THE nation's TV screens have been disinfected by the cancellation of the toxic Jeremy Kyle Show.

This appalling circus of human misery, poverty, and mental illness and its sinister ringmaster Kyle are all too typical sadly of 21st century TV "entertainment."

It is more akin to Madame Tussaud’s House of Horrors, only worse in that the “exhibits” are real human beings.

Ex-life insurance salesman Kyle has become a multi-millionaire out of his stewardship of this gruesome spectacle, modelled, like so much of modern British TV, on an American prototype - The Jerry Springer Show.

Under the Roman Empire, Christians were thrown to the lions, and gladiators fought to the death, before thousands of baying, bloodthirsty spectators at their amphitheatres.

It has been rightly described as "poverty porn."

Kyle has enriched himself by publicly airing society’s dirty laundry.

James Roberts by email