JK in the USA

20th Feb 2010

Natalie Tim­mins tells us why the leg­endary Jeremy Kyle’s move to the USA looks set to be successful

TALKSHOW leg­end Jeremy Kyle has signed a deal to take his con­fronta­tional show to Amer­ica, due to air in the USA in 2011 under the ITVs Amer­i­can pro­duc­tion com­pany, Debmar-Mercury.

As the UK’s high­est per­former in the day­time rat­ings bat­tle, and after pro­duc­ing over 1000 drama and morally ques­tion­able episodes, it’s no won­der the USA – home of the deaf­en­ing Ricki Lake and the straight-talking Judge Judy – has grabbed at the chance to have the man who defines social dis­or­der every morn­ing to vamp up their day­time telly.

After five years of telling British men to put some­thing on the end of it and women that they can’t give it up and expect respect, inter­est­ing doesn’t quite do jus­tice to how it will be to watch Jeremy take on out­spo­ken Amer­i­cans when he crosses the pond next year.

Of the oppor­tu­nity, good old Jezza has said that he’s ‘look­ing for­ward to meet­ing ordi­nary Amer­i­can peo­ple and hear­ing about their extra­or­di­nary lives’ and that ‘this show isn’t about me – it is about their issues and prob­lems and how we can face them together’.

What that trans­lates to is that he can’t wait to deal with the absolutely insane issues com­ing out of Amer­ica today, and yelling about how inno­cent the chil­dren are con­tin­u­ally (although we doubt he’ll be telling peo­ple to walk through the night to visit their kids when his are a plane ride away…)

And dou­bling his pro­grammes effec­tively means dou­bling his chances of being punched in the face by an irate guest. Fab­u­lous telly in the mak­ing, I’m sure you’ll agree.

After hav­ing a judge con­demn the show as bear-baiting, it’s no won­der Jeremy is able to spread his wings and fly to Amer­ica – if scan­dal makes for enter­tain­ing tele­vi­sion, then The Jeremy Kyle Show is prac­ti­cally a three ring circus.

Let’s just hope Jeremy takes Gra­ham so that he can keep say­ing that the show is to help, and not just a way of show­ing us what not to be when we’re older.

After all, the moral of the story is: DO NOT end up on a stage at 9.25am telling the pop­u­la­tion that your baby could belong to the entire local foot­ball team.