Jeremy Kyle - TV Career

TV Career

In 2005 Kyle moved his format to ITV, with a programme also entitled The Jeremy Kyle Show. Here Kyle has reached his widest audience to date. His often aggressive manner with guests has been the source of both popularity and criticism. He is seemingly unafraid of reprisal from his guests, believing that speaking his mind is better than holding his peace. Guests sometimes take offence at Kyle's comments, one guest even attempting to throw a chair at him, whilst another threw an envelope at the back of his head, but he often justifies his criticism by claiming that he only wants to help them. Kyle recently claimed on air that his show was watched by 1.8 million viewers, a very high figure for a daytime chat show.

In September 2007, Manchester Judge Alan Berg described The Jeremy Kyle Show as trash which existed to "titillate bored members of the public with nothing better to do". He went on to say "It seems to me that the purpose of this show is to affect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil" and added that it was "human bear-baiting". The judge so characterised it "after husband was provoked into headbutting wife's lover in front of studio audience".

In February 2008, The Jeremy Kyle Show was again criticised in court after a man who found out during the recording of a show that he was not the father of his wife's baby later pointed an air rifle at her.

Other shows Kyle is involved with include Kyle's Academy, a ten-part series for ITV1 daytime which first aired on 18 June 2007. A team of experts (so-called life coaches and psychotherapists), headed by Kyle take five people and work with them over an intensive fortnight to help them on the road to a happier more fulfilled life. Kyle has also presented Half Ton Hospital, a show about morbidly obese people in the United States. In December 2009 he played himself in ITV1's comedy-drama The Fattest Man in Britain.

On 19 April 2011, Kyle began presenting a new documentary series called Military Driving School, where he visited the Defence School Of Transport in Yorkshire, following a group of new recruits as they undergo training as front line military drivers. He is the presenter of the ITV1 show High Stakes, which began on 11 October 2011. Billed as a game of "knowledge, risk, and tension," the show involves participants answering questions and stepping on the correct six squares on a grid in order to avoid trap numbers.