Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 2009. Just away this week is the talk show host Jerry Springer. His career has been split between serving the public and outraging them. He started out as a civil rights campaigner, then he worked for Bobby Kennedy and after standing for office himself ended up Mayor of Cincinnati. But it seems the inner showman was always

Itching to get out. He was still in office when he stepped into a circus ring to fight a bear, live on TV. Since then, of course, the Jerry Springer show has made him famous around the world. A huge success, it's been shown in 50 countries, but it has countless critics, people who say it's exploitative, showcases aggression and appeals to the lowest common denominator. 'I'm hired to do a show about dysfunction,' he says. 'Our show is about either outrageous people or outrageous situations. But what is the difference between you and the people on my show? You dress better, you're richer, you had a better education. In the genetic lottery, you had better parents. It was,' he says, 'luck.' It's fascinating, Jerry Springer, that your life should part into these two apparently quite separate strands.

Does it sit comfortably with you? Are you surprised at your own journey? - Well, I'm surprised at success because I believe it is luck. As a kid, I wasn't thinking, gee, one day I'm going to be in show business. It never even dawned on me. 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. Quite a CV. I'm wondering what the young idealistic guy working for Bobby Kennedy would think if he was looking at this man now in this career. You know, how lucky can one person get? But if I'm proud of anything, it's that I never gave up my liberalism. Every job I've had, I've always been kind of on the side of the disenfranchised, whether it was the civil rights movement, whether it was my politics, whether it was as a talk show host, it's always the little guy versus the establishment. I still hang around with the same people.

I always hung around with and my interests are still working class interests and I'm very comfortable there. I'm not saying it's morally superior to other classes, I'm just saying we're all the same and I'm very comfortable being there. Have some music. Tell me about your fresh choice today. What have we got? Well, I played the character Billy Flynn. In the musical Chicago here in the West End. This is not you singing it though? No, what you're about to hear, no. You know, my voice has been outlawed. No. But All I Care About is the song that I sing, but this is his first song. And when he first introduced, you know, All I Care About is Love, which is a little bit cynical.

First time I've ever been on stage in a play. I mean most people, at least as kids, were in plays like in high school. I never was in a play. So here I am at sixty five and they come and say, We want you to be in this musical. And obviously I'm not a professional singer or a dancer. Well I figure if they're crazy enough to ask me, I gotta have at least the guts to say yes. I'm not sure, I think they might have been drinking at the time, but they never bothered to figure out if I could sing. Everyone working on the show thought someone else had asked me to sing. So there you go, now I got the job. ♪ I don't care about expensive things ♪ *music*

♪ Set and spats don't mean a thing ♪ ♪ All I care about is love ♪ ♪ All he cares about is love ♪ - All I care about from the London cast recording of Chicago performed thereby Henry Goodman in the role of Billy Flynn, the role that you were playing in the West End. Nervous? - I was really nervous opening night. Walking down the steps as the song starts, I'm going, Oh, this is gonna be brutal. Turned out okay, nobody died, but that was scary. Right, let's talk about the Jerry Springer show then. The guests, am I right the guests phone in and say can I be on your show? We get thousands of calls a week from people who want to be on the show. Why would they do that? I'm not sure, well first of all they're fans of the show. Right. I mean that's the only way they would have.

Phone number to call. We're not in the phone book. So the only way you would know our number is by watching the show every day and they put the number on the screen. I can understand maybe that people might think, you know, I really want to be on TV and actually I think it would be good to confront my ex-husband about the fact that I'm now sleeping with his stepson or that I want to marry my horse. It's good if my neighbours know about that sort of stuff. One might wonder though that after the experience they might think maybe not so good. Maybe that wasn't the right way to deal with it. No, they have total control over what we air. Do they? Oh yeah, yeah. I mean we don't want to hurt anyone. I mean, you know. Our show is so over the top. We're not out to hurt people. There's supposed to be entertainment. We don't want to do a show and then someone feels bad about what was on it. So there are two things.

