Feckless fathers, wife-beaters, the clinically depressed, junkies... come on down, it’s the Jeremy Kyle Show. ITV1’s daytime show is an explosive spectacle of anger, vitriol and confrontation. Its makers say it’s cathartic - its critics liken it to ‘bear-baiting’. But what is the truth? The Observer managed to get into the filming of one show and subsequently tracked down the participants and their relatives to find out what lies behind some of the most upsetting scenes on TV

How to describe The Jeremy Kyle Show to someone who's never seen The Jeremy Kyle Show? It's ITV daytime's flagship chat show, watched by more than 1.5 million people, and it's a vaguely familiar, Anglicised version of America's The Jerry Springer Show. Every weekday morning, at 9.25am, and repeated endlessly on ITV2, one guest has it out with another guest.

And what guests. All human life is here: cheating husbands, delinquent children, tearaway teens, feckless fathers, the long-term unemployed, the clinically depressed, wife-beaters, husband-beaters, child-beaters, victims of abuse, perpetrators of abuse, alcoholics, junkies, the sexually insecure, the sexually confused, the sexually polymorphous.

In the three years since it's been on air, the show has seen it all. And a whole lot more besides. One of the most popular clips on YouTube involves a woman who, by her own admission, beats her husband with kitchen implements. What she disputes is his claim that she was caught on CCTV having sex with two men around the back of a petrol station.

The show's antecedents are in The Jerry Springer Show, then, and the home-grown version of Oprah, Trisha, which was previously on ITV, and is now on Five. Except The Jeremy Kyle Show has one crucial difference: it's hosted by Jeremy Kyle. In three years he's become such a huge television presence that it seems impossible that for the first 10 years of his career he wasn't even in broadcasting: he was a sales rep, his break coming in 1995 at Orchard FM before he hit his stride with a 'confessions' show on Birmingham's BRMB. It's also where he met his second wife, Carla Germaine - briefly famous for having won the station's 'Two Strangers and A Wedding', in which she married (and divorced three months later) a total stranger. This month he returns to his roots with a new show on TalkSport Radio.

Kyle's masterstroke is that he's not simply a presenter, or in Springer's case, a ringmaster: he takes sides. He decides who is right and who is wrong. And then he gives his guests the wisdom of his opinions. Whether they want it or not.

What sort of opinions? How about, 'Stand up and be a man!' 'Heard of contraception? Put something on the end of it!' 'Call yourself a mother? You're a disgrace, love.' 'Who pays for your beer? You do? No, you don't! I pay for your beer! Me and every other taxpayer.' Some of his opinions are so well-worn they're almost catchphrases. Nor is he ever afraid to invoke his own example, his former gambling habit, his ex-junkie brother, his family.

'When I was on the radio, I used to drive through the night to see my daughter, so don't give me that!' 'Nobody taught me how to be a parent, you just get on with it!' 'Shut up! It's my name on the stage, not yours!' 'Get a job! Get off your backside and get a job!' And the most oft-repeated of them all: 'And now for those all-important DNA test results.'

The DNA test, or as Kyle invariably puts it, the 'all-important DNA test results', are the crux of his most popular shows, followed closely by the all-important lie-detector results. And that's what I've been promised. I've been on a waiting list for tickets to watch the filming of the show, up at the Granada studios in Manchester, for months. It seems unlikely I'll ever get them: someone in TV tells me the researchers routinely screen for journalists. And then I get the call. Would I like to see the Christmas DVD special - Jeremy Kyle... Live! In Your Street being filmed on location in the London area?

I would, and so it is that I find myself on a bus to Hemel Hempstead with what seems a pretty average cross-section of Kyle's viewers: there's a group of girls from Catford in their late teens. They love Jeremy Kyle. Adore him. When I meet them, they come roaring up, pointing at each other, doing Kyle impressions: 'You're scum!' 'No, you're scum. Get off my stage!' 'Get a job! You're scum!' Then there's a couple of post-A-level, pre-university schoolgirls from Muswell Hill, north London. Who love Kyle. Adore the show. Because 'it's so awful, isn't it?' There's two women in their forties who rebut my 'hellos' and look as if they might knife me given half the chance. And one random bloke, who works shifts, and got accidentally hooked.

