TV show guest Steve Dymond spoke of Jeremy Kyle egging on the audience to “boo him” and was “very upset” after the show’s recording, his son told an inquest into his death.
Mr Dymond, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, is suspected to have taken his own life seven days after filming for the Jeremy Kyle Show in May 2019.
He had taken a lie detector test for the ITV show after being accused of cheating on his ex-fiancee Jane Callaghan, from Gosport.
The inquest at Winchester Coroner’s Court heard that he died at his home in Portsmouth of a combination of morphine overdose and left ventricular hypertrophy in his heart.
Mr Woolley said he phoned his father who told him that Jeremy Kyle had “egged on” the audience to “boo him”.
He said his father told him that the “lie detector had cast him as a liar, he said to me he wasn’t lying. He was telling the truth, he was not lying … and asking why it said he had lied”.
He added that his father “was very upset, saying he was being called a liar, everyone had jumped on him, (he was) not with it at all”.
When asked by counsel to the inquest Rachel Spearing who had “jumped on him”, Mr Woolley replied: “Jeremy Kyle had got the crowd to egg on, to boo at him and stuff, he was cast as the liar before he had even spoken.”
Representatives for Mr Kyle said he denies asking the audience to boo Mr Dymond.
Mr Woolley said his father had continued to be “very upset” in the following days and would call him up to six times a day.
He told the inquest: “He was OK at some points but very down.”
He added that he tried to encourage his father to continue getting after-care support from ITV.
He said: “He told me he was getting support and after-care from the show’s counsellors, I explained to him he needed to get in contact with them and keep ringing them to get the after-care that he needed.
“He told me he had rang and I said he needed to get some help – ‘Ring the show, ring the show’.”
Mr Woolley said that the last time his father tried to make contact was a missed call on his phone.
“He said he had been ‘taken for a mug’ and ‘pounced on’ by the presenter,” Mr Woolley said.
“He said he felt he ‘was thrown under a bus’.”
Mr Woolley also recorded in his statement that he was struggling to understand everything his father was saying on the phone to him “because he was crying and speaking so manically”.
Leslie Dymond, Stephen’s brother, said Stephen had “endured a terrible time” on the show in his witness statement.
“He told me he was jeered and called a failure by the presenter,” he said.
“He repeated that he had the result of a lie detector test, which he did not agree with, pushed in his face, and (was) called a traitor, with the presenter and audience all heckling him.
“Stephen told me he had been at the point of collapsing at the studio but he was still heckled.”
“He told me he had contacted the show since the filming but that he had not heard anything about help being provided,” he said.
“I was horrified to hear what had happened to Stephen and I had never heard him talk this way or be so disturbed by anything before.”
In a statement read to the inquest, Mr Dymond’s cousin Gerald Brierley said that he had written Leslie’s witness statement based on Leslie’s “raw notes”.
He also said that he had agreed with Leslie to take care of legal issues on his behalf “for which he agreed to reward me with a share of any money that he might obtain from ITV”.
The inquest heard extracts from a note which Mr Dymond left for his son, who told the hearing that he had not been in recent contact with his father before the phone call on the day of the filming.
Ms Spearing said: “In the bottom paragraph he says sorry to you, he asks you not to be mad with him and he knows that you will be but he doesn’t know what to say to you.”
She continued: “He expresses pride in you and comments upon your skills as a dad.
“He says: ‘I never ever cheated on Jane and that is what is tearing me to pieces and everyone thinks I am but I’m not a cheat. But I did tell her lies and I lied so much to Jane and that is why she didn’t believe me’.”
In a pen portrait, read aloud by counsel at the coroner’s court, Leslie described how his brother joined the RNLI when he was young, his dedication to the role and how “brave” he was.
Coroner Jason Pegg told the hearing that the purpose of the inquest was not to “apportion civil or criminal liability” to any person involved.
The hearing continues.
– The Samaritans can be contacted on 116123 or email jo@samaritans.org
