BLAMED BEFORE THE INQUEST ENDED

The Jeremy Kyle Show had been broadcast on ITV for fourteen years when Steve Dymond filmed an appearance in May 2019.

Dymond had contacted the programme hoping to prove to his partner that he had not been unfaithful. During filming, a lie-detector test indicated that he had been dishonest. The episode was never broadcast.

Seven days later, Dymond was found dead at his home in Portsmouth. Police did not treat the death as suspicious. An inquest later concluded that he had died by suicide.

ITV suspended The Jeremy Kyle Show immediately. Two days later, it cancelled the programme permanently. Its previous episodes were removed from ITV’s services and its official online presence was deleted.

Kyle’s name became inseparable from Dymond’s death. The presenter was accused publicly of humiliating vulnerable guests and contributing to the circumstances in which Dymond died. Parliamentary hearings examined reality television, while documentaries and years of coverage revisited the programme’s methods.

Kyle disappeared from broadcasting. He later said he had felt hunted and scapegoated, suffered severe anxiety and required treatment. He returned through TalkRadio in 2021 and TalkTV the following year, but the programme that had defined his career was gone.

The full inquest did not conclude until September 2024—more than five years after ITV cancelled the show.

Coroner Jason Pegg found insufficient reliable evidence that Dymond’s appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show had caused or contributed to his death. Dymond had a longstanding history of depression, self-harm and previous overdoses. The coroner concluded that attributing his death to the programme would be speculative.

The finding did not endorse every feature of The Jeremy Kyle Show. It did not rule that its treatment of guests was beyond criticism, and an inquest does not determine civil or criminal liability.

But it rejected the causal allegation that had dominated Kyle’s public reputation since 2019.

The programme was cancelled within days. The process capable of examining the evidence took five years.

By the time the coroner found no causal link, the public had been living with one for half a decade.

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