Louis Theroux tempted to make documentary about Nigel Farage

Theroux is tempted to return to his When Louis Met format, and would consider Farage as a focus for one of the documentaries.

Speaking to Radio Times Magazine, Theroux said he would also be intrigued by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

He said: “Tommy Robinson is too much on the frontburner for me right now. I’m interested in stories about people who maybe are not riding as high as they once were – maybe Nigel Farage or Julian Assange.

“Farage seems to be more in the wings, more in the margins. I also like stories about people who have been somehow defrocked, or have fallen from grace.”

Theroux has said that the marginal figures he often featured in his series have become more dominant ideologically under the presidency of Donald Trump.

He said: “My older programmes about survivalists, neo-Nazis and religious cults worked because they were always alleviated by a sense that these were figures in the margins, lonely and embattled. Which somehow makes it a little easier to stomach.

“Whereas the kind of ideology that Trump has embodied is now in the ascendancy.”

A 2001 episode of the When Louis Met series saw Theroux spend time with then disgraced former Tory minister Neil Hamilton, who would later become UKIP’s leader in Wales, and his wife Christine.

It followed the pair as they were arrested over allegations of sexual assault, of which they were both later cleared. Theroux described his time with them as “one of the most unnerving experiences” he had ever had.

The full interview can be read in the Radio Times out now.