Interview: Jeremy Kyle

Call me Jezza

His brand of confessional TV - less smug than Kilroy, more serious than Springer - has already outstripped his predecessor Trisha in the ratings. So what's his secret? The new star of ITV daytime tells all to James Silver

Voices are raised and insults hurled as an elderly woman with a gaunt, heavily-lined face is berated for sleeping with another man "behind her dying husband's back". Her son and his fiancee are led into the studio bear-pit. Despite winning £100,000 at bingo - and giving a chunk of it to his mother - he claims he is now too broke to get married and blames his mum, who has sold the family home, pocketed the proceeds and shacked up with her lover, a greying Godzilla with a ponytail. As the show's host attempts to regain control over the proceedings, the aforementioned lover is soon jabbing his finger in the son's face, before being ordered to sit down by security ... Welcome to the world of ITV1's daytime sleeper hit, The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Recently securing a 34% audience share in its slot (weekdays at 9.25am) and attracting up to 1.5 million viewers - ranging from students and stay-at-home mums to pensioners and the skiving self-employed - Kyle's programme is rapidly turning out to be a rare success for an ITV daytime schedule struggling since Paul O'Grady's defection. According to its website, the show "deals with family and relationship issues, as well as taking a look at the every day conflicts that affect our lives". In fact, this is rubber-necking, car-crash, trailer-trash TV. Kyle conducts events with less self-congratulation than Kilroy and without Springer's homespun triteness. It is not hard to see why he is now outperforming his predecessor, Trisha Goddard, and in January was recommissioned by ITV to front 360 more shows over the next two years.

Graveyard slot

That is some going for a man who once sold life-assurance policies and not so very long ago languished in the graveyard slot in local commercial radio, where on one occasion - desperate for phone-in callers at midnight on a Saturday - he put a woman from Newbury who was delivering a calf on air for the entire duration of the creature's birth. "She named it Jezza after me and it weighed 87 pounds," chuckles Kyle, of a scenario worthy of Alan Partridge.

Tucking into a club sandwich and fries (but ignoring the salad garnish) in a hotel behind Manchester's Granada studios, where the show is recorded with conveyor-belt efficiency, Kyle, 40, has intense, piercing eyes and a permanent semi-scowl that wrinkles the fleshy fold between his forehead and nose. He also has an endearing Partridge-esque habit of referring to showbiz stars by their surnames - it's "Parky", "Ross" and, several times, "Springer".

Is Kyle Britain's answer to Jerry Springer? "I don't think I am," he says. "The subjects and how we do them are infinitely different. I think Springer is ... " he pauses, dipping a chip in ketchup, " ... you see it's difficult, am I trying to criticise the man? No, because Jerry Springer has worked for ITV and the man's had a 16-year career, and I respect him for that. But [his show] is a bit louder than ours. I would like to think that, hand in hand with honesty and directness, we show real life. I'm not saying he doesn't, but sometimes it steps over that ... " again he pauses and choose his words carefully, " ... I mean he did [a show entitled] 'I married a horse'. Nobody can defend that. That's ridiculous, isn't it? I'm not saying that we claim to change everybody's life who comes on this show, but we do some good."

Kyle struggles a little when asked to analyse his show's appeal. "It's hard because I haven't sat down to quantify it," he says somewhat bafflingly. "Maybe there's a degree of intrusiveness about it. Some of the subjects might be out of the ordinary, but there's also a lot of real stuff that people in all walks of life can relate to - drink, drugs, death and infidelity. For those that say it's exploitative, I don't think it's a freak show at all, personally, I think that misses the point. A lot of care is taken to help people. In an ideal world we'd all have a family member or best friend to turn to, but we don't all have that. For many of our guests who come on the show, they are thinking today's the day I'm going to turn it all around."

It is important at this juncture to stress that Jezza - as he likes to be known - makes no claim to be a trained counsellor or, indeed, therapist. He bills himself as "an ordinary bloke" who simply "tries to tell it like it is". Kyle has risen through the ranks of regional and national radio, hosting cult shows such as Jezza's Virgin Confessions, and estimates he's taken some 45,000 calls over the years from listeners in varying degrees of emotional distress.

