I'm Only Being Honest [Paperback]

I work from home and often put the JK show on as background while I work. I say background but I usually end up glued to the box with an untouched pile of papers on the table. Jeremy speaks sense and gives people a well needed kick up the bum. He often refers to his 'problems' but I have no idea what these are/were so thought this book would be an insight.

I'm almost half way through and to be honest i've had enough. it's really REALLY boring and without the constraints of a director, production manager etc. JK becomes a pompous opinionated verbose windbag. Even where i'm in full agreement with him I just want him to shut up and move on. So far i'm not a lot wiser either about his personal problems either. This isn't an autobiography, it isn't a 'making of' the programme, it isn't a great read. It's a hybrid that, for me, fails on all levels.

Sorry Jeremy, you make great television but you're no writer.

I was unaware of the existence of Kyle and his dreadful freak show until about 3 years ago, when I switched on a hotel TV. Since then I have seen it a few times and I was interested enough to look up the presenter on Wikipedia, which told me, to my amusement, that we attended the same school (Reading Blue Coat School, Sonning, Berkshire), though in my case about a decade beforehand. I now read that he even, like me, sneaked into the Coral's betting shop in Caversham at age 16 on Saturday afternoons. Small world. He even achieved, he says, the lowest ever O Level result in the school's history, at 3%. Wrong, I hold that honour, having achieved 0% (I wrote nothing, the then Headmaster, Paddy Richardson telling my parents that "this was not a failure, it was a refusal to participate"...). There, however, the similarities end.

I have to say that, as a read (I do not say "work of literature") this is a pretty poor book. Appallingly confused in its layout, it brings in people and places without much or any explanation and reads more like a socio-political rant than anything resembling a book of memoirs, let alone a proper autobiography.

It is very obvious that Kyle has a lot of personal demons. He admits to being obsessive-compulsive, as well as a problem gambler etc. I felt that his venom toward the lazy (people not in actual jobs) or, rather, the lazy who receive welfare benefits, was or is an outcome of his own psychology, the wish to be always rushing around "doing" something. It is oobvious to me that Kyle has read a lot of Ameriican self-help, NLP and similar books: a couple of bits of this book read like regurgitated chunks of Anthony Robbins. He cites a lot of statistics, but in fact fails to draw any equally valid but different conclusions from them than the ones he prefers.

I took great umbrage at his idea that those of welfare should be forced to "do commnunity work". that was tried in the 1930's, with work camps for those on long-term "dole"...just as in the German Reich and also the Soviet Union under Stalin. Unemployment is fundamentally a function of the economy, NOT the person, Jeremy! Naturally there are a few (of even a lot of) idlers, but the dreadful social results he notes are mostly a result not of idleness but of impecuniosity as well as low cultural levels in society itself, a situation the Jeremy Kyle Show makes worse!

Kyle even thinks that the "genuinely disabled" should be forced to have "regular assessments" until they can return to work. What nonsense. Why should those with bad health probelsm be forced to jump through hoops, attend "interviews" and "courses" with private contractors and devil's advocates a la Shallow Dave Cameron and "Nasty Boy" Osborne (Kyle speaks, like Shallow Dave Cameron, of "Broken Britain"), just because they are poor and unwell?

Where are these jobs which Kyle's "idlers" can do, in a country where there are 400,000 vacancies, officially, yet 10 MILLION economically inactive people including 1.5 million or more officially unemployed, 2.5 million disabled or partly disabled etc. And that's not counting pensioners, at present 20 million; a situation which the "work until you drop" Cameron/Osborne policies can only make worse. I wish Kyle could be unwell and poor and see for himself how easy it is to be on the benefits system, as I have seen in one or two people I know well over the years. A lot of the book falls between Richard Littlejohn/Kelvin Mackenzie Sun-speak and a rant by the unpleasant Jewish owner of the Daily Express, whose newspapers refer to those on benefits (except child benefit, pensions etc) as "scroungers" and their benefits as "handouts".

Kyle seems to live in some manic world of his own. He says nothing of his taste in music, literature or anything else much. Ironically, in view of the fact that as an alcoholic manic-depressive and verbal bully, he would be a good Jeremy Kyle Show guest (were it not for his admitted erudition and wit) Churchill is one of the two "heroes" Kyle mentions, the other being an Indian who worked his way up to billionaire status by doing four jobs and 17 hours a day for years. That seems to be Kyle's vision of the UK "better society" he would like to see: multiracial/multicultural (he says nothing of non-white immigration), with people forced to work longer and longer hours and be whipped off welfare, so that a tiny minority can become billionaires. Sick. One of the most creative literary and economic success stories of recent years has been that of J.K. Rowling, who, while a single mother, was on welfare which (with a lot of difficulty) allowed her to write all day for months, if not years. Her books are not only huge bestsellers, but have spawned the even more successful films. Her work has resulted in employment for thousands and pleasure for millions. Under Kyle's system, J.K. Rowling would have beeen forced to take some office job and would probably never have written those original stories.

I cannot see why this book was a bestseller; and I still cannot understand why on Earth anyone would want to go onto his appalling TV show.

The first few pages were intresting but as you read it, it is all about the show and i thought it wa sgoing to be about Jeremy Kyle. The book is just his views on people that come on his show, its basically like watching the tv programme, very dissapointed.