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Was ITV right to cancel Jeremy Kyle?

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If you’d asked me this a couple of weeks ago, I would have undoubtedly have said yes.

I’d only caught a few snippets of the show over the years, and in those brief moments was pretty horrified at what I saw. From my very limited viewing, I rapidly formed the opinion that this wasn’t my kind of show.

Why would anyone choose to go on TV to air their dirty laundry, and potentially discover something hideous about another person? Wife slept with your brother? Your sister is in love with your best friend’s killer? Sure – find that out in a TV studio in front of a live audience.

Apart from my bemusement as to why anyone would want to put themselves through that, I couldn’t grasp why anyone would want to watch that happen. Voyeuristic, ghoulish, gaining enjoyment from other people’s misery? I didn’t get it.

But much as I watch F1 and others love the Footballs, we’re all different. It was the most popular of ITV’s daytime shows. It ran for 14 years. So, not for me, but it was certainly essential viewing for many.

After Steve Dymond was found dead a week after taking a lie detector test on the programme, the show was first suspended by ITV and then axed, with an inquiry launched by MPs into the question of adequate support for the sometimes vulnerable people taking part, who often lived out their worst nightmares for the entertainment of others, unable to foresee the consequences.

And that’s the very nub of this –shows like these are taking already damaged people, and making life unbearably worse for them.

So my answer to the original question is now based on a very different set of knowledge to before, but it’s still a yes. It was right to cancel this show... and it should have happened a long time ago.

This post first appeared as part of The Mail's "Taking to the Podium" page, on Monday the 20th of May 2019.

I would have been quite surprised if any of the other opinion-providers had said the show should still be on the air - happily, they didn't. Seems to have been a change in my fellow columnists for this second outing, with one being replaced by one of the paper's own staff (and my contact there).

It's a long way into the paper now (page 27 this time), and I wonder if the format is working. We'll see. I'm certainly less comfortable providing my view on spiky topics like this, compared to my previous remit to write about whatever I wanted.

(Tape Time: No 202 - The Beatles' "Abbey Road" plus a bunch of 7" and 12" singles from 1986.)
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