Jeremy Kyle has broken his silence on the cancellation of his daytime show, following the death of a guest in 2019.
The Jeremy Kyle Show was axed in May 2019, after the suspected suicide of a guest less than a week after they failed a lie detector test while filming an episode of the show.
Speaking to The Sun, the 56-year-old said he spiralled into depression after his show was cancelled, and was abandoned by many of his famous friends.
Jeremy said: “I’m not asking for any sympathy, but being completely honest, yes, it was a very difficult time. It didn’t take long for some people I’ve known for many, many years to just disappear.”
“Some people were brilliant — Piers Morgan reached out straight away because he’s that sort of guy, and he was brilliant.”
“Kate Garraway, who is just extraordinary and has been through the most awful time herself recently, still takes time to get in touch, and I’ve helped her with her kids, too,” he explained.
“Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford were amazing, so was Rob Rinder, and Declan Donnelly.”
“But there were also lots who just never got in touch again even though we had worked together for so many years — it’s very, very telling.”
“It’s a strange situation because you don’t really want to talk to people when something like that happens, but then you’re annoyed when they don’t call too.”
Jeremy also said he’s “fair game” for criticism after he spent 14 years probing guests on screen.
“I stand by something I wrote in my book — ‘if you put yourself out there and it goes wrong, you have to face up to that’,” he said.
“I took the big salary money and all the perks. If I had wanted to swap it for a conventional nine-to-five job, I could have done.”
“So I get that people wanted to have a go at me. But it did start to feel like a massive pile-on and one I’ve never really been allowed to have my say on.”
“It was a huge issue and a big story, I understand that, and it asked a lot of questions of television productions and practices as a whole. But I became the focal point of all the criticism.
“Even MPs were taking shots at me in the House of Commons — and at the time when my anxiety disorder was at its worst.”
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