When I got in from Pop Quiz tonight (we didn't win but came second and won a Santa Chocolate Selection each for our trouble - more details later) Mark had taped a documentary for me - When Louis Met The Hamiltons. Louis Theroux is an interviewer par excellence and has done the dirty on a range of other subjects from the KKK to faded magician Paul Daniels. He is relaxed and manages to get his subjects to condemn themselves out of their own mouths. He lets people be themselves. A rare gift.
Neil Hamilton is an attention seeking, disgraced ex-Tory MP with a battle-axe wife, Christine. Louis just happened to be making a documentary about them when a sensational story broke around them. The Hamiltons were bizarrely accused of rape. Two weeks later the case was dropped but the inside story that made up the bulk of the documentary made for a fasinating 80 minutes of television. Far from being irritating the Hamiltons come across as an oddly charming couple, very British, full of stiff upper lip but ultimately both flawed characters. Their fatal weakness for publicity is their undoing. They just can't resist a photocall. And then complain about the press's attentions. So you're left feeling that whatever the rights and wrongs of their escapades they are getting exactly what they ask for. If you live by the sword you die by the sword.
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