'He lied... he called me a slut

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'He lied... he called me a slut. Jeremy Kyle could be a guest on his own show, ' claims first wife

Her first instinct had been to change the channel. And yet there was something about The Jeremy Kyle Show which caught Kirsty Rowley's attention.


The topic that morning was gambling and, in his inimitable way, Kyle, ITV's controversial 'agony uncle', was berating one man in the television studio for allowing a gambling habit to almost destroy his life.

"I was intrigued to hear what Jeremy was going to say about it," says Kirsty. "Normally, I just switch off. But this time, I was captivated."

As well she might be. For Kirsty is not just one of the 1.5million viewers who tune into ITV every morning to watch the show's unique, some say barbaric, form of entertainment.

Kirsty is Jeremy's first wife and mother to his 17-year-old student daughter, Harriet. It is why she found 42-year-old Kyle's sanctimonious style on this, of all of issues, hard to take.

During their 15-month marriage, the chatshow host weaved an intricate web of lies in an attempt to cover his own destructive and expensive gambling habit. According to Kirsty, he took money from her bank account without her permission or knowledge, racking up thousands of pounds in debt in order to fund his addiction.

And, for reasons Kirsty still cannot explain, Kyle also made up a series of astonishing stories about himself which destroyed her trust and ultimately ruined their relationship.

On his show, Jeremy demands his guests tell the truth, no matter how shameful or embarrassing. In his own life, however, he was a Walter Mitty character, shamelessly claiming – falsely as it turned out – that he was dying from a serious illness and bragging that he had inherited a substantial sum of money. Needless to say, the money never materialised.

Now happily remarried to an airline pilot, Kirsty, 39, has never talked publicly about her time with Kyle, preferring to forget the difficult years with her first husband, who was a simple recruitment consultant when she knew him. But it is the way he has made frequent references to her and their daughter on his show, as a way of demonstrating his moral credentials and his devotion to family life, that Kirsty finds galling and intrusive.

Yesterday, in a move some will consider bizarre given the nature of his show, Jeremy Kyle used solicitors Swan Turton to threaten to silence his wife with an injunction. Later, the threat was withdrawn.

Sitting in her elegant Wiltshire home, Kirsty seems a woman not so much bitter, but weary of her association with Kyle, whose show has been condemned by a judge as being the 'human form of bear-baiting' after a guest appeared in court for head-butting his wife's lover on air.

"If he had been a normal presenter I would have been able to carry on with my life," says Kirsty.

"Instead he talks about driving through the dark to see his daughter and the breakdown of our marriage. I wish he wouldn't bring us up. He has no right to after what he put me through.

"He seemed incapable of telling the truth about anything from the most trivial day-to-day things to more important issues. Jeremy was a gambling addict and what startles me is the hardline approach he takes with the people who appear on his show. It angers me that he can put himself in the position of, in his own words, a “TV God”.

"The man I married wouldn't have been out of place as a guest on his own show. The programme is crass and embarrassing, and for Jeremy to act like some kind of agony uncle is sheer hypocrisy.

"He is asking for trouble. He has a history of gambling and all that goes with it, the lies, the deceit. His whole life back then was a big lie. I just wish I had been able to give him one of his own lie-detector tests. It's not like he's been the victim. That was me. My marriage to him was an extremely unhappy period of my life and one which I am not allowed to forget."

The couple met in the autumn of 1988 when Jeremy, whose father was a secretary in the Royal Household, joined the Bristol recruitment agency where Kirsty was a secretary. She was 20 years old and, by her own admission, 'naive and romantic'. He was two years older and made her laugh with his Frank Spencer impressions. More importantly he also made her feel wanted and secure.

Kirsty says: "He was charismatic and charming. He has the gift of the gab and he was chivalrous, always opening doors, always thoughtful. I felt special, I felt loved. I had come out of a four-and-a-half-year relationship and was feeling quite hurt and dejected. And my parents' marriage was very stable. I always wanted to get married and have children."

Within a fortnight of meeting, Jeremy and Kirsty were an established couple. Two months after that, he proposed, at a friend's party getting down on one knee in the bathroom. She now knows he began lying early in the relationship, but at the time, she took him at face value. He was a convincing liar and she was in love with him.

She says: "He told me he had gone through a painful bust-up with his fiancee after he caught her in bed with his best friend. I believed him, who wouldn't? After we split, I found out this was a lie, and he'd been saying much the same thing about me to his next girlfriend.

"Just before we got engaged in December he told me he had a life-threatening heart condition. He even showed me a brown bottle of pills. I was completely shattered.

"I was just so shocked and felt terrible for him. I suppose it made me want to marry him all the more. I was eager for us to be together. I believed he didn't have long to live. He didn't put a timescale on it, but he said to my mother, which she recalls vividly, that he could die at any moment."

Partly out of compassion and partly because she was madly in love, Kirsty agreed they should marry.

They had a traditional white wedding at the family home in Almondsbury, a village just outside of Bristol, in July 1989, even though Kirsty's father, a wine merchant, and mother, a school secretary, were beginning to have doubts about their mysterious new son-in-law.

Kirsty recalls: "My parents were very concerned about me marrying him because it was so quick. My mum was also concerned that I'd be left a widow and there was something about him my father didn't like. He couldn't put his finger on it but he just wasn't sure. My friends didn't like him either – though only one was brave enough to tell me.

"But I was just so happy we were getting married. I didn't even think about it. It was a very happy day."

The cracks in their relationship emerged just as quickly as the romance itself had begun. On their honeymoon in the Maldives they had a row and, in the heat of the moment, Kirsty's wedding ring was thrown into the sea.

