Welcome To Zelo Street!

This is a blog of liberal stance and independent mind

Wednesday 16 March 2022

Jeremy Kyle - Where’s Your Lawsuit?

Channel 4 has just aired a two-part documentary titled Death On Daytime, concerning the now thankfully former ITV offering hosted by Jeremy Kyle. The show was, let us not drive this one round the houses for too long, bear-baiting TV. The pretence that it enabled members of the public to work through relationship problems was bunk: it was confrontation television, with one goal: More and Bigger Ratings For ITV Personally Now.


The Guardian’s review of the documentary notes “The Jeremy Kyle Show ran for 3,320 episodes over 14 years on ITV, and was at times the channel’s most popular daytime show. More than 1 million viewers regularly watched as its guests argued over paternity, addiction, deceit and betrayal, while Kyle bayed and roared in their faces”, that the result “brims with quiet fury”, and in conclusion was “a shocking exposé of the ITV series”.

As Zelo Street told when the Kyle show was pulled, the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr had seen the production process up close, including “a young man with bipolar disorder and borderline schizophrenia ritually humiliated in front of an audience, few of whom had had been vetted - those in a nearby pub appear to have been decanted from the bar to make up the numbers - with ITV afterwards just batting off criticisms and concerns”.

Yet, as the Channel 4 documentary was readied for transmission, Kyle was trying to put the frighteners on the broadcaster by threatening a lawsuit - and the story was dutifully put out there by the Murdoch Sun. To no surprise at all, Kyle is a regular host at another Murdoch property - the media noise floor occupant that is TalkRADIO.

KYLE HITS BACK … Jeremy Kyle taking legal action after Channel 4 doc claims guests on his ITV show were ‘duped and exploited’ … A source close to Jeremy says many of the allegations made in the documentary are verifiably false”. He asserted that “the false and damaging allegations made against me by Channel 4 are with the lawyers now”.


Yeah, right. The Mail takes a rather different line: “Jeremy Kyle calls in the lawyers over Channel 4 documentary set to claim his axed daytime show 'exploited' and 'duped' guests – as TV host's hopes of reviving his career appear to be failing”. The article points out that Kyle “reportedly doesn't have any TV projects lined up”. Cue the nanoviolin.

Kyle ought to consider himself fortunate - rather more fortunate than many of those he ritually and systematically humiliated on his ITV show during its 14-year run. He’s been given a good job for what the Army might have called “A passed-over Major”.

Indeed, some who saw the Channel 4 documentary would not even begrudge him that favour, as the Mirror told readersViewers have demanded that Jeremy Kyle be axed from his TalkRadio job … It comes after a disturbing Channel 4 documentary aired the harrowing accounts of guests on his ITV show who claim the host 'lied' to them”.

In any case, the threat of legal action has not stopped transmission of Death On Daytime, and with the programme out there, there seems little point in continuing any such action - if, of course, there was one in the first place. Maybe Kyle can reassure all those sceptics out there by ponying up a little evidence. Just so we know he was serious about it.

He got away with it for 14 years. He won’t get away with it again. Just rejoice at that news.


Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kyle was/is a clear example of tabloid TV. An appalling individual like his print fellows Murdoch and Rothermere.

Long ago there were at least traces of conscience, even foreboding, in Anglo-Saxon culture. Examples can be found in two outstanding US films Network (1976) and Broadcast News (1987). The latter confirmed the warnings implicit in the former.

Kyle was a sort of British watered-down version of Howard Beale. A straight copy of the US Donahue.

The fact is it is all growth from the same poison plant. Print and broadcast "news" is virtually unreadable, unwatchable and unbearable because of it. Its propagators are guilty to a man and woman. Too many truly vile inhuman beings who simply don't care about the terrible cultural and social wreckage they leave behind them...who no longer need to be told what to do - they know what is expected of them and duly deliver in their rotten cowardice. Hence Clive Myrie's on-air slip that, "I only read this stuff". Classic "It wasn't me, guv", which doubtless drew a rap on his knuckles.

I won't be cheering C4 for the programme. It's far too late for that, largely because it long ago shuffled into the media compliance queue which enables it to deal with the sensationalist Kyle in established sensationalist tabloid TV "style". At this late stage it is after all nothing but a ratings chase. What Ed Murrow warned of in his famous "Wires and lights in a box" speech 70 years ago.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...

Classy: 'rotten cowardice' and 'Clive Myrie' with just the word 'hence' to separate (or link) them.
A man who's spent much of the last 3 weeks broadcasting live from a city being shelled by the descendants of your erstwhile idols. While you've been sitting on your day-bed valiantly sticking a plastic knife into a map of the London Ultra Low Emissions Zone.

Just for once, why not do us all a favour, eh?: wipe the spittle flecks off the screen and try to read what you've written before you press Send?

And then don't press Send.

Anonymous said...

@ 18:44.

Tsk tsk.

Wipe the jellied eel off your chin and try to avoid curtain-twitching.

Makes you look even more McCarthyite paranoid than before. Mildly amusing, though, in a Daily Heil/EastEnders soap opera sort of way.

anon said...

"don't press send" cancel culture, B..highly unbecoming.

Oh look. It's Wankermind said...

@19:56
Your latest makes you look more Goebbels than before.

Anonymous said...

What is patently obvious in that documentary is just how shit scared were the behind-the-scenes employees, and what a small gang of spiv gobshites the instigating employers were. Kyle was simply a thug*, a sort of "pop" Andrew Neil.

Altogether, rotten-to-the-core BritYank media made as "entertainment" for a stupefied audience. Different from broadcast news only in its subject matter.


*Which he called his "presentation style". An utterly contemptible cowardly bullshitter.

Mr Larrington said...

BBC announcer Wallace “Bill” Greenslade famously* said “while I read this stuff, I don’t write it” in an episode of “The Goon Show”. I expect Mr Myrie was just paying tribute to his notable predecessor.

NB: Above may contain traces of wishful thinking.

* FSVO “famous”

Anonymous said...

To 10:16.

You and Bbbertie should get a room. If you don't already share one.

Only here to help. :O)

Room At Droid Self Righteous said...

"Only here to help"
Yeah. Like Harry Enfield's 'Only me'.

Anonymous said...

To 06:43.

So you're in the room too. That makes "three" of you.

Calm down, calm down. :O)

Still only here to help.

After the Bum's Rush said...

You: In burnt out basement
Rest of Us: In reality

Anonymous said...

To 13:44.

That makes "four" (and counting) of you in the room. There's no end to these multiple troll "personalities" in "Us". A suitable case for treatment. :O)

Still only here to help.

We Hear You said...

Are you here to help? The NCVO has many vacancies and some provide accommodation.

Anonymous said...

To 19:17.

For Bbbertie "and co" it will have to be accommodation of the padded kind.

Fifth troll personality incoming. :O)

Got Rooms Got Work said...

Oh. So it's Farage-type help.

Anonymous said...

@ 09:15.

And there, right on time, comes Bbbertie's fifth personality. First morning thought too. Gosh. :O)

Only here to help.

Anonymous said...

Yep. Farage-style help.

Anonymous said...

Same old de facto Quisling weasel blue and red tory chickens flying home neofascist curtain-twitching jackboot interchangable spiv :~#

Anonymous said...

@ 17:35.

Repetition....Buzzzzzz.....must try harder, Bbbertie. :0)

You're almost beyond help.

Anonymous said...

The universally challenged farter for 10 same old spiv de facto weasel blue Quisling and red tory chickens flying neofascist curtain home twitching interchangable (sic) jackboot :~#