Jeremy Kyle

Jeremy Kyle
Jeremy Kyle at Radio Festival 2010
Born	(1965-07-07) 7 July 1965 Reading, Berkshire, England, UK
Education	Reading Blue Coat School
Alma mater	University of Surrey
Occupation	Presenter
Years active	1996–present
Known for	The Jeremy Kyle Show
Spouse(s)	Kirsty Rowley (m. 1989–91) Carla Germaine (m. 2003)
Children	4
Parent(s)	Patrick Kyle Nan Kyle

Jeremy Kyle (born 7 July 1965)^[1] is an English radio and television presenter, best known for hosting the controversial tabloid talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show on ITV since 2005. In 2011, Kyle began hosting the American version of his eponymous show, which was cancelled after two seasons.

Early life

Kyle was born in Reading, Berkshire.^[1] His father was an accountant and personal secretary to the Queen Mother.^[2] He attended the Reading Blue Coat School, an all-boys independent school in Sonning, Berkshire.^[3] He studied History and Sociology at the University of Surrey in Guildford.^[4]

Radio career

From 1986 to 1995, Kyle worked as a life insurance salesman, recruitment consultant, and radio advertising salesman.^[3] He then became a radio presenter and after a brief stint at Orchard FM in Taunton, Somerset and Leicester Sound in Leicester, before being signed by Kent's Invicta FM in 1996. In 1997, he joined BRMB in Birmingham, presenting the shows Late & Live and Jezza's Jukebox.^[5][6]

In 2000, Kyle moved to the Century FM network, taking this format with him. The show was called Jezza's Confessions. It was broadcast between 9:00 pm and 1:00 am. He won a Sony Award for Late & Live in 2001.^[3] On 1 July 2002, he made his first broadcast on Virgin Radio, presenting Jezza's Virgin Confessions every weekday from 8pm to midnight. In mid-2003, he broadcast the show from 9pm to 1am every weekday, and in January 2004 the show went out from 10pm to 1am, Sunday to Thursday. He left Virgin Radio in June 2004. From 5 September 2004, Kyle presented the Confessions show on London's Capital FM. The new programme aired Sunday to Thursday from 10pm to 1am with live calls on relationship issues of all kinds. Capital Confessions came to an end on 22 December 2005 to make way for The Jeremy Kyle Show, a similar show which ran from January 2006 to December 2006.

In late 2007, Kyle began a new show (The Jeremy Kyle Show), broadcasting across Gcap Media's One Network, of which Orchard FM, Invicta FM and BRMB, his previous employers, are a part. The programme differed from his previous shows in that he interviewed celebrities. Kyle also began broadcasting a new programme, on Essex FM, in November 2007. Kyle joined Talksport on 21 September 2008 to present a lunchtime sports show every Sunday called The Jeremy Kyle Sunday Sports Show. As a result of Talksport's Premiership coverage on a Sunday, Kyle's show was cancelled, and he left the station.^[7]

Television career

In September 2007, Manchester Judge Alan Berg^[8] 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 effect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil. It is human bear-baiting".^[9] The judge characterised it as such "after a husband was provoked into headbutting his wife's lover in front of Kyle's studio audience".^[10]

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 child later pointed an air rifle at her.^[11] Other shows Kyle is involved with include Kyle's Academy, a ten-part series for ITV daytime which first aired on 18 June 2007.^[11] A team of experts (life coaches and psychotherapists), headed by Kyle, takes five people and works 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 ITV's comedy-drama The Fattest Man in Britain.

On 19 April 2011, Kyle began presenting a 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. In 2011, he is the presenter of the ITV show High Stakes. 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.^[12]

Starting in January 2015, Kyle presented The Kyle Files, an eight-part primetime series for ITV.^[13] He will also host daytime ITV series, The Emergency Room beginning in 2015.^[14]

Writing career

Kyle writes a column for Pick Me Up, a women's weekly magazine published by IPC.^[15] In his column, titled Jeremy Kyle Says..., Kyle adopts a frank style in responding to readers' problems that closely resembles the approach he takes on The Jeremy Kyle Show. In 2009, Kyle wrote his first book, I'm Only Being Honest, about Britain's social problems and his views on how to solve them including recounts of his past and personal life.^[16]

Personal life

Kyle met his first wife, Kirsty Rowley, in 1988, when he was a recruitment consultant in an agency in Bristol.^[17]

They became a couple within a fortnight, and were engaged within two months. They married in Almondsbury, South Gloucestershire, seven months later in July 1989. Their daughter, Harriet, was born in June 1990. The marriage ended just five months after the birth, in November 1990. His ex-wife has claimed that Kyle had carefully concealed a destructive and expensive gambling habit from her over the course of their marriage.^[17][18]

Kyle met former model Carla Germaine in 1999, while he was presenting on a BRMB radio show, and Germaine entered the controversial Two Strangers and a Wedding contest hosted by the station.^[19]

As the winner of the bride part of the contest, her prize was to marry the selected groom, Greg Cordell. Their marriage lasted only three months, after claims that Greg had an affair just days after their honeymoon, and she subsequently married Kyle in 2002.^[19][20][21] They have two daughters and a son together.

Kyle is a supporter of West Ham United.^[22] Kyle suffers from obsessive–compulsive disorder and has stated that he "licks his mobile phone to make sure it's clean" in his book I'm Only Being Honest.^[23]

Kyle has described his opinion on Broken Britain: "I think it starts with the breakdown of the family unit. Society should invest more in our kids. There should be community centres and youth clubs. And our benefits system – it's the greatest in the modern world. But there are loopholes and people taking advantage."^[2] In October 2010, Kyle appeared at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. He chaired "Getting Britain Back To Work" alongside George Osborne.^[24]

In late 2012, Kyle was diagnosed with testicular cancer.^[25] He received chemotherapy and underwent surgery to remove the affected testicle. He was given the all-clear following surgery and returned to presenting The Jeremy Kyle Show; the recording of the show had been put on hold while Kyle underwent treatment.

While filming in Magaluf, Kyle was reported to have been sprayed by pepper spray. Some reports stated that a substance was sprayed above the heads of a busy crowd which had an effect on Kyle,^[26] but a bouncer in Magaluf claimed to have deliberately sprayed Kyle with pepper spray because of Kyle's perceived role in making Magaluf look bad.^[27]

References

External links

• The Jeremy Kyle Show at itv.com
• Jeremy Kyle at the Internet Movie Database