The Jeremy Kyle Show

I've never witnessed someone so desperately happy when surrounded by the misery of human suffering, the glee in his eye when someone's cheated, bullied or lied to etc is quite scary. He genuinely seems to get off on people's misery.

I recently watched a 'special' episode, and even surrounded by some remarkable and wonderful human beings he managed to make it all about him, and got lost in his own conceit.

It really does show the true fundamental problems in the UK right now.

A mix of nice and awful people on the stage, I just wish he could be a little bit nicer to the decent ones, he's gotten worse as the years have gone on, he seemed to be a little nicer when he started out.

Some of the stories are quite engaging, I've learned a few things that I was formerly unaware of, it's just him, and his ego. 3/10

I should probably be honest and say why I bothered to watch a week or so worth of episodes of the Jeremy Kyle Show. Firstly I did have it in my mind after reading Charlie Brooker gleefully ripping into some time ago; Brooker has such a way with words and his passion for what he hates is so raw that I find myself wanting to feel that strongly about something myself and check out what has riled him so much (which is probably the opposite of what he is trying to do as a critic but in fairness he is also the reason that I watch The Wire, so it all balances out). Secondly last week in the UK we had the court case of a man who assaulted another man on the show. In his remarks Judge Alan Berg referred to the show as something along the lines of being akin to "human bear-baiting" and was a "morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people". So with these glowing recommendations I thought I should at very least see it for myself.

Well, after a week or so, I cannot help that feel that the judge's comparison with bear-baiting was off the mark. I have never seen bear-baiting or a dogfight or a cockfight but I imagine when you go to one you know you are at one and that it is not being dressed up as something else or put forward as somehow being good for the animal so, bloody and cruel it may be, but at least it is honest in its aims. The same cannot be said of Jeremy Kyle's approach which doesn't even have the decency to allow the viewer to laugh at the subjects as weird chav-culture circus freak shows – hell, at least Jerry Springer kicked back and enjoyed the car crash of other people's lives. But no, Jeremy Kyle never does that because, I suspect, it would be felt as lowering the tone.

There is no real risk of this though and, while I am not saying we need more Springer shows, at least it would make the relationship between subjects, producers and viewers an honest one. As it is though, the show tends to have a couple of settings but yet all of them are just as insincere as the others, the only difference being the approach and atmosphere of the specific episode. The show does the usual stuff that Trisha and countless others cover, so we have domestic abuse, broken relationships, cheaters confronted etc bl00dy etc. It all goes the usual way but what makes it significantly meaner than Trisha is Kyle himself. Knowing we are in a sea of this rubbish, he knows he has to make a mark. So where Jerry Springer will gently mock his guests and let the audience do the "you are trash" remarks, Kyle occasionally looks like he should have a bouncer restraining him such is the strength of his verbal assaults.

He goes after these gormless people, asking leading questions that he surely already knows the answer to given he is the host of the show (he isn't told what the show is about as he waits in his dressing room). So young mothers get gently asked about their drink problem and gently get asked "do you work at the moment", until the tempo changes and Kyle goes on the attack. IMDb reviewer davideo has commented that Kyle puts him in mind of Trisha crossed with Ray Liotta but at moments in the show all I can think of is Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, brimming with menace despite having just been your friend (just waiting for the show with the title "Tell me - what's so f**king funny about me"). Kyle really does go for it and I think it is him that makes the show such a lie in its presentation. I'm not suggesting that any of this type of show does actually "help" but somehow seeing Kyle "call a spade a spade" in a harsh and judgemental way, taking the audience with him removes any possibility that this show is about help.

But yet we still have to listen to the audience politely applaud at the end as if it has been of benefit and not just about Kyle laying into people. Shockingly at times it is easy to enjoy it, but only because the majority of the guests seemed to have been reached by producers flipping over flat rocks in swamps. Any parent with a child who wants piercings or tattoos should make them watch this show; tattoos still seem cool? No, thought not. Likewise, the various stories of offspring and DNA testing would have young people gladly wearing condoms even to hold hands. Slating these people further is too easy but ask yourself what sort of people would you expect on shows with titles such as "Prove I'm the Grandmother of your son", "Has my boyfriend been sleeping with men?", "Mum & sister, stop treating our home like a brothel" and the wonderful "If I stop drinking and hitting you, will you take me back?" or "You got 3 women pregnant at the same time but today confess you're gay!". Of course this is part of the approach of the show and makes Kyle's job so much easier – it isn't hard for him to judge these people, we're all doing it. It is hard to fathom what makes them sign up for this but then I suppose in this day we are nothing if we are not on telly and the only people who matter are the famous people.

