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| Jeremy Kyle’s hypocrisy over the right to privacy deserves its own show | Jeremy Kyle’s hypocrisy over the right to privacy deserves its own show |
| (about 20 hours later) | |
| Is there a British citizen who understands the importance of silence, restraint and decorum more exquisitely than Jeremy Kyle? I am moved to ask as the human-baiting impresario and his lawyers move self-parodically into action over the matter of his separation. | Is there a British citizen who understands the importance of silence, restraint and decorum more exquisitely than Jeremy Kyle? I am moved to ask as the human-baiting impresario and his lawyers move self-parodically into action over the matter of his separation. |
| Related: Fight club: Life after the Jeremy Kyle treatment | |
| Before we go any further, I should stress that I couldn’t give a toss about Jeremy’s private life. In fact, the less I hear about it, the better – particularly if he’s the one glossing it. I still use tongs when handling the memory of his comment on a News of the World story that the then 35-year-old Jeremy had pursued a 16-year-old girl when between marriages, who claimed he had asked her to wear her school uniform, among other even grimmer details. Or, as he put it: “I’ll admit I had a fumble.” | Before we go any further, I should stress that I couldn’t give a toss about Jeremy’s private life. In fact, the less I hear about it, the better – particularly if he’s the one glossing it. I still use tongs when handling the memory of his comment on a News of the World story that the then 35-year-old Jeremy had pursued a 16-year-old girl when between marriages, who claimed he had asked her to wear her school uniform, among other even grimmer details. Or, as he put it: “I’ll admit I had a fumble.” |
| What I am fascinated by, however, is that Jeremy and his lawyers go miles further than any celeb or public figure in my memory of such things, and do not think even the fact of the separation should be reported (confusingly, considering he issued a statement on it). | What I am fascinated by, however, is that Jeremy and his lawyers go miles further than any celeb or public figure in my memory of such things, and do not think even the fact of the separation should be reported (confusingly, considering he issued a statement on it). |
| That he wished its details to remain private is perfectly justifiable – if entirely predictable in a man who makes his living goading those he presumably regards as lesser folk into airing all their dirty linen in public. | That he wished its details to remain private is perfectly justifiable – if entirely predictable in a man who makes his living goading those he presumably regards as lesser folk into airing all their dirty linen in public. |
| But declaring that even an unadorned fact should not be reported breaks new ground. Another benchmark, then, from the Zen master of shows with titles such as My Kids Are Black and Angry, I Will Only Pay For a Child That Is Mine, and I’ll Prove the Child You Abused Is Really Your Son. Whether Jeremy is the ideal individual to open up a discussion on what truly constitutes the public interest seems debatable. Perhaps the only decorous way to get to the bottom of it would be to strap him to a lie detector machine and ask: “Do you understand that you have just leapfrogged Lord Sewel in the betting for Hypocrite of the Year?” | But declaring that even an unadorned fact should not be reported breaks new ground. Another benchmark, then, from the Zen master of shows with titles such as My Kids Are Black and Angry, I Will Only Pay For a Child That Is Mine, and I’ll Prove the Child You Abused Is Really Your Son. Whether Jeremy is the ideal individual to open up a discussion on what truly constitutes the public interest seems debatable. Perhaps the only decorous way to get to the bottom of it would be to strap him to a lie detector machine and ask: “Do you understand that you have just leapfrogged Lord Sewel in the betting for Hypocrite of the Year?” |
| Thursday’s Jeremy Kyle Show featured couples fighting their way through another of his slagathons. Jeremy deems himself a private figure, according to his lawyers, but his guests and any family with the misfortune to be connected to them are classed differently. “Tara and Gareth split up after the show,” ran a typically dispassionate tweet shortly after Thursday’s credits rolled. “They remain in contact for their children.” | Thursday’s Jeremy Kyle Show featured couples fighting their way through another of his slagathons. Jeremy deems himself a private figure, according to his lawyers, but his guests and any family with the misfortune to be connected to them are classed differently. “Tara and Gareth split up after the show,” ran a typically dispassionate tweet shortly after Thursday’s credits rolled. “They remain in contact for their children.” |
| Related: How Magaluf took the moral high ground by pepper spraying Jeremy Kyle | Related: How Magaluf took the moral high ground by pepper spraying Jeremy Kyle |
