Rather than the worthy docs about mental health and alcoholism, here are the programmes that Monsieur Theroux should have seen through: the weekends away with the freaks, bad hats and oddballs that used to be his bread and butter before middle age and quiet respectability came calling.
Wayne Lineker
It’s 2am in Sant Antoni, and Louis is stood at the DJ decks of Lineker’s Bar doing the Louis Face as Avicii’s Seek Bromance pounds from the speakers, sending the scrums of revellers into rapture. A Page 3 model in a beefeater’s uniform chides a skinny lad from Loughborough Uni into chugging a yard of nuclear green Aftershock. ‘Don’t you think this is a bit… you know… irresponsible?’ Louis asks, and Lineker rocks back on his heels, his entourage howling with mock indignation. ‘It’s the entertainment business, Louis,’ he grins, ‘you know that,’ before he gives him a pat on the shoulder that says: ‘You’re no better than I am.’ Ibiza Louis watches Wayne schlep off into an Uber with the waitress as Narrator Louis tells us that he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all, but felt it was time to leave.
Shinzo Abe’s Assassin
A cold open, as Louis stares quizzically at a puttering 3D printer in a bedsit in Nara Prefecture. ‘And it just prints out a barrel like this, does it?’ Tetsuya Yamagami acknowledges his question with a curt, wordless nod, and Louis raises an eyebrow to his cameraman. ‘That could be quite dangerous.’
Cue the music! Bom, ba bom, ba bom, ba bom-bom-bom-bom bada bada bada bada bom. Pieeewwwww. The Japanese parliamentary elections are only weeks away, and our intrepid lanky posho finds himself in a sermon at the Unification Church finding out just what has made Mr Yamagami so angry. A video message from the kindly former Prime Minister, speaking against a backdrop of a swirling cosmos, lets the worshippers know that he’ll be making a speech around the area next week. Narrator Louis tells us that he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all, but knew it was time to leave.
The Duke and Duchess of Rutland
Louis has some questions: why does the Duchess have the run of her husband’s 356-room castle – all cosy with her new boyfriend – while the Duke stays in his tower? ‘Am I allowed to meet him?’ Louis asks of His Grace. The Duchess diffuses the situation by grabbing him by the arm to show off the pizza oven she’s had installed in a stable. It’s all very impressive! Why do they keep selling Poussins? No answer. Louis goes out with the Belvoir Hunt and ends up being attacked by a posse of pole-wielding antis.
We then cut to the Duchess bringing a bouquet of flowers to Louis’ ward at Leicester General Infirmary. On his brief return to Belvoir to say goodbye to the Duchess, who is about to record a podcast and arrange the sale of some furniture, Louis thinks he catches a glimpse of a round, mournful, claret-coloured face in a top window, but before he can follow it up, his time with the Rutlands is at an end. He isn’t quite sure what to make of this, but reckons that it’s time to leave.
Noel Edmonds
‘But do you really believe that Noel?’ pushes Louis, as Edmonds details once again how the primal forces of the cosmos dropped everything to contrive a presenting role for him on a tea-time gameshow. Relations become even frostier as Louis asks what Noel considers to be unreasonable questions about the man who died on The Late, Late Breakfast Show, Edmonds’ habit of referring to himself in the third person and his brief, reformist presidency of the British Horse Society.
The episode and series ends with Edmonds encouraging Louis to climb inside an enormous replica of one of the famous Deal or No Deal boxes, followed by a cut to black. Inside the box, Louis tells us that he isn’t quite sure what to make of this, but decides that it’s time to leave.
Nick Clegg
A weird one for sure, as both interview and interviewee keep avowing every five minutes, ‘This is so strange!’ You see, Louis and Nick were at Westminster School together, albeit three years apart. But Louis claimed to have ‘fagged’ for Nick in an interview way back when: ‘You made that up!’ ‘I know I did!’
They are very obviously not friends. A bit of a drab programme until Clegg gets three martinis deep in a Menlo Park brasserie and invites him to a Metaverse sex party, at which their groins are nozzled and logged directly into the central mainframe. ‘Quite refreshing,’ says a clearly unsettled Louis, before being shushed by Clegg, in throes of priapic bliss. ‘Don’t cheapen this,’ groans the former Deputy Prime Minister, blind to Louis removing his headset and solemnly intoning, over voiceover, that he’s not sure what to make of it, but thinks it’s time to leave.
