I have a confession to make. I am not proud of myself, but perhaps if I go public it will make me feel better. After all, this is what I told hundreds of other people. You see, I was a television producer, and I worked on the Jeremy Kyle Show.

Last month, a judge in Manchester described it as a "human form of bear baiting" and said the producers should have been in the dock along with the man found guilty of attacking a fellow participant on the show. ITV brushed away the furore, painted it as an isolated incident, muttered that "violence isn't tolerated" and said that participants are provided with "ongoing support". The show provides an opportunity for people to "resolve pre-existing disputes and personal issues on neutral territory", ITV said.

When I read that, I wondered if they were talking about the same programme that I worked on. District judge Alan Berg was bang on - the Jeremy Kyle show encourages guests into unnatural, emotionally charged confrontations, lights the touchpaper and then retires to a safe and judgmental distance.

I worked for a year on various daytime shows produced by Granada TV - the Trisha show, Jerry Springer and then on the launch of Jeremy Kyle. I was at Kyle for just over a month, and I worked on five episodes; many other episodes were recorded while I was there. In my time at Granada on all three shows I saw numerous disturbing encounters. Some made it on screen in their entirety, some we could not broadcast at all. Most, however, were edited, so only the start of the encounter was used - the wild-eyed lunge that will be familiar to viewers of the show.

How does this happen? Simple. Guests are wound up like a coiled spring before the show. It is an integral part of preparations - a process, sanctioned by the show's editors, called "talking up". It starts hours before the recording of each show, with researchers and producers flitting from guest to guest, talking about the first few points they will say on air. Normally our advice would be stirring, along the lines of "go out there, stand right in his face and point at him so he listens!" Contributors are advised to shout five main points, written by the production team, to support the story of the show. They are encouraged to stand over their opponent, to make their points more effectively.

To make things even more heightened, guests are kept apart before the show. They have separate hotels, separate green rooms, and the production team take advantage of that distance, and the guest's nervous confusion - many had never been on a talk show before - by playing a machiavellian game of "he said, she said" to ensure that feelings run high. For instance, I might tell a guest about another: "You will never believe what he is planning to say about you!"

The coaching continues right up to the moment a guest walks on stage. My fellow producers and I would sit with the guests, whispering urgent instructions until the moment Kyle introduces them. This is the moment of confrontation - the "money shot". It is also the first time the guests see their hated enemy.

The whole show is designed to produce a gladiatorial-style exchange. Guests walk out of opposite entrances in the same way that Roman fighters would enter the ring in the Colosseum. For particularly controversial or confrontational subjects, producers would ramp up the music, selecting heavy metal tracks to set the tone.

Revolting as all this may be, there is nonetheless a strange morality at work: the Queensberry rules of the daytime chat show. Producers of the Jeremy Kyle Show would never put a guest on air whose story was not in some way true. They would never fake DNA results or lie detector tests. Guests never get paid: they just receive expenses, cigarettes and beer.

Unedifying though the spectacle is, ITV is right to say that, for some people at least, resolution is achieved. Some guests do indeed go home happy. Often, the more aggressive the show, the happier the guests are, cheering as they are driven home. But when unstable and weak people are used because the pressurised producers are desperate to come up with a show, real damage is done. And who talks to the people who call the show about the problems they have, if they are not selected as participants? We had a list of numbers of social services, Childline, Alcoholics Anonymous and the like, but we were not trained counsellors. Yet serious issues are often raised in these calls.

After last month's court case, ITV said the programme provides guests "the offer of counselling, mediation and support which is ongoing following their appearances". When I worked on Jeremy Kyle, aftercare was indeed given immediately after recording, but only if requested by the guest. Occasionally we would pay for a guest to have counselling at home. Kyle himself does not see them again.

A final thought for you, Jeremy Kyle, and it is tough love: face up to the fact that you peddle heartbreak and pain, you use people and their problems for your own gain. Go out and get a better job.

For ITV: admit the fact that you broadcast a show that damages people's lives. In this new age of moral responsibility on television, it is time to bring the curtain down on shows like this.

As for me, I don't know why I did it. Like many of the other producers on the show, I was young, ambitious, and pleased to be working. Looking back on my time there, I am ashamed to have worked on that show, and I am ashamed that it is still broadcast. Don't watch it, ever. Not even if you're off work sick. The story you see being played out on the television screen comes at a price.



· Charlotte Scott started as a producer on Trisha in September 2004, before moving to Jerry Springer and finally the Jeremy Kyle show, which she left in August 2005. She now works in the film industry.



Response from ITV



Dianne Nelmes, Director of Daytime and Lifestyle, ITV Productions:

"Much of the reporting on The Jeremy Kyle programme has been inaccurate and based on the patronising assumption that people who appear on it are cynically goaded into aggressive confrontation.

"In fact, they are real people dealing with real problems. Yes, they row on air, but it should be remembered that Kyle is a talk show. Everything that is said in the show, all the extensive compliance training we give our production teams and all the discussions we have with guests, centres on encouraging dialogue and achieving resolution.

"I'm not pretending the Jeremy Kyle Show is a public service, but equally I will not allow the advice and support offered to every single guest to be dismissed as a hollow or glib gesture. It is proper, professional help, funded by the programme, which has really and undeniably helped hundreds of people.

"The writer has no direct knowledge of the way the show operates now, nor is her account of how it operated then remotely accurate. Then - as now - counselling and aftercare was available for all guests. We take the safety and wellbeing of studio guests extremely seriously. No violence is ever shown in the programme, and producers do not encourage or provoke violence. In fact incidents like the one recently reported are very rare, and when physical aggression is shown, security staff intervene as quickly as possible. We do not seek to "wind up" guests. Guided by the programme's qualified psychotherapist and director of aftercare, the production team's priority is to make guests feel comfortable telling their stories in a way that gives them the best chance of achieving resolution. There can be hours of discussion with guests before they go on air to help them focus on the issue they want to address.

"Strict procedures are in place ensuring that the ability of all guests to cope with appearing on the programme is assessed beforehand by the psychotherapist. Systems are also in place to ensure people who contact us but are not invited to appear are given advice, in some cases directly from our psychotherapist, or referred to where they can get help, or we will contact an appropriate authority for them."