That we do. One, you can after the show say I want that part out, I want this part out. So they get control over that. Also, if they're going to be surprises, they're given a list of 21 possible surprises. They don't know which of the 21 it's going to be. But they know Of those 21 is a possibility. You say it's entertainment but an important element of the show is having the audience who very clearly have an opinion and appear to be encouraged to voice that opinion. So people are being judged for their behaviour. Sure and they're perfectly okay with it. No one who comes on the show that doesn't know what our show is about. Yeah. They're all into it for the moment. And as--

Angry as they might get at the moment getting carried away as they're telling the story, as soon as the show's over, I gotta tell you, they're like everyone else. They all wanted pictures and autographs. They all asked me, Jerry, can you hold my baby while I take this picture? They're like everybody else. Now, are there exceptions? Of course, we've had neo-Nazis on that I want nothing to do with and stuff like that. I was gonna ask you about that, the neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. You know, that's not entertainment. Those are people with vicious views that can incite all sorts of, not just ill-feeling, but violence and hatred and can perpetrate hatred. Is an entertainment show the right place for them? And didn't one of them say to you, talking about your Jewish ancestry, that revolting phrase about a relative being made into a lampshade, that's not entertainment? Well, I agree that's not entertainment, although there's a part of me that the only way we

is what I consider evil ideas, is by sunlight. It's when you keep it quiet that it grows. But I was hired to host a show. I have nothing to do with who gets on the show, what the subjects are. To know what the show is about. When I show up I'm given a card and on the card that I hold are the names of the guests but that's all. I never know what their stories are, I never know anything about them and the idea is then my reaction will be authentic. What about the the idea you have heard it

propagated many many times I'm sure that that your show and show is like it contributes to a coarsening of our culture that if people think that it's fine to be exhibitionist about the ways that they behave that are extreme and often hurt other people and are exploitative then it contributes to a general sort of yeah coarsening of our culture and of what we expect of each other. If people say that I you know I disagree it's kind of observed and it it trivializes human behavior to believe now that's the one answer and then the other answer is celebrity culture came first Ever since I've been a kid, there were magazines about these celebrities. Who's sleeping with whom? Who's doing what? Every day's headlines in the newspapers. You cannot say, We permit these stories about famous people, but you're not allowed to have it on television about poor people. That is such hypocrisy that I don't think then I give a serious answer.

Answer to it. What's your next piece of music? Oh, I want to hold your hand. After all that? Yes. No, you're a nice person. I vividly remember. It was the third week in January 1964. I'm sitting in my fraternity house studying for finals. Joel Picker, a fraternity brother of mine, came... Knocking on the door and opening before I even said, Come in. And he says, You gotta listen to this. And I vividly remember that. I said, Who is this group? What is going on here?

And it's the Beatles singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand. ♪ Oh yeah, I'll tell you something ♪ ♪ I think you'll understand ♪ ♪ When I say that something ♪ ♪ I wanna hold your hand ♪ ♪ I wanna hold your hand ♪ ♪ I wanna hold your hand ♪ Beatles and I want to hold your hand. Let's find out a little bit more about your appearance. First of all, tell me who Miss Goldberg was. I don't even know if she really exists. It may have been a name used, but that is the name of the alleged sponsor. Of my parents getting them out of Nazi Germany in 1939, in August of '39. Most of my family...

Was exterminated in the camps. And mom and dad, their families had been taken away. They didn't know where they were taken. Mom and Dad were trying desperately for about two or three years to get out of Germany, but they couldn't get visas any place. Last moment, England, Great Britain gave the visas to them. They were among the last 80 something people to get out of Germany, out of Berlin to get to London. That is because the numbers on their visas, you know, they can figure out based on the dates that there were like 80 people still to get out before September 1st of '39. And a month later, once they came to London, a month later, my mother gave birth to my sister. She or I would even be here had it not been for Great Britain letting us, you know, letting my parents in.

