TV chat host Jeremy Kyle says the now axed ITV show show was a juggernaut in its day, but is now from ‘a bygone era’ thanks to social media
Kyle has been off ITV for more than five years but opened up to Kate Garraway about his whole life(Image: ITV)
Jeremy Kyle has hinted his tough-talking ITV show was already on the way out when the axe fell in 2019, because changes over its 15 year lifespan meant “you can’t say boo to a goose now.” Bosses pulled the plug on the long-running daytime series following the death of studio guest Steve Dymond, who took his own life one week after filming an episode.
Now Kyle, 59, has given Kate Garraway his first ever TV interview, recorded just a few weeks after he was “exonerated” by an inquest in September over causing Dymond’s suicide. At one point, he tells Kate he accepts the show had to take responsibility for what happened. “I understand entirely that The Kyle Show had to fall on its sword because of that,” he says.
But he also explains the programme was of its time, suggesting it was nearing the end of its natural lifespan after 17 series and 3,320 episodes. “It was a juggernaut. You’d look now and go ‘it’s a bygone era’. We launched in 2005, just before the advent of social media and I think that changed everything.
Kate finds out all about Jeremy’s three marriages, his career and how he once thought he was going to die(Image: ITV)
“People watched to make themselves feel better about their own lives but the world has changed dramatically – you can’t say boo to a goose now, can you? So understandably shows like that have gone by the by.” And Kyle adds: “I’m immensely proud of the 17 series, of taking it to America and the people that we genuinely helped. Fifteen years is a long time.”
Recording a show in May 2019, a tearful Dymond failed a lie detector test which aimed to prove he was not cheating on his partner Jane Callaghan. The 63-year-old was found dead seven days later, having overdosed on morphine. In footage from the show, which never aired on ITV but which was played at the inquest, Kyle told him to “be a man and grow a pair of balls”. He’d also branded Dymond, who had a history of mental illness and suicide attempts, a “serial liar” and said he “would not trust him with a chocolate button”.
But in September it was ruled there was no “clear link” between Dymond’s suicide and his appearance on The Jeremy Kyle show, with the coroner recording that he’d died from the combined effects of an overdose and a heart condition. “Steve Dymond’s participation in the show is one of a number of factors, and whilst it is possible that the manner of his experience added to his distress, it is not probable,” the ruling stated. At the time, Steve’s son Carl Woolley made it clear he still held Kyle directly responsible for his father’s death: “Anyone watching the clips of the show can see that he was in tears and was spoken to in the most brutal way by Jeremy Kyle,” he said in a statement. “The only good thing that came of my father’s death, is the Jeremy Kyle Show is cancelled.”
Steve Dymond died after failing a lie detector test on the show which he’d hoped would prove he wasn’t cheating(Image: ITV)
After the ruling Kyle insisted he was “exonerated” and that his name had “finally been cleared” after he’d remained “steadfastly silent in the face of lies, false accusations and unfair criticism over the last five and a half years”. Now, suggesting the public scrutiny took a huge toll on him and his family after the show was taken off air, Jeremy sighs to Kate: “You can be the king of the castle one day and the next day you’re not allowed in the castle grounds.”
Tripping up as he makes his way to the stage – and laughing that he is “clumsy, idiotic, OCD” – Jeremy says he is extremely happy to be opening up about his whole life to old friend Kate. “It’s great to be back. ITV have been really supportive over the past five years and with you – we go back a long way. So, it’s perfect.”
Speaking to the Good Morning Britain favourite, Jeremy also reveals that when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which required chemotherapy and surgery back in 2012, he did at one point fear for his own life. “I remember waking up to this amazing nurse who stayed with me all night and held my hand – it was terrifying,” he tells her. “I thought I was dead that night, I thought I was dead.”
Kate says Jeremy has a “strong fringe” as a schoolboy, which she admires
Kate, 57, takes the father-of-six back to his childhood, where he had a strict upbringing with his parents Nanette, who worked for Coutts bank, and father Patrick, an accountant whose clients included the late Queen Mother. Born in 1965 in Reading, Berks, Jeremy and his elder brother Nick were sent to the town’s posh Blue Coat School. He says: “They worked hard and grafted and they decided to spend 60% of their income sending us to private school which I really respected. They gave us a good upbringing.”
Despite this, he hated his school days. Third wife Vicky Burton tells the cameras: “He was never very good at any contact sports and he always says at school he didn’t really have any friends.” Admitting this is true, Jeremy says it helped set him up for his later career. “I hated it. I was the shyest boy in the school. They called me Kyle Pile Haemorrhoid. That was my nickname.
“Then there was a seminal moment when I was 15 – I worked out that if you became the loudest in the class and took the mickey out of the people who were taking it out of you, you’d be all right. And that’s what I did. It was a mask really.” At 16, he discovered he felt very at home in the bookies having developed a love of horse-racing thanks, in part, to spending time at Clarence House with the royals as a youngster. He found he was good at talking to people, who would open up to him whether he wanted them to or not, and he also developed a love of betting, once winning £5k from a £5 bet after picking the top three horses in the Grand National.
A teenageJeremy is seen here with his parents Patrick and Nanette, who spent 60% of their income sending their sons to private school
After that he embarked on a career as a city trader, which lasted just six weeks as he was “useless”, and then as a recruitment consultant, which went far better. “You learn what your strengths and your skills are and and for me, it was really obvious it was about people,” he says.
The gambling though, did get out of hand, being one of the factors which ended his first marriage to Kirsty Rowley. “There was a few months where work wasn’t great, the marriage wasn’t great and I ended up in debt,” he says. “I owed 10 grand and ended up paying 13 grand back. I was really hacked off. That is the last and only time time in my life that I ever got into a position like that. After that I focused. I think that’s one of the greatest life lessons I’ve had really, if I’m honest.”
Having had daughter Harriet, now 35, with Kirsty, he later married Carla Germaine and had three more children, then went on to have another two with third wife Vicky, with the youngest now aged just one. His break in broadcasting came after selling radio advertising spots led to him trying out as a DJ and landing a late night talk show, moving to BRMB in Birmingham where his Late and Live Show would eventually become Jezza’s Confessions.
Despite appreciating his upbringing, Jeremy says he “hated” school and didn’t have any friends, preferring to spend his time in betting shops
He says to encourage people to open up he had to give listeners a bit of himself too. “How are you going to get people to respond to you unless you are open and honest with them about everything? I loved the fact that people would open up. I’m not an expert, I’m just a bloke off the street that they wanted to talk to. And I really respected that fact that people wanted to come on.”
Thinking back now, he reckons it was his father who most influenced his tough broadcasting persona. “I was taught by the old man that you have to tell people the truth and then you have to get on with it – and that probably shaped a lot of me,” he muses. “Some people would say ‘is that sympathetic?’ But I always felt, if you’ve got an issue, people can mollycoddle you or they can tell you how it is. And interestingly, tough love, hard love – the truth – that, for many people, is the right way to go.”
Life Stories: Jeremy Kyle, Tuesday, April 1, 9pm, ITV1.
