Jerry Springer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2009

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the talk show host Jerry Springer. His life has been split between serving the public and outraging them. His first career was in politics where, as a life-long Democrat, one of his early jobs was working with Bobby Kennedy. Then he found global fame with his controversial TV programme, The Jerry Springer Show. He says that in politics and in his TV show, he is always on the side of the powerless and disenfranchised. It's a philosophy, he says, he learned from his parents. They were among the last Jews to escape from Berlin in August 1939 and their memories and fears of that time shaped the entire family.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler Book: Photo album of family & friends Alternative to Bible: Torah Luxury: A cheeseburger machine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2009. My cast away this week is the talk show host Jerry Springer. His career has been split between serving the public
0:35.6	and outraging them. He started out as a civil rights campaigner. Then he worked for Bobby Kennedy,
0:41.7	and after standing for office himself ended up mayor of
0:44.4	Cincinnati but it seems the inner showman was always itching to get out. He was still
0:49.9	an office when he stepped into a circus ring to fight a bear live on TV.
0:55.4	Since then of course the Jerry Springer show has made him famous around the world.
0:59.3	A huge success, it's been shown in 50 countries, but it has countless critics, people who say
1:05.0	it's exploitative, showcases aggression and appeals to the lowest common denominator.
1:09.5	I'm hired to do a show about dysfunction, he says.
1:13.0	Our show is about either outrageous people or outrageous situations.
1:17.5	But what is the difference between you and the people on my show?
1:21.0	You dress better, you're richer, you had a better education. In the genetic
1:25.7	lottery you had better parents. It was, he says, luck. It's fascinating, Jerry Springer, that your life
1:32.3	should part into these two apparently quite separate strands.
1:37.0	Does it sit comfortably with you? Are you surprised at your own journey?
1:40.0	Well, I'm surprised at success because I believe it is luck. As a kid, I wasn't thinking,
1:47.8	gee, one day I'm going to be in show business and never even dawned on me.
1:51.5	Virtually every job I've ever had has been handed to me. Someone just said, hey, we'd like you to do this. I mean, all these jobs I've had, I never sat down and said, gee, I would like to do that it just happens.
2:04.6	Quite a CV I'm wondering what the young idealistic guy working for Bobby Kennedy would
2:10.2	think if he was looking at this man now and this career.
	...

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