And you had to have a sponsor, which is the answer to your question. We have no idea who that person was. God bless her if she really existed. What is equally like? Is that there was an agency here in London that was helping Jews get out and they would put down a Jewish name as an obvious sponsor and Goldberg is a typically Jewish name. And so your parents were part that that very last slim tranche of I think it was... By 80,000 people who were allowed into the UK. Yeah, they were literally at the very end. Yeah, they just made it. You said that being a child of parents who had been subjected to what your wider family, and particularly your parents were part of, has indelibly shaped the person that you are. I wonder how. It's the fundamental part of my existence. It's my philosophy, it's made me a liberal, it's taught me as we pass on to our daughter that you never...

Judge someone based on what they are, just on what they do. - Did it somehow help you to understand more of? Who your parents were, maybe even though you'd never, well, I'm sure you'd never had those sort of discussions with them. - Yeah, very much so. There's this story which I'll try to get through, but it really makes the point. My dad was very short. He was like 5 foot 1. He's now near 80. I mean back at this time of this story. I'm going to tell you. And my mom was afraid to get in the car with him because he was so short he would look like through the steering wheel kind of driving. I came home she'd always say Gerald could you talk to Dad about that. To have him stop driving the car. So one day I finally said, Okay, Mom, I'll talk to him. And I think... Dad, you know, Mom gets nervous and you don't really need the car anymore because the truth is you hardly ever drive it. And, uh, what he said to me, which just blew me away.

At the time he said, Maybe when I 80 I'll give it up, but you never know when you have to get away. And I was stunned because my dad never talked, hardly ever talked about the Holocaust or something like this. Thinking, has he, for the 40 years that he was living in America, has he every night been thinking that he might have to get away? You know, I just, I didn't say anything. I just couldn't believe it. Should we have some music? Let's have some music. What's this? This is the Tennessee Walls, recorded among other people by Patti Page. I guess she had the big hit with it. This was back in the 1950s. We had just... To America. There was a radio in my kitchen and I would sit there and listen and what I remember the Tennessee Waltz that was one of the first songs that wow and I remember my parents loved it and we all would gather around the radio and listen to the song.

Prince stole my sweetheart from me That was Patti Page and the Tennessee Waltz. And so Jerry Springer, you arrived in America and to use your own phrase, the Americanisation of Gerald began. I was five years old, I had this thick British accent of course. You know, my mom dressed me and what... Thought boys wore at that time, which was blue shorts, a jacket, a bow tie, a beret, and knee socks. My first day to school in America and the kids beat me up and ripped my suit. And I had this British accent, you know, I just didn't fit in. So my parents really went on this campaign. You know, they would make sure that I was really Americanised. Do you think were your parents archetypal immigrants? I mean, clearly your parents... Worked very hard. They only spoke German, they had to learn English. Was patriotism an important part of that? Absolutely. Being an American? Yes, yes. It's the American dream.

You know, I go in one generation, my family went from annihilation and a Holocaust to this ridiculously privileged life I live today because of my silly television show. Know America could work. Did they talk to you about politics in a pure sense? Yes, it was very much a part of my upbringing. Every night at the... It was my mom, dad, Evelyn, my sister, Evelyn, and myself. And we each would have to Talk about one story we read in the newspaper. So the 22nd of November 1963, would you have been just finishing high school? I was 19, I was a junior in college. And do you remember hearing of JFK's assassination? I'll tell you how I heard. In college and there was a campus radio station. I had the noon to one o'clock show and behind

Behind me we had these teletype machines where if four bells rang, you knew it was a major story. And you'd go to the teletype and it would have typed out what the headline was. And the four bells ring and it's like... Over there and it says shots have been fired at the Dallas motorcade and then four bells again and the president's been shot. And there there's this little black and white television set and one of the networks, it was Walter Cronkite on CBS News, was cutting in saying the president was shot. I now go back to the radio station. I said nothing professional. I said oh my God the president shot. Turn on your television sets. But that's how I heard. Actually had to announce it. That's how I find out. Jerry, tell me about your next piece of music. Blowing in the Wind became the anthem of the 60s. It was

By Bob Dylan and then recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, I think in 1961. So that was the part of the 60s that was still pure. All things were popular. Possible. We would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. If we would cure poverty, we would create the Peace Corps.

