Jeremy Kyle and shows like it demonised working class

In 2019, Steve Dymond appeared on The Jeremy Kyle Show, taking a lie detector test to prove to his ex-fiancee Jane Callaghan that he had not cheated on her. A week later, the 63-year-old was found dead at his Portsmouth home.

- EMMA CLARKE

Following the full inquest into his death, which was attended by 59-year-old Jeremy Kyle earlier this week, Hampshire coroner Jason Pegg has now ruled there was “no causal link” between the show and Dymond’s death.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the combative format of the show – in which members of the public were encouraged to air their grievances in front of a live (and very vocal) studio audience – is back under a spotlight in a way it hasn’t been since it was cancelled abruptly in 2019.

It was often a jarring and difficult watch. Since it began in 2005, there had been regular calls for the show to be axed, amid concerns about guests’ welfare and how certain situations were handled.

There’s no denying that the show was engineered to be poverty porn – to take the piss out of the less educated and less fortunate. It wasn’t about resolving family feuds or helping struggling couples through their issues – it was about exploiting them at their most vulnerable, all in the name of “good TV”.

During a Channel 4 documentary, Jeremy Kyle Show: Death on Daytime, former staff claimed they were encouraged to bait the guests and agitate them before they went on, in order to ensure the presenter could get a rise out of them.