Idi Amin and alluded to in the film "The Last King of Scotland" in 2006, a movie which earned actor Forest Whitaker an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Amin. During Amin's time in power, popular media outside of Uganda often portrayed him as an essentially comic and eccentric figure. In a 1977 assessment typical of the time, a "Time" magazine article described him as a "killer and clown, big-hearted buffoon and strutting martinet". The comedy-variety series "Saturday Night Live" aired four Amin sketches between 1976 and 1979, including one in which he was an ill-behaved houseguest in exile,
Idi Amin London. This prominent defection helped Henry Kyemba, Amin's health minister and a former official of the first Obote regime, to defect in 1977 and resettle in the UK. Kyemba wrote and published "A State of Blood", the first insider exposé of Amin's rule. Initially, Amin was supported by Western powers such as Israel, West Germany and, in particular, Great Britain. During the late 1960s, Obote's move to the left, which included his Common Man's Charter and the nationalisation of 80 British companies, had made the West worried that he would pose a threat to Western capitalist interests in Africa and