How Jerry Springer became world’s most outrageous TV host and joked ‘I’ll burn in Hell’ after riotous talk show was axed
HE revolutionised talk shows, made headlines with his combative style and even inspired a controversial opera.
So it marked the end of an era when it was announced earlier today that Jerry Springer died of cancer at the age of 79.
Family confirmed the British-American star – who was born in Highgate tube station during the 1944 Blitz – died at his home in Chicago.
In his last interview, in November, the outrageous host seemed to predict his imminent departure when he joked: “I just hope Hell isn’t that hot because I burn real easy.”
The gag is typical of the dark humour of the former lawyer, who courted controversy all his life and whose Twitter profile described him as “Talk show host, ringmaster of civilization’s end.”
His eponymous talk show – which launched in 1991 and aired for 27 seasons and nearly 5,000 episodes before finally being axed in 2018 – was renowned for its onstage punch-ups, swearing and shocking stories of incest and cheating.
Outrageous TV hit
With episode titles including I Married a Horse, Stripper Sex Turned Me Straight and Stop Pimpin’ My Twin Sister, its popularity prompted rivals like Ricki Lake and Montel Williams to ‘revamp’ their own shows to boost ratings, as well as inspiring the UK’s Jeremy Kyle show.
But the show caused outrage among religious leaders and conservative viewers and, in 2000, a woman was murdered hours after the show revealed she was sleeping with her violent ex-husband behind his new wife’s back.
While Jerry defended the content as nothing more than “escapist entertainment,” he seems to have had a change of heart in his later years. Just a few months ago, he expressed regret for changing the tone of talk TV.
“I just apologise,” he told David Yontef’s Behind the Velvet Rope podcast in November. “I’m so sorry. What have I done? I’ve ruined the culture.”
The son of Jewish shoe salesman Richard Springer and bank clerk wife Margot, who fled to the UK from Poland to escape the Holocaust, Jerry was born in a London Underground station as they sheltered from German bombs.
The family moved to New York when he was five and Jerry studied politics and law before working as an aide for Robert F. Kennedy in his doomed 1968 presidential campaign.
Elected to Cincinnati city council in 1971, he resigned abruptly three years later for “very personal family considerations.”
In a shocking revelation worthy of one of his own shows, it later emerged the real reason was a probe into his use of sex workers, who he admitted he paid by personal cheque.
At the time had been married to Micki Velton for a year, who stuck by him, and daughter Katie was born in 1976. The couple divorced in 1994 after 21 years of marriage.
He bounced back to become Mayor of Cincinnati for a year, in 1977, and unsuccessfully ran for governor of Ohio, before taking a job in TV.
Originally hired as a news commentator, his life changed when he was handed his own show as a rival to the popular Phil Donahue Show – even adopting the haircut and glasses of the fellow host.
But in 1994, Jerry and new producer Richard Dominick turned the format on its head by bringing ordinary families with extraordinary stories on to the stage to slug it out.
Cheats were exposed and confronted by furious spouses, sex workers and addicts were shamed and hate groups encouraged to spout extremist views on air.
Among the more outrageous moments were an episode in which a man who lived in wedded bliss with his horse argued that he should be allowed to do anything that makes him happy, and another that saw a mother-daughter dominatrix team ride a ‘slave’ around the stage.
Other guests included a man who revealed he cut off his own “male organ” with a pair of garden shears in a twisted bid to deny it to an alleged stalker and a trans woman called Sandra, who sawed off her own legs because her “brain told her to.”
Backlash against hit
In 1998, when the show pulled in all-time high of 7million viewers and became the first talk show to beat Oprah Winfrey in the ratings, campaigners claimed fights involving five to 12 guests per day were being aired, and Chicago City Council suggested the guests should be arrested for committing acts of violence in the city.
There were also complaints that the off-duty police officers who served as security guards on the show did nothing to stop the brawls, but Jerry insisted the show “never, ever, ever glamorises violence”.
There were also claims the punch-ups were staged, which producers denied, and in a series of interviews in 2000, former guests claimed there was a “fight quota” for each episode, and that they and other guests were encouraged to brawl.
Events took a tragic turn when Nancy Campbell-Panitz was found beaten to death hours after an episode in which she featured was aired in 2000.
She was in a heated exchange with ex-husband Ralf Panitz and his new partner Eleanor on the show. The episode, entitled Secret Mistresses Confronted, saw claims that Ralf was sleeping with both women, while Eleanor accused Nancy of stalking.
Eleanor and Ralf were later convicted of Nancy’s murder and her sons attempted to sue Jerry and the producers of the show, claiming he created “a mood that led to murder.”
The case was eventually dropped.
Jerry always vehemently refuted that his show corrupted its viewers, saying: “Television does not and must not create values, it’s merely a picture of all that’s out there – the good, the bad, the ugly.”
He added: “Believe this: the politicians and companies that seek to control what each of us may watch are a far greater danger to America and our treasured freedom than any of our guests ever were or could be.”
The host found himself in the centre of a fresh row when Jerry Springer: The Opera, a British musical penned by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, hit the West End in 2003 before being screened on the BBC two years later.
The plot, which sees the star sent to hell and hosting a debate between Satan, Jesus and the Virgin Mary, was condemned as blasphemous by Christian groups and generated 55,000 complaints to Ofcom.
Religious protestors led demonstrations outside the BBC headquarters in London and the Christian Institute attempted to bring a private prosecution against the corporation, which was eventually thrown out by the High Court.
In 2005, Jerry hosted a UK version of his show and more recently, he fronted a courtroom reality show Judge Jerry, from 2019.
His most recent TV appearance was as a contestant on The Masked Singer, where he appeared as Beetle.
Throughout his career, Jerry greeted criticism and backlash with humour, telling Reuters in October 2000: “I would never watch my show. I’m not interested in it. It’s not aimed towards me. This is just a silly show.”
His favourite tongue in cheek wish for people who he met was that they “may never be on my show.”
But he never lost sight of how the show had sent him to the dizzy heights of superstardom, saying in 2011: “With all the joking I do with the show, I’m fully aware and thank God every day that my life has taken this incredible turn because of this silly show.”