We arrive at the location, and it's chaos. The filming is being done in the car park of a pub in the middle of a housing estate, and every man, woman, toddler, babe-in-arms and pitbull in the immediate vicinity has turned up to see the spectacle. And what a spectacle it is. Particularly when Jeremy Kyle strides out on the stage and promises us 'those all-important DNA test and lie-detector results'. There's a huge, expectant roar from the crowd.

I'm in a cordoned-off area in front of the stage along with the rest of my bus-mates but there's not enough of us so they bring in some locals, not all of whom are entirely sober. Behind us is a chain-link fence with more crowds, who are even noisier, and even less sober, pressed against it.

And then it starts. A young, terrified-looking 18-year-old called Jamie is led on. He left his eight-month pregnant girlfriend because he suspected she had an affair and he believes her newborn daughter might not be his. It's pretty standard Kyle fare, and Jamie has a quiet voice so it's hard for the crowd to catch it all, but then out comes the ex, Gemma. Gemma, it turns out, has no difficulties, projecting.

'This lady tells a very, very different story. Are you sure he's your baby's dad?'

'Yes. One hundred and twenty per cent sure.'

'How do you know?

'Because he's the only prick I was shagging!'

The crowd goes crazy. All around is uproar. People are shouting comments. 'Yeah, love, because no one else is going to shag you.' 'You go, girl!' 'Look at the state of you, love!' We're surrounded by stagehands and security guards but no-one tells us to shut up.

The scene - the crowds, the drinking, and the swearing and the jeering, and the sight of two people seated on what looks like a large scaffold in the middle of a pub car park in the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead - seems... well, medieval. Like the groundlings at the Globe, I think, before I realise that it's more like a witchcraft trial. Where the judge and jury is Jeremy Kyle. And where the punishment for being found guilty will be decided by the crowd.

When Jeremy brings out the all-important lie-detector results, or, as he calls it, 'the truth - fact!', to discover whether Jamie had sexual intercourse with another woman while going out with Gemma, it's the modern equivalent of the ducking stool, or at least about as scientifically accurate. (Kyle regularly claims the lie detector is 96 per cent accurate, whereas a 1997 survey of 421 psychologists estimated it to be 61 per cent. Or not much better than chance.)

Tracey, Jamie's new girlfriend, takes the stage, followed by Ann, Gemma's mother. And then Kyle asks if there's anybody there to support Jamie, and in the front row, right in front of me, is Jamie's brother, John, and his stepmother, Karen. The microphone goes to Karen.

'When I first met you, Gemma... I told you about Jamie's problems.'

'What are Jamie's problems?' asks Kyle.

'Mental health problems, OK?'

Mental health problems? I wait for the follow-up question, 'What mental health problems?' But it doesn't come. It's back to Gemma, who's calling Karen, 'a manipulative bitch', and that's it. Subject over.

Except not quite. I tap Karen on the shoulder. 'What kind of mental health problems?' I ask her. She doesn't know I'm a journalist. I'm there as a member of the public.

'Bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia.'

'But you should tell the programme makers that!'

'I have. I've been telling researchers that for two hours this morning. This is so wrong. It's just so wrong.'

It is so wrong. I cannot believe how wrong it is. I am watching a vulnerable young man being publicly humiliated on a makeshift stage in a pub car park in front of his friends and neighbours and, for those lucky enough to receive the DVD for Christmas, the nation at home.

I cannot believe I'm part of the crowd who is doing it. I cannot believe, if even a fraction of what Karen has told me is true, how the production team could possibly go ahead with the filming. Or why they didn't step in to stop it when Karen made her revelation on air.

Karen is visibly upset. Jamie is more upset. He's retreated into himself, has barely said a word for 15 minutes. He's not being confrontational enough, to Kyle's obvious chagrin:

'You've got about as much get up and go as that pair of steps, mate. What is wrong with you? Open your gob and say something. Because I don't know, and I say this every morning, but I genuinely don't know the results. But right now, looking at you, you don't look the most trustworthy, if I'm completely honest.'

When he does reveal the all-important DNA results, it's absolute mayhem:

'Right, here we go... the DNA results...she was 120 per cent sure. He found bruises on her legs, he was only 25 per cent sure. The DNA tests show that Jamie... is the child's father!'