"I've said it from day one that I'm not a counsellor," says Kyle, who is married with three children and lives in Berkshire. "There are 60 or so people who put this show together, and we're not just talking about dedicated teams of researchers, who work 48 hours without sleeping before a show, but we also brought in ITV's own psychologist, Graham Stanier. We've concentrated on offering our guests before, during and after-show care. We help as many as we can by referring them on for counselling. We don't just hang 'em out to dry."

Both on- and off-air, certain things stick in the Kyle craw. He dislikes the indolent and spongers. "I get angry when people don't help themselves," he says. "I think that the welfare state was the greatest invention, but it was supposed to help people who can't help themselves, not help people who are taking advantage. I will sit here until I am blue in the face and say that if you have five kids by five different women with no intention of ever working, then you are taking the piss out of a man and a woman who have two kids and struggle to make ends meet. That's not politics. That's just how I see it." He gets quite indignant, sometimes, I suggest. "Yeah, absolutely, it's not put on."

Then, I blot my copybook by asking if he thinks he can sometimes be self-righteous. He doesn't like that. "Self-righteous?" he parrots defensively. "If you are on the dole and you can't get a job and you're trying desperately, then that's awful. But I also think it's awful if you know a system is going to look after you when you don't do anything for yourself. My mum's waiting for a hip operation. She's waited three years and paid tax all her life. Ronnie Biggs comes back from Brazil, after 30 years on the run and," he clicks his fingers, "he gets heart treatment like that. Is that self-righteous or honest?"

TV god

So where does this talent for confessional TV come from? "I grew up listening to Parkinson," he replies. "I listen. I'm honest. I think I've learned to communicate over the years from the radio. I've been through a few things. Doesn't make me right the whole time though. One [critic] said I was "a TV god", another said I had "the eyes of Satan and I lie in bed at night thinking he's going to murder me". The truth is I am not a god and I am not going to murder anyone. Those kind of comments come with the territory. My favourite article said they half-expected me to rush on to the set one day and slap one of my unsuspecting guests over the head with my own member." It should be pointed out, however, that, thankfully, Kyle has so far managed to resist the urge.

Despite his innate feel for the medium Kyle might never have made it to TV were it not for the sharp eye of Dianne Nelmes, ITV's director of daytime and lifestyle. "I heard him on Capital Radio and when we first called him in for audition in truth he was an outsider because we were looking for a woman [to fill Trisha's shoes]," recalls Nelmes. "But the minute I saw him on the set I genuinely just knew he had it. I also launched Trisha and I do have a nous for screen talent, but I had to do a lot of work to persuade the bosses at ITV Network who weren't at all sure about him.

"In the end, I was so certain I was right I went to [ITV chief] Simon Shaps and asked him if he would let me spend my own department's money to make a pilot, because ITV wouldn't commission one. Simon backed me totally. We did the pilots and they were just stunning. Once we'd delivered them to ITV, they couldn't not commission him. It launched in the very tricky summer period, but he was an instant success."

At times, Kyle sounds like he cannot quite believe his luck ("I keep expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say it's all been a mistake," he says at one point). But he is also clearly enjoying his success. "It would be great if someone wants to invite me to a Pro-Celebrity golf day," he says at the end of the interview, sounding once more uncannily like Steve Coogan's creation. "That's my thing, golf. I'm still waiting to be invited to a Pro-Am." The way things are going for him right now, it will not be too long before he is teeing off in terrible golfing trousers with the likes of Ronnie Corbett and Jimmy Tarbuck.

Curriculum Vitae

Age 40

Education Reading Blue Coat School and Surrey University

1986-95 Salesman - life assurance, recruitment and radio advertising 1996 Presenter, evening show on Kent's Invicta FM 1997-2001 Presenter on Birmingham's BRMB, where he won a Sony award 2001-02 Presenter, Century Network 2002-04 Presenter, Virgin Radio's Jezza's Virgin Confessions 2004-onwards Presenter, Capital Radio on Sunday evenings 2005 The Jeremy Kyle Show on ITV 2006 ITV order 360 more shows

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