Were going to save the world. It was a beautiful pure time. Peter, Paul and Mary and Blown in the Wind. So Jerry Springer, you were sort of gradually sucked into politics through what had happened at home, through the heritage of your parents and the relatives that had been lost in the Holocaust. You went to New Orleans because why? Was that a civil rights thing? You were fascinated by the fights that were going on down there. Yeah, and just as soon as I got down there, September 5th of 1961, that week the high school in New Orleans was integrating and they had all the troops there and

protesting so right away I was thrown into it and I got more and more involved in politics then active in the civil rights movement in the marches I became active in the anti-war movement the Or being the Vietnam War. So I go to work for Bobby Kennedy, I get offered a job with Kennedy. - What kind of a figure was he? I mean, the Kennedys were known for being these sort of-- charismatic, vigorous people. He was my in my life done my political hero. I mean, I thought he was totally authentic. He wasn't very articulate, frankly. You know, John Kennedy Intellectualize how we ought to have civil rights or how poverty in the inner city is unacceptable. With Bobby, he would just walk into the neighborhood and say it's This is wrong. And he would stutter and all that. But you kind of knew he really believed it. And that, to me, politics is authenticity. If you're real, people get it. -I want to ask you about the moment, then, that you heard of Bobby Kennedy's assassination.

Did you hear? I got a call late at night. I was in Ohio at the time it happened. It just seemed unbelievable. Almost despairingly unbelievable. The John Kennedy assassination was shocked like this could never happen in the world. With Bobby, it was, Oh, my God, they're really gunning us all down. There was just this despair. And after Bobby Kennedy was shot, many people just kind of dropped out, the young people. And that's why we had Richard Nixon elected president. Tell me about your next piece of music then. This next one is Abraham, Martin and John. This was the incredible year of 1968. In American politics it was unbelievable. February of '68 there's the Ted Offensive, where America finally realizes that we're not winning the war. Martin Luther King gets assassinated. Two months later Bobby Kennedy gets assassinated. Two months after that the riots in Chicago at the Democratic Convention.

Like every one of our heroes was being assassinated. John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy. And Dion wrote this song and it kind of became such a powerful song at the time because it said what we all felt. It was like they keep killing our heroes. And Abraham, Martin and John. So Gerry Springer you were elected to Cincinnati City Council at the... you were just 26.

Young, did you feel ready for the responsibility of a life in politics? I must have. I just moved to Cincinnati to practice law. This was after the Obama's assassination. And I was still ticked off about the war. So I decided to run in the Democratic primaries as an anti-war candidate. And that's how I got to be known. And then the next year, I was elected in a city -- election to city council. So you ended up as a city councillor at 26 which is a young age and then you'd been working at this job for four years and it was exposed in a police raid that you had been somebody who had visited a prostitute and you did a very, it must have been an incredibly unusual thing for the time, you went on TV to talk directly to the electorate. So you held a press conference. Yeah but just to get the facts right it was nothing to do with police nothing like that. Okay. I announced there was nothing.

In the newspapers, there was nothing going on. I held a press conference one day and said, I'm resigning from council. And everyone says, What are you resigning for? And I said that several years ago, I had visited a prostitute. And I was getting these phone calls. So I didn't want to live my life being blackmailed. You know, we're going to tell, we know you were the positive. So I told the public, I'm out. So I first resigned and then I held a press conference saying why I resigned. And then everyone said, Well, what did you resign for? You know, I said, Well, it was inappropriate. You're entitled to know this. And I was young, I was naive. It was wrong what I did. I probably overreacted, you know. And how did the voters react to you? Well, the next election, they over... I came in first.