The crowd is in uproar. Booing, jeering cheering, screaming, whistling, shouting insults.

Gemma, points her finger at Jamie and screams, 'Wanker! Wanker! Wanker!'

And so the baby girl, in years to come, will be able to watch, time and again, the moment the world found out the identity of her daddy.

A week later I head up to Hemel Hempstead to see if I can track down Jamie, Gemma and Karen. I don't have any of their surnames - Karen was led away by researchers the moment filming stopped, and since I was incognito, I couldn't stop and ask her.

Hemel is a town of some 90,000 people, and, to be honest, I don't rate my chances. In fact, it takes me a little more than two hours to find Jamie. Jamie Kosta. The 10th person I stop to ask knows exactly who Jamie is - he'd seen him during the filming of The Jeremy Kyle Show - and thinks he knows, roughly, which street he lives on. The 14th person I stop knows the exact street. And the 15th knows which house. Everybody knows Jamie. He's the one off The Jeremy Kyle Show.

What's more, it turns out Jamie is living less than 400 yards from the pub car park where it was filmed. It's his girlfriend's house, and he's minding her children and trying to fix up a motorbike, and he's friendly and bright and easy to talk to. He's nothing like the sullen, mute youth I saw onstage. I'm still on the doorstep, I haven't even told him where I'm from, when he says, 'I was totally stitched up. They told me it was going to be 15 minutes' drive from here, in an enclosed space with an invited audience. I haven't even got words for what I think of them.'

He repeats this to me, three or four times in the course of our conversation, and it's clearly the thing that bothers him. Although the logic of it isn't entirely clear.

'When I found it was only around the corner, I was not happy. It was public humiliation. I didn't want everyone knowing.'

'But if you're going on national TV... ?'

'It's not going on national TV. It's going on the DVD.'

'But still...'

'I just wanted the DNA test, that's all. I needed to know. And I didn't have the money to get it done. But it was all wrong. They done it all wrong.'

'In what way?'

'Everything that happened... it just seemed that they didn't care. They didn't care about the feelings of the people. They just wanted to do it, get it over with and be done with it. It was all, "we want it this way", and sod anyone else.'

It's television. I'd be surprised if it was any different. Jamie seems genuinely taken back, still, a week later, at the very idea.

'Your stepmum said when she was talking to Jeremy that you'd been ill in the past,' I say.

'Well, it's not the past. It will go wherever I go.'

'What will?'

'Borderline schizophrenia. And I've got bipolar disorder. So mentally I'm quite ill. Physically, I'm stable. Mentally, I ain't.'

He doesn't take medication, he says, but suffers 'extreme mood swings, paranoia, I'm very paranoid. And living in my own made-up world. It's mine. Not anyone else's.'

'Did the researchers know about that?'

'Yeah, they were told.'

'You told them or your stepmother told them?'

'I told them and my stepmother told them.'

'What was their reaction?'

'There wasn't really a reaction. I told them that I'd had it for a very long time now. And it's something that don't bother me anymore. I said to them I don't need people's sympathy. I've learned to deal with it.'

Later when I speak to Jamie's step-mum, Karen Kosta, she describes his childhood as 'traumatic', his mental condition as 'unstable', his current situation as 'extremely vulnerable' and says he's unable to cope with life the way that other people do.

Karen is a teaching assistant and, from everything she says, it's obvious she's always tried to do the right thing by Jamie, is still trying to protect him, worries over him, fears for his future, and is the key stable figure in his life so far. He spent several years in care, as a very young child he was in a residential therapeutic unit, and although he spent time in mainstream schools, most of his childhood was spent in specialist EBD schools; schools for children with severe emotional, behavioural disorders. All of this is documented. All of it, she says, she told to the researchers.

'It was so, so very wrong what they did. It was almost like ritual abuse. And I wasn't allowed to see him beforehand! They kept him from me.... Afterwards when I saw him, when I hugged him, and he was crying his eyes out, he was absolutely shattered by the experience, and I was very fearful about what he might do to himself. I turned to a producer and I said, "If anything happens to my son tonight, you will have blood on your hands."'