Overall this is nothing we haven't seen before but yet Kyle manages to take this formula and make it just so much more demeaning, voyeuristic, cruel and pointless. And when you look at his genre peers you have to admit that quite something.

This programme is the equivalent of the old freak shows where people used to laugh at the more unfortunate within society.

Now, not a lot of guests on TJKS are 'unfortunate'. In fact, it's plain to see their problems are mostly entirely self-inflicted. What really gets my back up though is Mr Smug himself - oh yes - put your hands together (by pain of death) for Jeremy Kyle. The most sanctimonious piece of s**t ever to grace a television screen. This man has seen and done it all and he never fails to get in the face of some poor b*st*rd who has come on either for his 15 minutes of fame or maybe a bit of help from Kyle's counsellors.

I think someone would have to be seriously damaged to air their problems on a show like this - and this programme manipulates that vulnerability to the max.

The one thing that particularly disturbs me is some of the warring young couples who come on the show to fight over paternity of their 'bay-bey'. What the hell do these poor babies have going for them with dead-heads like these as parents. Some of them look like they couldn't find their bum with both hands, let alone raise a child.

This show is a sad indictment of everything Britain has become.

It depresses me that there are seriously people out there who are naive enough to believe that this show actually helps it guests with their problems. If you go on google reviews or if you look at some of the reviews on this site, you'll see several people not only defending this now cancelled show, but people also saying that this show should be brought back because, it supposedly, helped people with their problems. Lets just go over a few things.

1. Guests were told to change their clothes and wear tracksuit outfits, just so Jeremy Kyle could further ridicule them.

2. Several guests have come out saying that they were locked in a small room for 10 hours straight, making them feel stressed and anxious.

3. The producers have told their guests to speak louder than Jeremy Kyle on the stage just to make them look worse.

4. Despite not liking it when his guests swear on his stage, Jeremy Kyle himself swears at his guests, calling them vile insults, and then suspiciously editing clips of him swearing out so he doesn't look bad.

5. There was no aftercare on the show. Former guests have come out saying they were either given just one minute of aftercare, or none at all.

So to all the people who think this show helps people with their marriage problems, drug problems, etc, how do you explain everything I have just listed out?

Jeremy Kyle is not a good person, he is not a hero, he doesn't care about his guests problems, and he has no such intention of helping them. He is a vile, deceitful, scummy human being who exploits his guests and revels in their misery, and if any of you seriously believe he helps people, then you all seriously need to get in touch with reality. This show should never come back.

Jeremy Kyle has a mouth like an outraged anus and uses it to pour scorn on the absolute dregs of society. His audience consists of the unemployed and people throwing a sickie which is ironically the type of people he hates the most.

This miserable wretch is just slightly more intelligent than the people he blasts away at. The only people he is polite to are men who are substantially larger than himself because like all bullies he is quite clearly a massive coward. That's most people because this guy is about four foot tall and has classic angry short man syndrome.

He is so pathetic he constantly informs the audience what a great dad he is (the papers disagree), how he beat his gambling addiction (the papers disagree on that too) and how he has helped his brother through whatever problem he is discussing. He probably doesn't even have a brother, I wouldn't put anything past this loser.

At the end of it all the lie detector decides on the truth, often dictating whether couples stay together or not but lie detectors aren't anything like infallible, that's why they aren't used in criminal courts. At least one in ten people therefore base life changing decisions on pure random chance and if he doesn't feel ashamed of anything else he should feel ashamed of that.

Utterly awful, I've only seen it twice but that was enough for me and both shows were nearly identical anyway so I doubt the format changes much. Rubbish television can sometimes be fun simply because it is so awful but this is soul-draining mean nonsense hosted by one of the most repulsive sanctimonious parasites ever to blight the airwaves. Watching him put his arm around 14 year old pregnant girls while calling them 'babe', 'sweetheart' and 'darling' made me feel physically sick.