informative reflective medium-paced

unfortunately i lost my interest in this and found it to be repetitive at times.

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Theroux cops in the afterword that this was originally a Saville-only book. As the other reviews attest it's pretty bad. It's clear that he feels either immense guilt or embarrassment (depending on how charitable you're feeling) that the interview that saved his career also missed the news story of the century, so Theroux just keeps coming back to it. Not only is it diminishing returns, but he does himself no favours trying to rationalise it.

Even when he's talking about himself it's not always great. The first third in particular was almost a DNF. Straight, white and privately educated Theroux had an extremely privileged upbringing. His attempts to downplay this where increasingly grating. Instead, Gotta get Theroux this is at it's best when he's talking about his experiences filming or his relationships. They seem to be the most honest and introspective. This might be because he comes across as clueless in the former, neglectful in the latter and actually acknowledges it.

I think I just prefer Theroux as a documentarian rather than a writer.


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informative slow-paced

This felt more like a disjointed collection of stories about Jimmy Saville, where the author randomly goes on tangents about themselves, rather than a cohesive memoir about Louis Theroux.

I considered DNFing multiple times. I feel like it doesn't make sense to write a memoir and then have it be almost entirely about other people. It gives the impression that Theroux himself just isn't that interesting, so even when you do happen to get an opinion or emotion from him, you're disinclined to give a fuck. 

Also, why can men actually not write a memoir without talking about their genitals? I thought this memoir's saving grace was that Theroux managed to break the curse, then right near the end there's a random and highly irrelevant story about the time he got an infection in his balls. 

This was a hard one to get through, and I'd never have bothered if I knew what I was getting into beforehand.

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

I really enjoyed getting a behind the scenes look at Louis’s documentaries. The discussion surrounding Jimmy Saville was very interesting and I understand why it was such an integral part of the book. But it was quite a high focus and I feel like that aspect of the book took over a little bit

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I wanted so much to enjoy this book as much as I enjoy Louis Theroux’s documentaries, but unfortunately this book is subpar to the television work he puts out. 

Louis Theroux wrote this himself and comes across so terribly throughout. He seems ungrateful for the privilege afforded to him in his early life to be able to play around with his career as much as he did and he seems entirely uncaring in both of his marriages, although I recognise his first marriage was one of convenience rather than desire. 

The behind the scenes secrets from his TV career are fun, a redeeming part of this book, but his constant discussion of Jimmy Savile was a bit much. I didn’t need every second chapter to be reminiscent of time spent with Savile before the allegations. 

Stick to TV Louis.

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