When Louis Met Ann Widdecombe (BBC2)

THE bedroom door remained firmly shut to interviewer Louis Theroux. So did questions about what happened - or didn't happen - inside that most intimate of rooms.

"I don't let anyone go upstairs," insisted Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, referring to her boudoir but sounding like someone laying down the rules of petting to a boyfriend.

Theroux's speciality is following around a certain type of celebrity, such as Paul Daniels and Ian and Christine Hamilton, whose very name brings a smile to the lips. Some think he's holding them up to public ridicule with his impertinent questions and intrusive camera, but, as he maintained on GMTV yesterday, he's not taking the mickey and all his subjects (or victims as some would call them) have benefited from his documentaries.

Widdecombe, who was Shadow Home Secretary at the time of filming, is clearly no fool. Whether she's a virgin, Theroux's probing was unable to establish. He got as far as calling her - to her face - a "single woman of a certain age" but, once the v-word was mentioned, Widdecombe wasn't having it. She'd only agreed to talk about certain areas of her life and sex wasn't one of them.

"I am not going to go any further than I have gone," she stated, avoiding saying exactly how far she had gone.

"I will winkle away at that one," a suitably-chastised Theroux promised her.

We learnt that Widdecombe collects plates decorated with bears, writes poems about her cats, and has a website called The Widdy Web. Theroux was surprised to find her secretary Gloria was a former rock band manager. She seemed an unlikely figure to work for a woman whose musical tastes, one suspects, lie elsewhere.

He also met Widdecombe's 90-year-old mother Rita, a lively woman who lives upstairs at her daughter's home, an area barred to Theroux. He eventually met her after joining them on an Arctic cruise, then got into hot water for interviewing her without her daughter being present. Theroux was in the dog house - and Rita apparently banished to her cabin for the rest of the voyage to avoid letting any Widdecombe cats out of the bag.