On stage with Jerry Springer

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 19 JANUARY 2003

HAVE YOU EVER wondered how the producers of Jerry Springer’s American show lure their guests on air? I have. Every episode features some or other variety of grinning hillbilly who has contacted the show in order to air his or her toothless atrocities, and each of those stories entails bringing into the studio some ungrinning hillbillies, the artless victims of those atrocities, who have no idea why they are there. I am not myself a hillbilly, toothed or otherwise, so I have never really understood precisely why a man would say to his wife, “Sure, honey, I’ll be a guest with you on The Jerry Springer Show. Won’t tell me what it’s about, eh? No problem. Say, why are we bringing granddad and the vacuum cleaner with us?”

Surely, I have always thought, the producers must use some other cunning strategem to lure the witless on stage. And then this week, sitting in the Green Room backstage at Jerry Springer’s South African show, drinking complimentary vodka through a straw while waiting to be called for makeup, a terrible thought occurred to me. What if their cunning strategem is to phone and say: “We would like you to be a guest on Jerry’s chat show. No, no, not that show, the other one. The respectable one.”

The thought made me wobble a little at the knees. I scoured my memory for indiscretions and the kind of harmless youthful eccentricities you pay witnesses to keep quiet about. I didn’t fancy the prospect of bounding on stage to be confronted with a Greek chorus of bad memories pointing their fingers at me while the audience hissed and checked its dictionaries to get a clearer picture of my perversions. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with smart alecs making barnyard sounds whenever I entered a room.

Jerry Springer’s Saturday Night (M-Net, Saturdays, after the movie) is Jerry Springer’s other show. Unlike his American series, it has no truck with adulterers, paedophiles, incestuous love triangles and foot fetishists. No, wait, that’s not true – rather, the adulterers, paedophiles, incestuous love triangles and foot fetishists with which it has truck don’t actually admit to it. The idea of the show is that Jerry interviews local celebrities of interest. Hands up who can spot the fatal flaw in that idea.

For some weeks now I have felt immensely sorry for Jerry Springer. Imagine flying 25 hours out of Chicago once a month to interview Heinz Winkler or Amore Vittone. No really – imagine it. Speaking to Heinz Winkler must be something like sticking your head inside an empty washing machine and murmuring phrases in Esperanto. Except after five minutes of interviewing Heinz Winkler, you would want to turn the washing machine on. With your head still inside.

Some weeks ago I watched Jerry interviewing a radio DJ named Nicole Fox. What questions can you think of to ask radio DJ Nicole Fox? Me neither. Neither could Jerry. The interview consisted of Jerry gallantly saying “You don’t have a face for radio,” and radio DJ Nicole Fox agreeing between cackles of the kind of laughter that terrified the Munchkins when they heard it swooping overhead. Sometimes she would cackle even when Jerry hadn’t said anything. “Gee,” I remember saying aloud to my bourbon, “how deep are they going to have to reach for guests? I hope there is someone leaning over that barrel with mighty long arms.”

Apparently their arms are like the tentacles of a giant squid, because last night there I was, sweating in front of the cameras, trying to remember which is my best side, or whether I even have a best side, and cursing those extra helpings of Christmas pudding. I was on screen for 10 minutes, which means three hours idling in the Green Room beforehand, hoovering up the buffet and playing “I-spy” with the other guests. My heart sank when I arrived to find Mark Banks, resplendent on the waiting-room sofa, wearing a shirt shiny and green and ornate, like a Muslim Christmas tree. You don’t want to be on the same show as Mark Banks. Mark Banks is very funny, and a funny guest makes other guests look dull. If you’re a guest, you want to avoid Mark Banks as a rabid dog avoids his water bowl. You want to be on a show with, say, Heinz Winkler or radio DJ Nicole Fox.

During an ad break, Tobie Cronjé and I stripped down and oiled up and engaged in a bout of Greco-Roman wrestling to decide who would have to go on directly after Mark Banks. Tobie was surprisingly powerful and had several painful grappling moves, but I am proud to announce that the correspondent for your quality Sunday newspaper won through. Panic lent strength to my headlock.

In the end it was all very jolly backstage, after the vodka kicked in. I met a group of pleasant young men calling themselves the Sons of Trout, who I imagine are some manner of religious cult, but very polite with it. There was a blonde woman named Wes-Lee who claimed to be some manner of singer. “So, what do you do?” we asked each other simultaneously.

The interview passed in a blur and a stammer and a hot tick-tock. I was pleased to note that there were no Tennessee mountain folk on stage accusing me of impregnating their goats or their trailer vans, but less pleased to notice the collective sigh of disappointment from the audience when I emerged. I think they had been expecting Simon Gear.

Afterwards the producers patted me kindly on the shoulders. “Never mind,” they said, “you did your best.”

After the show a member of the audience sidled up and asked me for an autograph. “Certainly,” I said, beaming graciously, taking up a pen with a flourish.

“Not yours. Jerry’s,” said the audience member. He looked at me narrowly. “What’s your name again?”