They returned home and began rowing on a fairly frequent basis. Kirsty, who had given up work to become a housewife, fell pregnant within a month of their wedding.

They rented a two-bedroom flat in Clifton, an affluent area of Bristol. It was when she was at her most vulnerable, three months into the pregnancy, that she began to have serious doubts about Jeremy after she discovered the potential source of his endless fabrications.

He was a secret gambler. He had a serious problem and, as she was to find out over the next few months, he was prepared to go to considerable lengths to fund his habit.

Kirsty says: "On his show he seems so flippant about his gambling but there was more to it than he pretends.

"I went to draw some money out of our joint building society account for some maternity clothes only to find there was nothing in there. You needed both our signatures to take money out – I still don't know to this day how he did it.

"Then I found out he'd accessed my personal account without my consent. I'd once asked Jeremy to take out some money for me – stupidly – and given him my card.

"When I contacted the bank I found out he'd run up a £4,500 overdraft. They'd been trying to get hold of me but he must have intercepted the mail.

"When I confronted him he admitted he had been gambling. He was very remorseful. He told me about the bookies and I found out later he was on the gambling phone lines."

Then Kyle pulled an astonishing stunt which would be farcical were it not so cruel.

During one argument, he broke down, telling his young wife: "It's bad news, I've seen a doctor today. I haven't got long to live."

"He closed his eyes," she says, "And looked pained as he told me. Well obviously he wasn't dying, was he?"

Deception became a fact of life in the marriage, with Kirsty only discovering the full picture months or years later.

"One time, Jeremy told me he was suing our ex-boss because she hadn't paid him a large commission fee," says Kirsty.

"Years later, I bumped into her and asked if it was true that Jeremy took her to court. She said, “Absolutely not.” She said that he had run up a big phone bill on gambling lines."

By Christmas 1989 the bank was requesting repayment of the £4,500.

Kirsty's father intervened and set up a scheme so that Jeremy could repay the bank from his wages at the recruitment agency which – in fairness – he stuck to. It wasn't the only financial lie Kyle had told his wife. When they first met he claimed he had inherited £70,000 from a grandmother.

She says: "When he told my parents about it, he said he didn't know whether to spend it on a house or car, which was odd as he couldn't drive.

"And when he ran up a gambling debt, he couldn't pay it back. He certainly didn't buy a house. I never saw proof of the funds and when we needed to pay off the overdraft, the £70,000 was nowhere to be seen.

"The whole marriage had become completely bizarre," says Kirsty. "It was surreal. He lived in a fantasy world because it was better than his own life. I think, in the end, he believed his own lies. But even when he was caught out, he shrugged it off and expected me to forgive him." Which, with a new baby on the way, is precisely what she did. When Harriet was born in June 1990, Jeremy was delighted.

"He was bragging that he had the most beautiful daughter," Kirsty says. "In fairness he has stuck by Hattie and is a caring, devoted Dad. He bought her her first car, never faltered on his maintenance payments and they see each other a lot. They are very close."

Yet with Kirsty, Jeremy's behaviour became increasingly overbearing and unpredictable.

She says: "He was jealous and controlling. There was one time he wanted to wear his red golfing jumper. He pulled it out and said, “What's this? It's dirty.”

I said, “You haven't put it in the washing basket.”

He started to get aggressive and said, “What do you do all day? You are a slut!” then proceeded to cut up the jumper with a pair of scissors.

"He never raised a hand to me. It was all verbal and mental. He'd just start ranting. He told me one of my best friends was criticising me behind my back. We lost touch over it. He managed to drive wedges between me and a lot of my friends.

"On many occasions he would walk out. He would go missing for a couple of days or more. He would phone to say he was living in a car. Of course, I'd be beside myself with worry.

"He was very clever at turning things around. He would insist I had said things I knew I hadn't. He was very manipulative and I almost felt like I was losing my mind. I'd question myself all the time."

The marriage finally ended in November 1990 after yet another explosive row.

Kirsty says: "I can't even remember what it was about now but I said if you leave one more time you are never coming back. And he did leave. I don't think he went calmly. He never does anything calmly.

"I called my mother. I crumpled into a heap and burst into tears. But I also felt this overwhelming sense of relief, even with the prospect of a five-month-old daughter to look after on my own, no job and debts to pay.

"Now I don't even have the wedding video. I recorded over it by accident with an episode of Neighbours. I took that as a bit of an omen."

Jeremy and Kirsty have both since remarried – Kirsty to her childhood friend George Rowley. Jeremy, more controversially, to Carla Germaine, a woman who achieved notoriety after winning a radio competition to marry a complete stranger.

It was no great shock when the radio marriage lasted just three months, but more of a surprise when Carla married Jeremy, who was a DJ on the radio station.

Kyle started his career in radio at the age of 31. He was working in the sales department of West Country station Orchard FM when he successfully applied for an on-air post.

He worked at various local stations, landing a job on London's Capital Radio in 2004, where he came to the attention of ITV executives looking for a replacement for daytime talkshow host Trisha Goddard.

For Kirsty, life now has a normality that she never had with Jeremy. She and George celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary last week with her and George's three children.

She says: "I learned what love is with George. He's so normal, sensible. He taught me to trust again.

"I'm happy Jeremy has got over his addiction and that he's managed to find stability – for Hattie's sake, not for his.

"I could forgive the gambling, but not the continual deception. I still don't know why he did it. I think he needed people's approval. Deep down I don't believe he had a very high regard for himself.

"I don't like being malicious. I don't hate him, I almost feel sorry for him. But I just want to be allowed to move on like other people do. If I switch on the TV he's there, I'm permanently faced with it the whole time.

"I hope that by telling what really happened I can put it all behind me."