write, or blog, today in defence of Jeremy Kyle.
Am I mad? Am I bonkers? AmI admitting that, when not at work, i actually watch this bear baiting, as one rather out-of-touch judge put it this week?
In order: No, no and yes. And ,for the record, the difference between bear-baiting and Jeremy Kyle is this: People on Jeremy Kyle chose to go on.
Indeed, the rumour round Manchester is that many do it for a free night in Manchester, although another rumour has it that it is becoming harder and harder to find somewhere for the participants (unusually high number from south Wales I find) because of their behaviour in the hotel. Well, you can take the boyo out of south Wales, I suppose.
But let's be honest, Jeremy Kyle (ITV 1, 9.25am) isn't doing anything that Jerry Springer wasn't doing a decade ago. On a recent 'telly you hate but love to watch' compilation (more of which late this week) Trisha Goddard, who boasts being the first TV woman to use a lie detector on national telly, all but laid claim to creating Kyle by moving to Channel 5. All he is doing is picking up her baton.
The Time, The Place it is not. And all the better for it. The claims that they are out to help people mend their lives on Jeremy Kyle might be a bit far-fetched, but so is the notion that the X-Factor is purely about talent and an ability to sing. At the other end of the social scale, Nigella Lawson's current Nigella's Express is built around this notion that she cooks in her own kitchen and then serves up her gastro porn to friends, which, as it turns out, isn't entirely true. What I'm driving at is that TV programmes aren't always what they say they are. But we make that call and move on.
I asked around the Daily Post and Echo newsroom who had watched Jeremy Kyle yesterday. More had than hadn't, and a good few of those that had immediatley recited their favourite scenes. Yes, it's people's real lives that are being played out before the cameras but they are only dealing with issues which have already happened, and which Jeremy Kyle had no part in setting up.
And as for this idea of bear-baiting, a claim triggered by a judge dealing with a fight which had broken out on the programme, but which had not been aired, think about this, your lordship: Security were on hand to break it up. That wouldn't have been the case in the street in Chesterfield had the paths of the two involved crossed.
I'll put it another way. Up and down the country there are simmering tensions between people who feel hard done by or have done harm to others. The BT mantra 'It's Good to Talk' is true - if these people actually sat down and talked, more often than not, they could move on. As it is, they don't. Unless they go on Jeremy Kyle. I have no idea why they do. I have no idea why someone who is sleeping with their son's ex-partner, despite the fact he looks like a Klingon and is 40 years her senior, believes the best way to face it out is in front of a TV audience of students and people with nowt better to do, and a former radio presenter with a shouty voice who likes to remind us that he, too, has had family problems (never mentions the fact his wife was the winner of a radio competition to marry another listener which Kyle hosted).
But the fact is, they do. And that's their choice. And may that freedom of choice continue. Because if nothing else, it's highly amusing telly.
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