by Joy Cooke

Created on: March 15, 2010

Gosh, if there is one person on television I LOATHE* then it's Jerry Springer. He is an appallingly patronising and irreverent man, seemingly taking pleasure in inviting 'trailer trash' onto his show and then berating them for living their lives in the only way they know how.

So imagine how I feel about Jeremy Kyle and his self titled television programme, The Jeremy Kyle Show. I despise the awful man and despite the fact that I have tried to see the good in him I just can't see past the snide comments, spiteful retorts when anyone dares to argue with him and his all round persona of thinking he is so much better than his guests.

And he's no better than them. Not at all. He is actually worse as while the majority of his guests are down on their luck, some would say the underclass of British society, he is making his money by bringing them to the attention of the public and parading their lack of intelligence to everyone simply to get people to watch his show.

He quite regularly brings out lie detector tests where women can prove their partner (rarely husband) is cheating on them, will arrange DNA tests before gleefully telling a heart broken man than a child isn't his and then sits in front of these people dishing out advice on how he thinks they should conduct their lives. The man quite literally makes me feel sick.

The format of the show is pretty much identical to that of Jerry Springers. The guests are brought out cattle market style and seated on the stage in full view of the audience, who rarely look any better informed than the people they are ridiculing on the stage. Kyle himself mingles around the audience but is often seen sitting on the steps in the studio dispensing his awfully condescending advice. Perhaps it's just me, but when confronted by a 17 year old girl who is pregnant with her second baby I don't think he should be allowed to so callously brand her a drain on society or 'stupid', which incidentally seems to be Jeremy Kyle's favourite word.

The thing which amazes me about this show is that it doesn't ever seem to achieve anything. Yes, the guests will scream and shout at one another and perhaps the scorned woman will agree to leave her cheating rat of a partner. But you can just sense that as soon as filming is over they will be having a giggle about the whole episode, in actual fact sometimes a guest will find his or her situation so amusing that they will spend the whole of the show smirking and barely looking like they could care less about how they are being portrayed.

I do feel for these guests, however derogatory my review appears towards them. I personally think that The Jeremy Kyle Show doesn't really set out to help anyone, and honestly even as car crash TV (which I'm sure most of us enjoy at some point) it's not very good because you can feel yourself getting so embarrassed on behalf of the poor guests that it does make this show very uncomfortable viewing.

You might be wondering why I watch The Jeremy Kyle Show if I hate it so much, and the answer is that I rarely do. Ordinarily I'd say that you cannot write an article based on so few viewings of the show (out of the years it's been broadcast I've probably seen no more than eight episodes, three of which were very recently when I had a house guest staying for a few days). The thing is that this show is so standard from episode to episode that you honestly could watch one full episode and you'll understand and recognise the layout for the next few years worth of shows.


* In actual fact there are quite a few of them, but Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle are two of the worst!

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