| And so to the crucial matter of people’s children, those of public figures or otherwise. Jeremy is rightly concerned about the absolute right to privacy of children – but only his children, as far as I can make out. After all, many – most? – of the people prodded and provoked into rage and revelation on his programme over the years have had children back home. Such faceless minors and dependants are not required to sign consent forms – and anyway, could not possibly be expected to understand to what they are consenting. | And so to the crucial matter of people’s children, those of public figures or otherwise. Jeremy is rightly concerned about the absolute right to privacy of children – but only his children, as far as I can make out. After all, many – most? – of the people prodded and provoked into rage and revelation on his programme over the years have had children back home. Such faceless minors and dependants are not required to sign consent forms – and anyway, could not possibly be expected to understand to what they are consenting. |
| In an immensely crowded field I have always found this denial of their rights as children the most singularly repulsive aspect of Kyle’s programme. For a powerless minor, miles off screen, the episode on which either or both of their parents featured is not merely just another of Kyle’s repeatedly trumpeted 2,000-plus shows. It may have supplied ITV with 49 minutes of povsploitation telly, but surely supplies unquantifiable misery for children who had no choice in the matter. | In an immensely crowded field I have always found this denial of their rights as children the most singularly repulsive aspect of Kyle’s programme. For a powerless minor, miles off screen, the episode on which either or both of their parents featured is not merely just another of Kyle’s repeatedly trumpeted 2,000-plus shows. It may have supplied ITV with 49 minutes of povsploitation telly, but surely supplies unquantifiable misery for children who had no choice in the matter. |
| In fact, if I might just wire him up to our notional polygraph again, what does Jeremy think is more likely: that a child’s parent or parents appearing on his show will constitute a mere 49 minutes in their childhood, or that its ripples will magnify that car-crash public event enormously – grotesquely – into something that cannot fail to be formative, and endlessly repercussive in its damage? | In fact, if I might just wire him up to our notional polygraph again, what does Jeremy think is more likely: that a child’s parent or parents appearing on his show will constitute a mere 49 minutes in their childhood, or that its ripples will magnify that car-crash public event enormously – grotesquely – into something that cannot fail to be formative, and endlessly repercussive in its damage? |
| According to Jeremy, the trait he most deplores in himself is “people-pleasing”. And when asked what one thing he would bring back to public life, he replied: “common decency”. Even so, on the form book, it is too much to hope that this moment in his own personal life might be a teachable one, and cause Jeremy to ponder the common decency of his position. From this day forth, ought someone whom we now know places such a premium on privacy be content with making his living from getting others to waive the right to theirs? Ought there really be one standard for the likes of him, and quite another for the lumpen proletariat from whose anguish and failings and mess he makes his money? | According to Jeremy, the trait he most deplores in himself is “people-pleasing”. And when asked what one thing he would bring back to public life, he replied: “common decency”. Even so, on the form book, it is too much to hope that this moment in his own personal life might be a teachable one, and cause Jeremy to ponder the common decency of his position. From this day forth, ought someone whom we now know places such a premium on privacy be content with making his living from getting others to waive the right to theirs? Ought there really be one standard for the likes of him, and quite another for the lumpen proletariat from whose anguish and failings and mess he makes his money? |
| The answer would appear to be so open-and-shut as to serve as a form of morality play. I’m seeing a sort of daytime telly version of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, with Jeremy as a Joe Keller figure upon whom the horror of his own emotional profiteering is just dawning. They were all your children, Jeremy. They were all your children. | The answer would appear to be so open-and-shut as to serve as a form of morality play. I’m seeing a sort of daytime telly version of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, with Jeremy as a Joe Keller figure upon whom the horror of his own emotional profiteering is just dawning. They were all your children, Jeremy. They were all your children. |
| Like I say, on the form book, that looks like a particularly meth-assisted bit of a wishful thinking. Perhaps we might reach Jeremy more effectively by dreaming up a one-man show title for him. Something like: I Couldn’t Care Less About The Privacy of the Kids That Aren’t Mine. | Like I say, on the form book, that looks like a particularly meth-assisted bit of a wishful thinking. Perhaps we might reach Jeremy more effectively by dreaming up a one-man show title for him. Something like: I Couldn’t Care Less About The Privacy of the Kids That Aren’t Mine. |
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