When this was put to ITV, a spokesman said: 'We take the welfare of our contributors very seriously and simply would not allow a guest to appear on the show if we thought their appearance would be inappropriate or unsuitable... In Jamie's case, our records show that conversations between Jamie and our production team at the initial phase of contact established Jamie's medical history. In addition, our director of aftercare, Graham Stanier, a qualified mental health nurse and psychotherapist, saw him prior to the recording, found no evidence of mental illness and deemed Jamie fit to take part.'

He also said: 'We were aware of Karen's concerns and the fact that Jamie was upset, following this recording. Our director of aftercare spent a long time with Jamie [discussing access to his daughter and his welfare concerns] and his assessment found no evidence of any risk of self-harming.'

Bizarrely, given that I'd given ITV the full details of my presence at the recording, the spokesman also said: 'The family were not misled about the location of filming. They were told it would be on an external stage near their homes with an invited audience of around 40 people. These guests had to produce identification and were processed through security checks prior to admission... It is simply not the case that Jamie appeared on stage "in front of a crowd of jeering drunk people".'

This is untrue: at no time was I asked for identification or processed through security. I was surrounded by his neighbours and I have audio recording that will prove that many of them were drunk, abusive and loud. When I return a week later, the landlady of the pub tells me it was one of the best day's takings she'd ever had.

If any of this sounds familiar it's because just over a year ago a case came to court in Manchester, in which David Staniforth was fined £300 for headbutting another guest on The Jeremy Kyle Show during a row. This wasn't the newsworthy thing, though. Rather, it was the judge Alan Berg's comments on it. Or as the headlines put it: 'Jeremy Kyle Show "human bear-baiting", says judge'.

Berg's full comments were even more damning: '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 for no more and no less than titillating members of the public who have nothing better to do with their mornings than sit and watch this show which is a human form of bear baiting which goes under the guise of entertainment.

'The people responsible for this, namely the producers, should in my opinion be in the dock with you, Mr Staniforth.'

Learndirect, the government agency which, remarkably, had sponsored the show, cancelled a £500,000-a-year deal shortly afterwards. And then earlier this year Chris Grayling, shadow secretary for work and pensions, made a speech in which he referred to 'the Jeremy Kyle generation' consisting of irresponsible, alienated and socially inadequate young men. As phrase-making goes, it was a stroke of brilliance, prompting comment articles and columns and yet more debate about the show.

When I ring Grayling, he agrees that the amount of attention it received was unusually high for a political speech. But then, he says, the show has such resonance because it is a 'snapshot' of a very real culture that exists in society today. And that the show is the only place this is portrayed in mainstream media.

'He's very apt to berate people for a lack of responsibility. But I'd rather have that, frankly, have him saying, "this is wrong", than having someone with a neutral view when you clearly have somebody who is not taking responsibility for their kids.'

It's surely why the show is so popular, too. And entertaining for that matter. Sometimes having someone tell a feckless no-good do-nothing to go and get a job is exactly what's required. And Kyle has very clear lines on a number of issues: no one should be ashamed to say they're gay, or have anybody persecute them for it; under no circumstances is violence justified; parents must take responsibility for their children; and if a man does a woman wrong, she should just go right ahead and dump him.

Aside from Conservative MPs, Kyle has had support from unlikely quarters. He found a champion in Johann Hari, the Independent columnist, for example. Hari wrote: 'Who are the villains of these shows, the people the audience find abhorrent? Men who treat women badly. Homophobes. Misogynists. Neglectful parents. Exactly the people who deserve to have an audience booing them.'

It is the blinding clarity of Kyle's moral universe that is so attractive. He separates right from wrong and comes down squarely on the side of right. Messy, complex issues are reduced to a soundbite that scrolls across the bottom of the screen: 'My husband slept with my daughter! Lie detector results' for example, or the above-mentioned YouTube favourite: 'A one-night stand caught on CCTV? Can I trust my girlfriend?'

Anybody who needs extra help is sent offstage to 'Graham'. That's Graham Stanier, the show's resident counsellor - he's a trained hypnotherapist - or as Kyle calls him, 'a genius' who is there to sort any problems which might crop up.

It's such a beautifully neat formulation that no wonder it's formed the basis of the hundreds upon hundreds of episodes so far. If only life could always be like this.

