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In 1979, Pilger and two colleagues with whom he collaborated for many years, documentary film-maker David Munro and photographer Eric Piper, entered Cambodia in the wake of the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime.

The result was a series of world exclusives, the first of which occupied almost an entire Daily Mirror, which sold out.

This was followed by an ITV documentary, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, which brought to people's living rooms the suffering of the Khmer people.

Some $ 45 million was raised, unsolicited, in mostly small donations following the showing of Year Zero, including almost £ 4 million raised by schoolchildren in the UK.

This funded the first substantial relief to Cambodia, including life saving drugs like penicillin and the manufacture of clothes to replace the black uniforms people had been forced to wear.

According to Brian Walker, director of Oxfam, " a solidarity and compassion surged across our nation " from the broadcast of Year Zero.

Pilger and Munro made four later films about Cambodia.

During the filming of Cambodia Year One, they were warned that Pilger was on a Khmer Rouge ' death list ' and, in one incident, they narrowly escaped an ambush.

The British Film Institute ( BFI ) has described Year Zero as one of the ten most influential documentary films of the 20th century.