Louis Theroux is to make a new documentary about Jimmy Savile.
Louis Theroux
The 45-year-old filmmaker is shooting a follow-up to his 2000 programme 'When Louis Met Jimmy', for which he spent a significant amount of time with the now late 'Top of the Pops' presenter and was given unprecedented access to his home life.
Since Savile's passing at the age of 84 in 2011, hundreds of women have come forward to claim he sexually abused them when they were children, while other victims claim they were subjected to assaults as adults.
Theroux will now seek to "understand the truth" about Savile by speaking to those he abused and the people who knew him and worked with him for the BBC project to understand how he used his celebrity status to carry out his crimes and deceive the British public for decades.
Speaking about the new documentary, BBC Two controller Kim Shillinglaw said: "BBC Two should be part of the national conversation and this challenging subject matter is the kind I want to see on the channel. Louis Theroux is one of the country's most talented filmmakers and I am very pleased that he is revisiting this important - and deeply personal - subject for us, asking difficult questions about the life of Jimmy Savile and those around him and exploring the impact his crimes had on his victims."
In his original documentary, Theroux openly asked Savile about the rumours surrounding his personal life and enquired if it was the reason the former 'Jim'll Fix It' host had stated he hated children.
Savile replied: "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."
Theroux then enquired if he said it to stop people pursuing the notion he could be a paedophile, Savile said: "How do they know whether I am or not?"
Savile also showed Throux 'the shrine' he had in his home to his late mother, whom he referred to as "The Duchess", having kept her bedroom exactly as it was after she died, even continuing to clean her clothes.
After spending three months filming with Savile in 1999 and 2000, Theroux and the DJ remained friends for a number of years and the investigative journalist would even occasionally stay at his home.
In the wake of the Savile scandal - sparked by 2012 ITV documentary 'Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile - Theroux has admitted he felt a burden of responsibility for failing to unmask his dark side.
Speaking on the comedian Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre podcast, he said: "I feel a sense of responsibility. I think none of us wants to believe that someone we know is a sex offender. I knew when I was making it there was his sexual side that I had not fully understood."
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