6 Times Louis Theroux Put Himself In Danger To Get A Story

Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends chronicled various subjects during its three-season run ranging from the bizarre to the extreme. The 2000 episode looking at the cultural separatists living in post-apartheid South Africa features both in almost equal measure.

The episode shows much of the Boer separatist movement in an increasingly dilapidated state, with one scene showing a Boer rally that was intended to see several hundred attendees ending up with just a fraction of that showing up. Later, Louis interviews a married couple who would not allow a black person to enter their house, and yet own a variety of records made by black artists.

The episode culminates with a meeting between Theroux and the Afrikaner nationalist leader Eugène Terre'Blanche, and to call it heated would be an understatement.

Initially, the conversation between the pair is cordial enough though there is an obviously tense undercurrent throughout. In an exercise that Theroux would later explain was intended to improve relations between the pair, the scene with begins Terre'Blanche explaining which parts of the country his organisation were claiming by marking them on a map with a felt-tip pen.

However, the conversation takes a turn for the worse when an increasingly irate Terre'Blanche raises his voice and shouts at Louis for asking why a black person could not be a Boer. Ultimately Louis is only subjected to some intense finger-wagging and a suspiciously firm hand-shake from Terre'Blanche and escapes unscathed.

After living in relative obscurity in the years following his meeting with Louis, In 2010 Terre'Blanche was murdered on his farm by two of his workers at the age of 69.