The Jeremy Kyle Show

The Jeremy Kyle Show is the most British TV show you have probably never heard of. The naïve amongst you might attempt to compare it to smiling Ricky Lake or upbeat Jerry Springer, but the British people would know this to be wholly and utterly inaccurate. If you happen to be a Brit, it is a high probability that you are more likely to have watched an episode (or five) of JK than you are to own a passport. There is however a slight catch in that no sane British person ever owns up to their love of JK. It is quite the controversial move if you do.

Picture the scene: It is early evening, probably in the midst of January and bloody cold, not to mention dark already outside. That’s the way it is here, which is just fine because the kettles just boiled for tea. Dinner is served (on trays) in front of the TV for a long night of viewing before bed. Jeremy Kyle is on, as it always is in England. A TV program no one admits to watching but we, the 67 million strong British, are happy and contented.

After all, where else can you watch two Chatham lasses fighting over one scraggly little bloke with about three teeth? Where on the tellybox can you see a twenty something man with a skull badly tattooed across the entirety of his face, or an onstage proposal between two Glaswegian teenagers after a love triangle cheating exposé? Hair extensions are flying, a drunken guest sat backstage threatens the cameraman, someone’s red-faced father gets dragged off set by security, it’s an absolute car crash until Jeremy Kyle makes a bold move to bring out: the lie detector results.

The audience gasps. As do I, at home with my dinner perched haphazardly on my lap, anxious, eager even to await the results of the test.

Have I been having sex with my brother? Did my nan steal the baby’s gold bangle? Has my son been cutting up my sex toys?

Shocked yet? Do you feel the disbelief? These are all genuine headlines from classic episodes.

It pains me (and no doubt my parents) to admit I started watching the show as an impressionable teenager, a habit of mine that continued on into university and my early 20’s. The initial trauma and confusion of seeing dysfunctional, almost broken people argue on camera became a morbid fascination and a twisted alternate reality to my comfortable little home. My somewhat sheltered teenage mind just had so many questions. I would ask my father who at times could be just a little judgmental, his past as a London police officer often tarring his view of the people he thought of as time wasters and criminals. On the other hand, my mother, a lawyer with a few clients who had actually ‘starred’ on the show, did her best to explain what she could. She dealt with these people frequently as they so often needed legal help and advice, many of whom would arrive drunk and carve their initials into the waiting room furniture, appointment after appointment.

The guests on the Jeremy Kyle show were of course just ordinary people, just like I was, but different too in so many ways. Many seemed to be trapped in a cycle of abuse, poverty, and lack of life opportunities that only Jeremy Kyle could fix, or so they (and I) believed. That much was obvious to my teenage self but it far from halted my curiosity for the show. I did not know anyone like the guests in real life, but the show made me feel like I did.

A few short years into adulthood the Jeremy Kyle show had become a part of my daily routine, a bizarre comfort blanket on a wintery, British evening. Sick day? Relax with daytime Jeremy Kyle. Dumped by the boyfriend? Oh look, Jeremy is on (again). Broke and nowhere to go? No bother pet, pop the telly on for a bit of, you guessed it. Just do not tell anyone.

To admit in public that you watch such daytime nonsense, such drivel, worse still that you’re an actual fan of The Jeremy Kyle Show, has some dire consequences that are far reaching into one’s social circles. Tell a group of mates you like to watch JK at dinner time and you risk at least one of them wiping your number from their phone. It’s game over, finish your pint and go home.

A colleague at a former workplace, pink in the face and literally shaking with anger once scorned ‘the types of people who watch that show’ at the briefest mention of it by a fellow colleague. Needless to say, it was never brought up again.

A former boyfriend’s parents over Christmas dinner referred to people they don’t like as ‘the Jeremy Kyle watching sort’, as in the types of people who voted Brexit and spit at foreigners in the street with an England flag draped round their bare shoulders. That sort.

To be fair to the JK haters and I don’t like to admit this, but they do have a point. A popular British newspaper likened the Jeremy Kyle show to a ‘Roman Colosseum’ with some accuracy. There were a few times over the years you would hear about vulnerable JK guests in the newspaper, encouraged to fight and argue on stage for the viewers pleasure, no doubt their actions being of great detriment to their lives when they return to the communities they come from. Another online media platform compared it to a ‘Victorian Freak Show’ in the way that Jeremy would provoke the guests in their worst possible moments, a DNA test gone wrong, a failed drug test, you name it. Perhaps the most shocking of all, in 2019 a guest committed suicide following the results of the lie detector.

It probably came as no surprise to many when The Jeremy Kyle Show was cancelled. Great numbers of people were absolutely pleased, others were angry and upset. By this point in my life I was working full time and hadn’t the time anymore for watching the show as I had previously. I was however, just a little bit deflated and sad to hear the news that my favourite teenage viewing was over and for a good reason. My guilty tv pleasure was no longer fit for purpose.

But it was not all bad. The Jeremy Kyle Show had its good moments too. It brought families back together who had been separated at birth, found long lost siblings, sent people to rehab who truly needed it all for free when they could not afford treatment. I learned a lot about society and people and the country I live in. I have learned not to judge people too quickly.

The 4pm slot on ITV has never quite been the same, despite some brave attempts to fill it. Some online campaigns and discussions have pushed for talks into a new show of some sort. The winter nights here in Britain are still long, dark, and cold…perhaps if we are lucky, we might be in for a friendlier reboot.