Desert Island Discs Revisited: The Interviewers - Louis Theroux

DESERT ISLAND DISCS REVISITED: THE INTERVIEWERS - LOUIS THEROUX (320kbs-m4a/97mb/42mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 1st March 2026

Filmmaker Louis Theroux is castaway by Lauren Laverne.

Louis is a TV 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

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.

Marvin Gaye - All the Way Around
Murray Head - Heaven On Their Minds
The Smiths - Panic
Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full (Seven Minutes Of Madness - Coldcut Remix)
Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Fat Joe (feat. Ashanti) - What's Luv?
Joni Mitchell - California
Antônio Carlos Jobim & Herbie Mann - One Note Samba