Yet we should not be too quick to take the moral high ground here. It’s all too easy to see ourselves nowadays as modern, socially conscious audiences, and to preach about how far we have come from the dark ages of this century’s first two decades, with their trashy magazines, tailgating paparazzi and unethical entertainment. But the truth is that social media has become the new tabloid talk show, and our urge to pick apart private dramas and public breakdowns is just as toxic as ever. In fact, it may be even worse: social media allows you to become an active participant, rather than just an observer sneering from your sofa.

Take Twitter/X for example, where public shaming and pile-ons give users the same sick thrill that watching Kyle’s show did. Just like the programme, X thrives on conflict, and a scroll through any spat on the platform carries all the same features you’d expect to find in a Jeremy Kyle script: nasty language, cheap insults, black-and-white stances on who is “right” and who is “wrong”, mental distress and vulnerabilities mocked or — worse — turned into a meme. The baying online crowds can be just as classist (consider the derision directed at the “four lads in jeans” photograph) and just as voyeuristic when it comes to others’ suffering (look at the true crime brigade).

Social media is also even more dangerous than reality TV because it encourages users to be vulnerable: to mine their traumas for content, to fetishise sadness, to share the intimate details of their lives in the name of mental health outreach. There is even a word for this emotional clickbait: “sadfishing”. While some users may receive sympathetic comments and reactions, many may accidentally find themselves in a hot seat that is even less regulated, and nastier, than The Jeremy Kyle Show. The medium may have changed, but our guilty pleasures have not. We should think twice before assuming that what made Jeremy Kyle so successful is a thing of the past.