Because they thought I overreacted. I don't use it as an excuse but they figured a lot of young guys have been with a prostitute and then I was re-elected, came in first and then the next election I was elected mayor of Cincinnati and that's when my career suddenly took off. Let's have some music. Tell me about the next piece of music. Here Comes the Sun as particular relevance to me because it is... The song that my wife marched down the aisle to in my wedding, in our wedding, and it is also the song that our daughter marched down the aisle to two and a half years ago and it's beautiful Here Comes the Sun which describes my wife and my daughter.

The Beatles and Here Comes the Sun, you said Jerry Springer, that was played when your wife came down the aisle and also when your daughter came down now. How did you meet your wife? blind date. It was instant. I mean I literally knew that night that this would ultimately be my wife. I know it sounds corny but it was absolutely true. I don't think she had that. That was my next question because actually that's a profoundly lovely thing to think but you're in a great deal of difficulty of the person at the other side of the dinner table doesn't it? Well she did, I don't know if she's thought how.

But there was immediate mutual attraction. Do you think you're an easy person to be married to? Ah, yes except... For my time away. Are you a romantic and idealistic? Yeah, yeah. I well up its sound of music. I mean, geezle. So there's not a lot of macho about me there, but life is luck. And I've been so lucky that I don't have any particular talent, but I've been successful in a business that no one... Would have thought that I would be successful in. - But you do have a sort of Barnum and Bailey aspect to your character. I mean, you called you, you know, the ringmaster was the name of your- - That's because of the show. You know, you got into a ring with a live bear on TV to fight it. Right. I'm pretty playful. Well, I'm pretty playful, but I wouldn't play with a live video TV. Well, here's what happened. Here's how I got trapped into that. Okay. You know, you're the mayor, and...

Every day you're getting requests for this, that, and the other. And so you get a request for charity for every minute you stay in the ring with this bear. Thousand dollars for honestly I don't even remember what the charity was but it was for charity and everyone starts laughing oh you wrestle a bear and I They said, What? And they said, Yeah, but it'll be muzzled. Go ahead. Ah, fine. Let's do it. You know. What I didn't know is they put it on the six o'clock news, so on the day that it happened... I was gonna fight the bear live! Now it's suddenly the day and now I'm getting frightened.

- Not unreasonably. - I said, What do you mean? So now you show up, you look at the bear. There's a huge crowd there. And I'm going, This is stupid. And they coach me. They say, Dance around with the bear, but just don't touch him on the nose. It's the one thing, Don't touch him on the nose. Now he's muzzled, so he can't bite you, but he can still whack you and... So I'm dancing around for the first minute like an idiot, but he's not getting me. You know because I'm just dancing around Don't it su- Good, $5,000, another minute. Whoa, now I'm starting to feel, oh, I got this, I'm gonna touch him on the nose. How bad can it be? I touch him on the nose. Where his paw came from. And there is a picture in the Cincinnati Inquirer the next morning. I am horizontal in the air, in the air. My glasses are flying.

He whacked me on the side of the head and it really hurt. I'm a grown-up, I can't start crying. Cameras are zooming in. And so I didn't get that last $5,000 but we got $10,000. You should have just written them a cheque, I guess. I should have. What's the next piece of music? Wind Beneath My Wings. This, when Katie, our daughter, became 13, she became Bach Mitzvah, which is in the Jewish religion, a bar mitzvah is when, symbolically, a young boy becomes a man. And they have bat mitzvah daughters, which are the equivalent. So we had a big party for her and I was at the time anchoring the news. And so I paid the photographers as a side job to put together this nice five minute video of Katie's life from birth through 13. And the background music was Wind Beneath My Wings.

