Jeremy Kyle

Early life

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

Radio career

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

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. 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.

Television career

In 2005, Kyle moved his format to ITV with a programme also entitled The Jeremy Kyle 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 effect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil. It is human bear-baiting." The judge characterised it as such "after a husband was provoked into headbutting his wife's lover in front of Kyle's 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 child later pointed an air rifle at her. Other shows Kyle is involved with include Kyle's Academy, a ten-part series for ITV daytime which first aired on 18 June 2007. 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 was the presenter of the ITV game 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.

Since 2015, Kyle has presented two series of The Kyle Files, a primetime show on ITV. In 2015, he fronted a ten-part daytime series called Jeremy Kyle's Emergency Room. The show returned for a second series in March 2016.

Since March 2016, Kyle has guest presented ITV's breakfast programme Good Morning Britain.

Writing career

Kyle writes a column for Pick Me Up, a women's weekly magazine published by IPC. In his column, titled Jeremy Kyle Says..., Kyle adopts a frank style in responding to readers' problems that at times 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.

Personal life

Kyle is a supporter of West Ham United. Kyle suffers from obsessive–compulsive disorder and has stated this in his book I'm Only Being Honest.

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." In October 2010, Kyle appeared at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. He chaired "Getting Britain Back To Work" alongside George Osborne.

In late 2012, Kyle was diagnosed with testicular cancer. 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.