Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A BAFTA award-winning documentary maker known for his immersive approach, often living alongside subjects on the margins of society.
On the island
Eight records
I love Marvin Gaye, especially in my 20s when I was digging into vinyl in second-hand shops in in New York. I would explore a lot of old well soul records in general, but Marvin Gaye especially. This is from his favourite album of mine, I Want You, and it's a track called All the Way Around.
Heaven on Their MindsFavourite
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice
When I was growing up, I grew up in South London and my parents, this was in the days of vinyl, and they had a copy of Jesus Christ Superstar. It was very battered, the album, and it skipped and there were certain bits that repeated constantly, but we listened to it endlessly, my brother and I, and this was our favourite track, was Heaven on Their Minds.
I'm a big fan of The Smiths and in my university days I listened to them a lot and this was one of my favorite tracks, it's Panic.
When I was about 17 or so my friend Joe Cornish gave me a compilation tape and it had a track on it by Eric B. and Ruckim paid in full and this was really a big moment for me because although I'd known about rap before then this was the first time I listened to a rap record that felt I don't know just really poetic and and interesting and different.
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
When I was living in San Jose, I uh used to buy a lot of secondhand records and one of them was The Freewheel in Bob Dylan. And I love this track. It's the sort of the ultimate passive aggressive love song. Don't think twice, it's all right.
I met my wife at a BBC Christmas party in late 2002, and on our third or fourth date together, we were at a nightclub and this track came on. And although I knew that she was very special and that I was falling in love with her, there was a kind of catalyzing moment when I saw her dance. I'd always thought of myself as a reasonably good dancer, although many would disagree. But when I saw her, I just thought, wow, the way she moved, I don't know, she just seemed to transcend and go into a different dimension of physical movement. So I have a special soft spot for this song, which is What's Love by Fat Joe, featuring Ashanti.
As a family, we have spent quite a bit of time going back and forth from London and California, Los Angeles specifically, and this is a beautiful song about California by Joni Mitchell.
Antonio Carlos Jobim with Herbie Mann
I love a bit of Bossa Nova and this is a kind of Bossanova classic written and performed by Antonio Carlos Jobim with some jazz flute by Herbie Mann and it reminds me of my kids because it's one of those tracks that they've latched onto as well. They call it the sort of Baba Doo Dem song because it's got some sort of uh scat singing at the end.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
I read the first volume as a teenager and I loved it and I thought one day I'll read the rest of them and of course that's never happened, so I'd like to do it. And so much of it is about someone recollecting his life in tranquillity and it feels apropos to sort of use my solitude to sort of do that.
The luxury
a jigsaw puzzle with 40,000 pieces
I was once on a cruise with Anne Whitticomb for work and and one of the things they did on board was everyone would sort of walk past this table that had a puzzle on it and uh just do a few bits, you know, through the days just to pass the time. And it felt very civilized. I also used to do puzzles with my grandparents down in Dorset, so it's got nice associations for me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:35What's the appeal of making documentaries about people whose lives seem strange to the outside world?
You know, it's not something I have a brilliant answer for. I think it runs so deep with me that to some extent I can't quite explain it. I just know that it's a comfortable place for me and has been ever since I was a child, really. When you are on a hillside in Idaho with a a gun nut, let's say, and he's predicting the end of the world, suddenly things like electricity bills or small marital arguments don't feel so important.
Presenter asks
2:12How important is it for you not to judge the people you work with?
You know, I think there's a misconception around that because I feel as though almost all the programmes I make are in a sense journeys of judgment. It's not as though I arrive among the neo-Nazis, let's say, and say, well, I've heard a lot about Nazis, but I don't really know what I think about it. You know, there's definitely some preconceptions that I carry with me. But I attempt to interrogate the process of decision making or the psychological quirks that lie behind extreme lifestyle choices or stories around mental illness. It's more to do with attempting to see how people deal with really difficult situations.
Presenter asks
3:30What kind of interviewee are you, and as an expert interviewer, do you have any advice on how I get you to open up?
I think I'm I'm a pretty obliging interviewee, but I think what I do have is certain defence strategies. … I would avoid the question probably, but I wouldn't try and do it too nakedly or obviously. And then I'm just quite comfortable with my line of defense on certain subjects. And I think as a journalist too, other journalists sometimes see me as fair game. So they they sort of think, well, I'm going to Louis Theroo him. … And um so I have to be prepared for that.
Presenter asks
6:38You've described your need to be liked as lamentable and your desire to interview people as an emotional prophylactic. What's going on there, do you think?
God, where did I say that? Was that in an interview? … I mean, I think it's a weakness in me that I do like to be liked. I think there's a lot of strength and power in not being easily shamed. I I tend to think that's where Trump gets his power from. He seems unshamable. I think I'm quite easily shamed. I'm not saying I want to be more like Trump, by the way, but I'd like to be less easily affected by um what other people say about me.
Presenter asks
9:34Your mother Anne was a BBC World Service radio producer, and your father's the novelist Paul Thoreau. What were they like as parents?
Well, I feel grateful to have had them as parents and to still have them. And they were sort of children of the 60s in the sense that they were sort of rebelling against what they'd been brought up with. They came from church-going families. My dad, a Catholic family in Boston, Massachusetts. My mum, South London, Anglican family. And so they were a bit more free-spirited. It was all flares. And my mum was a working woman, first-generation university educated. So there was, I think, a feeling that we're going to not make the mistakes of the past. And, you know, that we're groovy and the kids can be groovy. I mean, they didn't use the word groovy that much, but that was the sort of feeling. Does that sort of make sense? It was like, when you're old enough, you can choose if you want to have a religion. And I remember sometimes thinking, why haven't we been baptized when all my cousins have been baptized in America? And my mum saying, well, when you're old enough to decide, you know, you can decide whether you want to be baptized. It was that sort of attitude.
Presenter asks
29:00Many years after making a documentary with Jimmy Savile, you revisited it after the horrendous truth was revealed. Why did you choose to do that?
Well, I um … I was I suppose a couple of reasons. One was I was being asked about it the whole time, and it was almost becoming a distraction. … But more than that, I suppose I felt that I um wanted to figure out what how it was that I'd missed what I'd missed. Um I wanted to do a kind of personal and professional stock taking and to sit down with victims and talk to them about their experiences.
“When you are on a hillside in Idaho with a a gun nut, let's say, and he's predicting the end of the world, suddenly things like electricity bills or small marital arguments don't feel so important.”
“I think there's a misconception around that because I feel as though almost all the programmes I make are in a sense journeys of judgment.”
“I just sort of think that we are all much more complicated than we let on. And we sort of go around judging people, and we go around sort of stigmatizing people. But actually, if we sort of opened up our minds like cabinets, you just see so much weird stuff in there.”
“I think it's a weakness in me that I do like to be liked. I think there's a lot of strength and power in not being easily shamed. I I tend to think that's where Trump gets his power from. He seems unshamable.”
“I'd always thought of myself as a reasonably good dancer, although many would disagree. But when I saw her, I just thought, wow, the way she moved, I don't know, she just seemed to transcend and go into a different dimension of physical movement.”