It's not, of course, and neither is The Jeremy Kyle Show. After the bear-baiting comments, Charlotte Scott, an ex-producer on the show, wrote a piece for the Guardian in which she described how the 'bear-baiting' confrontations on the show were orchestrated by the producers - by playing on the guests' 'nervous confusion' and by 'playing a Machiavellian game of "he said, she said" to ensure feelings run high'.

In fact this is the least of it, according to a former producer, who gave an even more graphic account of what goes on behind the scenes, on condition of anonymity.

'They are messing with people's very messy lives. I had guests who were absolutely distraught afterwards. Some guests are offered some form of aftercare, but none of mine ever were.'

Mental health, says the source, is the big 'grey area': 'They're very careful with the legal stuff - you can't mention who hit who if it's going to court - but if they truly screened for mental health issues, there would be no one on that show. Almost everyone who goes on it has some sort of issue. Normally they're at the very least depressed.

'The really heart-breaking thing is that these people, with massive real problems in their lives, honestly think that Jeremy Kyle is going to help them. I really I can't stress enough how callously I feel these people are treated. They don't care about the guests. They are absolutely the lowest priority.'

'Most crucially, I felt I didn't have the appropriate experience or training to deal with the issues that arose. Most of the producers are in their early twenties and they're TV people. They don't know about this stuff. We had a case of a girl who phoned in and it turned out that she had been abused... but we couldn't put it on air and that was it. There was no system of referrals in place.'

An ITV spokesman contradicts this: 'In the event that someone contacts the show with a serious problem meaning they cannot be filmed, we have extensive referral procedures to assist them. The production team also receive training from the aftercare team on how to handle such issues.'

'My biggest problem with Jeremy Kyle is that he's being so disingenuous,' says the former producer. 'He's damaging the very people that he purports to help. They could still make that show in an ethical way. It just wouldn't be as interesting.'

Jamie, in fact, was one of the lucky ones. It's been arranged that he will have four counselling sessions as aftercare. The show also helped to arrange contact sessions for him to finally meet his daughter. Was it worth it? Karen, his stepmother, doesn't think so. 'Who knows what effect it's had,' she says. 'He's an extremely vulnerable, troubled young man who's had such a difficult life. Believe me, this was the very last thing he needed.'

The greatest defence that ITV can make, and regularly does make, is that all guests are there voluntarily. It's their choice whether to appear on the show. Or not. Caveat emptor.

When I ring Phillip Hodson, a fellow and spokesman for the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, he questions how fully informed is the consent of those who go on the show.

'There are people from whom it might be difficult to get informed consent, precisely because of the nature of their challenges. And there's a natural desire to get attention, and it's flattering to be asked to go on television.

'But that's not the same thing as saying, "this is helpful to me" or that "I understand the consequences". The idea of informed consent means that it's pointed out to you how negative this could be for you. If the man you're talking about had known in advance that his drunken neighbours were going to barrack him, and that afterwards he'd be led away in tears, would he really say, "This is what I want?" The answer is no.'

When I describe to Hodson the scene that I witnessed, he says: 'Do you know that they closed Bedlam precisely on the grounds that they thought it was unfair to laugh at the patients? And that was back in 1770. These programmes - Kilroy, Trisha, Springer in the States, and now Kyle, stand or fall entirely on the quality of the research. And I think there is a place for them. But there is no place for exploitation of the vulnerable and the mentally challenged.'

He rings me back later to give me the exact quote. 'The government, in 1770, ended the practice of allowing the public to visit the Bethlehem Hospital of St Mary's in London because it "tended to disturb the tranquillity of the patients" by "making sport and diversion of the miserable in habitants". It's extraordinary in the modern world where we're so sensitive to hate crimes of all kinds that we still find the mentally ill, or the mentally challenged, a fit subject for amusement. It isn't funny.'

I found another disgruntled ex-guest: Kevin Lincoln, a wrestler from Harlow, Essex. He sends me copies of the correspondence between himself and ITV. He gave his consent to go on the show. He actually was the one who rang them - he accused his ex-girlfriend of trying to force him out of the wrestling gym where they both trained. After he signed the form in the studio though, minutes before he went on air, he discovered that the strapline - the subject heading shown underneath the guests - would say, 'Ex, get out of my life!' Only it was being addressed to him.

