Paradise Lost: The life of Louis Otieno

Louis Otieno: The making of a superstar

Media personality Louis Otieno speaks through pain to share his story. Some of his words are caught between his teeth and it is clear he is a far cry from the authoritative Louis Otieno of yore.

His mother, Ms Elizabeth Omolo, a veteran broadcaster, tries to explain her son’s motivations, and at some point you fear she may break down sobbing.

Journalists Sophie Ikenye and Rose Kimotho discuss what was and what could have been in Mr Otieno’s story.

For a man who worked in all Kenya’s top four media houses as the star anchor, his story at the top and now at the bottom is an indulging study of how Kenyan media works and the banality of middle-class life.

All that is packaged in a 23-minute podcast on Nation.Africa. It will be the first of six episodes on Mr Otieno and is titled “Paradise Lost”. It is written and produced by James Smart.

The podcast traces the rise and rise of Louis Otieno in the Kenyan media, and intrigues that until now have only been spoken of in low tones.

“You know, I have a bionic ear. I’ll just ask you to keep your voice up,” pleads Mr Otieno during one of his phone conversations with Mr Smart.

The Nation podcast, which provides exclusive details on the rise and fall of a man who was one of Kenya’s biggest names on television, reveals that besides his waning sense of hearing, Mr Otieno has been struggling with decades of back pain — so much so that he lives on painkillers. His speech is also slurred.

And somewhere in the first episode of the podcast, his mother, herself a broadcasting legend who worked for many years at the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), tries to justify what some perceived as arrogance in Mr Otieno during his time at KBC TV, NTV, Citizen TV, K24 and KTN over the years.

“He was mistaken by many, and that depressed me. It’s not that he hated anybody. He just wanted people to read from the same script and enjoy the job equally. Not one person enjoying and the other person is grinning at the corner,” she says.

The first episode is titled “The making of a superstar” and it explores the circumstances under which Mr Otieno rose to the national limelight.

It reveals a sense of curiosity that accidentally thrust Mr Otieno into the media. In the narrator’s words, Mr Otieno “didn’t exactly want to be on TV”. He says he didn’t even think about it.

But as they say, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Mr Otieno’s mother was an employee of the KBC, handling mostly the education programmes, and he would listen to her shows keenly to flag mispronounced words, long pauses, coughing and any foible.

When she returned home, he would confront her with whatever he had pointed out.

“He would be the only person waiting to open the door for me (when I got home late at night). By then, he was already with his pen and paper with the mistakes I made on air,” shares Ms Omolo. “He became inquisitive very young.”

And when he became a newscaster, it was the mother’s turn to be the critic and she would also note words wrongly pronounced by Mr Otieno and give her opinion.

“She would not let me put one word wrong. She would be waiting for me at home with that word written on a piece of paper,” Mr Otieno recalls.

The podcast revisits the circumstances under which Mr Otieno became a household name on Kenyan television, going ahead to earn the right to have a show named after him.

“He single-handedly brought up the culture of interviews on Kenyan television and important people were paying attention to him,” narrates Mr Smart.

He adds that this period saw newscasters revolutionise the trade. “(Young anchors) started talk shows. They started reading news faster, dressed smarter and sharper. This was an industry-wide change. The TV revolution was being televised. For Louis, well, he was at the centre of it all and he did his bit to move things forward,” says Smart.

One of the early key achievements for Mr Otieno, he shares, was to get the then Finance minister David Mwiraria to speak on TV about the Anglo-Leasing scandal when it was on everyone’s lips.

In the interview, Mr Mwiraria (who died in 2017) responded to the question of whether some money had been sent to Kenya as controversy raged over shady multi-billion contracts between the Kenyan government and a British firm.

“He actually pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. Now, this is live TV. When you go quiet for three seconds, it’s like 15 seconds. But he went quiet and I went quiet. And he folded this piece of paper on air,” says Mr Otieno. “He cut it and gave it to me on air. He said ‘I can give you this. This will show you your answer; there you go.’”

The former news anchor goes ahead to say that while he is not the one who unmasked the Anglo-Leasing scandal, “I’m the only one who got the person where the buck stops with to come and talk to the country on the matter at the time when it was hottest”.

The podcast retraces Mr Otieno’s fast rise and how he was a much sought-after name in the TV world, starting talk shows wherever he went and even starting town halls.

However, his progress and his brand in general did not augur well with some industry gatekeepers who felt “threatened”.

“I believe there were people being threatened by Louis,” Rose Kimotho reveals.

Mr Otieno says that when he joined NTV, the only person internally who supported him was Ms Sophie Ikenye, who is now with the BBC. And Ms Ikenye says: “We worked well together. We would bounce ideas off each other; so it was quite intriguing to work with him at that time and also interview all these people.”

The podcast talks about the various perceptions of Mr Otieno.

“The public thinks he is a proud and arrogant man (and there are) claims that he was womaniser, a drunkard, and a family deserter,” says the narrator, before going into detail.

Subsequent episodes, which will focus on the fall of Mr Otieno, will be uploaded every Saturday morning for the next six weeks. In next week’s episode, Mr Otieno will explain how his bosses wanted him off-air “so many times”. He believes he was a hunted man in the corridors of media.

“Many times, I remained on air because of pressure from Kenyans,” he will disclose.

Also, did you know that there is a deceased minister whose only ever one-on-one TV interview was on a Louis Otieno show? Listen to the first episode of the podcast to find out who that is, plus why embassies were at one time falling over themselves to catch Mr Otieno’s attention.