It was just this beautiful tape and it's the last video we had of my parents and it's become this family tradition. Now at all events we show this of little Katie going from birth to that's what it was. This song. Bette Midler and Wind Beneath My Wings. So Jay you've said that that was for Katie in the film that Mitzvah.

Danced, it's called in America, Dancing with the Stars, which is a show where celebrities each week, it's a huge show here as well, strictly come dancing. But you went on it because you wanted to learn to waltz. Yeah, for Katie's wedding, I was 35 years older than any of the other contestants. Show. So you know when they originally asked I said no that's you know I don't I don't know how to dance that's not for me. And then you know ultimately my daughter convinced me to dance. Do it you learn to dance for the wedding and I'm always telling Katie to to be confident in herself so she threw it right back at me well dad give it your best That's all that counts. Okay, you win. So I went on the show and then the day of the walls. Know we had her on the show which was great. So how many millions would have watched that then? five forty million people were watching and everyone knew that story of Katie and how she overcame things and everything.

So here it was. It was a great moment. Our listeners will not know. So what you are- Katie was born with some disabilities and she's, without getting into the details, she proved everyone wrong and she's now graduated college, got married, now has a son. She's just this wonderful person, but she beat the odds and she's always overcome them. So this was just this wonderful moment now. But now it's the wedding. It's now time for the father door to dance. And of course this is the moment. Well, Katie's wearing this beautiful wedding gown and in the middle of the dance she says, Dad, they can't see our feet.

Because the gown covered our feet. So I didn't have to learn to dance anything. The whole thing was for North. We were just laughing. And what are your... I noticed in your book you said Katie for president. You know you can't probably help but have ambitions for our children. What are your... what would you love to see Katie do? Just what she's doing. She works with disabled children and she's wonderful with that. And I just wanted to be happy. That's all I want in life, you know. On the desert islands where I'm about to send you at the end of this recording, there will be no audience, there will be no spotlight, there will be no spangled shirt slashed to the waist where you can waltz in front of 44 million people. Be all alone? How will it be for Jerry Springer all alone? Oh, I'm fine all alone without the crowd. Are you? But I want my family. Can't have them? No. All alone. I can't imagine life without my family though. That would be awful. Without the crowds, where do I sign off?

Well, you are very famous and I'm wondering what you think your parents What would they make of this this incredible journey that you've had? Because while they were alive, they were very proud. So I know they'd be proud and they loved me. I was the son that, in their mind, couldn't do anything wrong. - And they told you, did you? People say, well, I just know my parents were proud. Did they tell you? Oh, no, they were always telling me, yeah. They could quell, is how they said. Gerald, I could quell. Let's have your final piece of music then. - My generation in America was Elvis Presley. So Elvis was the first superstar in terms of rock and roll. Every boy wanted to be Elvis. So when I hear love me tender it's my adolescence, my youth. ♪ Love me tender, love me true ♪ ♪ You make me true ♪ ♪ All my dreams fulfilled ♪

♪ For my darling, I love you ♪ And I always will. Elvis Presley and Love Me Tender. So, Jerry Springer, this is the point where I will give you a copy of the Torah and the complete works of Shakespeare and you can take a book of your own choosing. What will your book be? probably a photo album if I'm stuck on an island alone just a photo album Album of all the pictures of my family's life, my friends, you know, just that would be the thing as a practical matter, that would be what you'd want to look at. Okay, well, I mean, technically, it is a book and you are allowed it you're working within the rules. So your photograph album as published by you is your book to take and a luxury then to make life somehow a little more bearable. A cheeseburger machine.

I think that's fine. Not really so practical because your arteries are going to fur up, I reckon, at least after 18 months. Yeah, but if I'm alone on the beach, I don't want to live forever. And if you had to choose just one of these eight, which one track would you choose? I'd say either the Tennessee Walls or Wind Beneath My Wings. What do you reckon? All right, Wind Beneath My Wings. Jerry Springer, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you for having me. The desert island discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit BBC.co.uk/radio4