'It was completely the opposite of what I was told it would be. She basically accused me of being a stalker. I didn't have any idea. I was there under totally false pretences. I couldn't believe it. It was filmed on 3 April and went out in late May and I literally spent that entire time trying to get them to not broadcast it.

'I told them that my life would be ruined if it went out. In wrestling, image is everything and she'd alerted the entire wrestling community to the programme. I told them I was concerned for my personal safety. I thought someone was going to belt me. It got to the point where I said if no one else is going to be putting my life in danger, I'm going to be putting my own life in danger, if you put it out there.'

An ITV spokesman said: 'Following the recording, Kevin did claim that his life was in danger and that he might take his life if the programme was broadcast. Naturally the production team took this very seriously. He was immediately referred to the aftercare team, who concluded that he was emotionally stable and it transpired that he just did not want the programme to be broadcast. It is significant that in this conversation Kevin admitted himself that he had no suicidal thoughts.'

The show was broadcast in late May. Ofcom told Lincoln there was nothing it could do until after transmission. 'And then it was too late, the damage had been done. I can honestly say that the experience has scarred me. Both personally and professionally. I was forced out of my gym and all of my wrestling gigs were cancelled.'

In America, the worst has already happened. In 1995, a male guest, Scott Amedure, appeared on the sub-Springer programme The Jenny Jones Show and admitted to a secret crush on his (male) best friend, Jonathan Schmitz. On camera, Schmitz laughed. Off camera, three days later, he shot and killed Amedure.

In February this year, Craig Platt of Kimmel Bay, north Wales, who had previous convictions for offences including affray, found out live on the Jeremy Kyle Show through DNA testing that his baby wasn't actually his. A week later he pointed a loaded air rifle at his wife's head. He is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.

But then the show is built around creating a spectacle out of the damaged fragments of people's lives. Every morning there's a fresh dose of broken, awful, ugly, desperate lives served up for our, the viewing public's, delectation.

Bread and circuses, as Paul Moore, director of children's services at the children's charity NCH, puts it. You're either a winner of a loser. 'And Jeremy Kyle is the judge and jury. He's Caesar appealing to the baying crowds. Is that really what we want to do with people who are our most vulnerable?'

Is it? When I ask him whether he thinks ITV needs to undertake a critical self-examination, he says, 'Maybe we, the viewing public, ought to. If we had greater compassion for our fellow human beings there would be no market for this.'

I refuse to let ITV off the hook that easily. What are we waiting for? Our very own Jonathan Schmitz? It occurs to me, though, when I talk to Chris Grayling on the phone, that it's not just the fatherless young layabouts who are the Jeremy Kyle Generation. It's all of us.

Going public: How TV turned into group therapy

1970 The Phil Donahue Show debuts on US TV with taboo topics and audience participation.

1986 In Britain, Robert Kilroy-Silk MP gets his own daytime show. In America, The Oprah Winfrey Show popularises the talk show.

1987 The Geraldo Rivera Show starts, with episodes including 'Men in Lace Panties and the Women Who Love Them'.

1991 After the success of Oprah, a raft of copycat shows appear: The Jerry Springer Show, The Jenny Jones Show, The Maury Povich Show and The Montel Williams Show

1993 Ricki Lake debuts her own show in the US and by 1994 C4 is screening it. As the youngest talk show host, Lake targets a young, urban demographic.

1994 Fist-fights and nudity become the norm as The Jerry Springer Show is revamped. By 1998 it is more popular than Oprah in many US cities.

1998 ITV drops Vanessa Feltz's daytime chat show, replacing it with Trisha. Jerry Springer hits the headlines with allegations from former guests that the show's fights are staged.

1999 The Jerry Springer Show starts in the UK.

2000 Jeremy Kyle's Jezza's Confessions begins on Century FM. By 2005 Kyle is fronting The Jeremy Kyle Show at Capital.

2002 Jerry Springer the Opera is a hit at Edinburgh, going on to the National Theatre.

2004 Ricki Lake's show ends and ratings for similar shows start to decline.

2005 The Jeremy Kyle Show starts on ITV as a replacement for Trisha, which moves to Five.