daresay it’ll happen again.

    Sounds quite like the Armstrong/McQuaid/Verbruggen deal too.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    LT has said that he’d heard rumours about Saville both from journalists and others who worked in the industry but had felt at the time he couldn’t substantiate any of them, but that he was sure that he felt Saville had a “secret at his centre”

    I think the problem is the ‘rumours’ at the time really manifested themselves as an in-joke. Lee and Herring told jokes about both Saville’s pedophillia and his necrophillia – live on the BBC back in the early 90s. In telling them they were playing with the in-joke by edgily putting that behind the scenes joke in front of the camera – mainly because they knew the people that commissioned their show didn’t really watch it. That doesn’t mean they knew that he was a pedophile and corpse botherer – its means they’d heard jokes about it. If they’d have thought they were true though they’d have told the police about it rather than told jokes about it.

    BoardinBob
    Full Member

    Wasn’t the character in the Irvine Welsh book that was shagging corpses in hospitals and mortuaries supposed to be Saville? That was way back in the 90s.

    lunge
    Full Member

    Wasn’t the character in the Irvine Welsh book that was shagging corpses in hospitals and mortuaries supposed to be Saville? That was way back in the 90s.

    Freddy Royle. Very, very similar indeed. Both had a TV show involving often ill or vulnerable kids, both did some work at a hospital, both smoked cigars, both had some very high level connections. I remember reading it and thinking that Welsh may have well as called him Jimmy.

    “The thing was, Freddy brought millions of pounds into the place with his fund-raising activities. This brought kudos to the trustees, and made St Hubbin’s Hospital a flagship for the arm’s-length trusts from the NHS. All they had to do was keep schtumm and indulge Sir Freddy with the odd body.”

    forzafkawi
    Free Member

    I’ve always thought Louis Theroux was a bit drippy and soft on his subjects to be frank. I never saw the original documentary and have only watched half of this one so far but I must admit his “friendship” with Savile seems a bit creepy to me. Birds of a feather and all that.

    Savile always came across as a bit of a slimy weirdo to me and this film and all the revelations just confirm that. Personally I was never aware about the rumours about him when he was alive but he was always one of those people that just made my skin crawl. Russell Brand falls into that category as well.

    pondo
    Full Member

    I think LT, conciously or not, benefits from his soft and drippy exterior, people feel he’s no threat and open up to him – makes him a fantastic documentarian. I felt a genuine remorse that he hadn’t spotted what Saville’s secret was and done anything about it. The honesty and openess of everyone involved (except Saville) is amazing.

    B.A.Nana
    Free Member

    Never liked him mainly because he appeared to be one of those celebs who was only in it for the status. Doesn’t surprise me he admitted to not being particularly interested in doing charity, it was obviously just a vehicle for staying in the public eye with him.
    Saw him numerous times in the Clachaig Inn in Glencoe, swanning about looking for doting people to boost his ego. I recall there was a funeral in Glencoe village and he turned up in his walking gear. I thought at the time (mid late 90’s), he’s just acting like (worse than) the local laird, the fact he turned up at all and showed his face, no matter how dressed, was good enough for the local peasants, and they’d be thankful of him, cos I’m Sir Jimmy. That’s how I interpreted it. He’d blocked access to our house with his campervan as well, the toss pot.
    He also came in my shop a few times (his brother was in the local OP home), gave him the cold shoulder because I just didn’t like him, feel quite happy about that now. He stopped coming in, not sure if his brother died/was moved or because I didn’t faun over him.
    Also lots of rumours in Leeds about him, but only rumour. I recall watching the LT programme and expecting some revelation, but he squirmed his way around, only really reinforcing in the programme his desperate need for publicity.
    The most recent stuff about him hasn’t surprised me. Or maybe I just feel smug about media whore got his come-upance.

    grtdkad
    Full Member

    It’s almost as if this lot knew back in the 80s, no?

    hora
    Free Member

    I watched abit of the programme but it strikes me that the production company/Louis are still making more money on the back of a vile man that needs an ending now. I also think the format/Louis needs to move onto something new. I turned over.

    gobuchul
    Free Member

    John Lydon talked about the rumours in 1978.

    [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esKnWAIgpLY[/video]

    jekkyl
    Full Member

    I watched it too. The man was clearly the devil in human form. It’s like some sort of sick dark ironic joke looking back that he made kids dreams come true when in reality it was exactly the opposite. His public persona TV Celeb and marathon running charity worker designed to ingratiate himself to the general public so that when he was out in public people would boost his ego and he could legtimally fondle, leer and talk to women in a foul and loathsome manner. This charity worker disguise also allowed him free reign to pick and chose his victims from hospitals and care homes. He could ask the patients history from the staff pretending to be concerned so he could pick the ones that had already suffered sexual or emtional abuse knowing they would be the least likely to report him or deny his advances. I weep for those children, absolutely foul. Hard watching the tails of his abuse and his use of his catchphrase in the abuse. & the clips of his funeral with people clapping as he went by, stomach churning.

    DezB
    Free Member

    John Lydon talked about the rumours in 1978.

    Good on Johnny. Shame it’s Piers bloody Morgan he’s talking to there. Skeletons in the closet that one, I’d bet.

    grtdkad
    Full Member

    Just a tad ironic that auld Jonny there, once considered as all that represented the decline of “British values” appears to be a far, far better person than most other celebrities (then or contemporary). Let alone the criminal establishment inc the BBC exec etc that tried to shut him down.

    davidtaylforth
    Free Member

    more mad paedo stuff

    [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ2p8_4pqTI[/video]

    edlong
    Free Member

    To be fair, I didn’t see all of it, but what I did see was disappointing – there’s space for a serious look at that angle of the story – how intelligent, rational people were taken in for so long by such blatant depravity, but whether LT is the right man to make it, not so sure.

    I’ve got a lot of respect for what he does, and his humble charm clearly opens doors and he had access to plenty of people who are probably pretty reluctant to talk to tv crews about JS, but I think he was too close to the story to do a great job – it ended up being just about LT’s guilt really, and consequently quite self-indulgent.

    TimothyD
    Free Member

    I only heard of this after things came out in the media, but a friend of a friend while in her early twenties met Saville, and being married at the time, he said to her to get in touch if she ever divorced because she looked 16, which made her go from being a fan to disliking him intensely.

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 49 total)

The topic ‘Louis Theroux: Savile’ is closed to new replies.