George Frew, the Oxford Mail's own Mr Telly, meets the man of the moment, Jerry Springer, at the Oxford Union It's only the third of March, but in Oxford at least, Springer has already sprung. Jerry Springer, that is, who sprang into the Oxford Union last night wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and red tie, and his trademark disarming grin.

Much good it did him, too. Expecting, perhaps the usual sneering, sniping remarks from the undergraduates in the ancient chamber spattered with the bleeding reputations of Nixon, OJ and Flowers - among other notable Yankee scalps - Springer might have turned up wearing body armour and been forgiven for thinking that he'd somehow been hoodwinked into addressing students from Kosovo Polytechnic.

In the end, if he was fired upon, he was only being pelted with marshmallows.

Mind you, old Jerry (I don't know and he wasn't telling) is pretty much bullet-proof these days. If you can survive the big guns of Oprah Winfrey's criticism, after all, then the aggressive world of the media has not much left to show you, unless the ratings start teaching you a salutary lesson. But you can't say that about a man like Jerry.

Especially when his controversial, confrontational talk TV show still regularly attracts an alleged 25m people a day across 50 countries. Count the ratings and then count the bucks. Who counts the cost?

Well, Jerry does, apparently. His formal address was on Contemporary Family Values in America, which naturally led us to wondering about Mr Springer's own family and sense of values.

How did this "former Mayor of Cincinnati and award-winning news anchor" see

himself on the issue, given that his press release had mentioned both of the above but nothing of his family?

While Oprah talks (and talks) about "the dangerous descent of talk TV" (while continuing to contribute to the genre), Jerry continues to rise and rise on what he prefers to think of as "the most identifiable touchstone of our current pop culture".

That'll be his show, in case you were wondering.

And in case you were wondering, Jerry's show regularly features people who are fat, nasty, adulterous and mindlessly aggressive, the sort who might be described as the rotting multi-coloured underbelly of beached whale American trailer-trash whose only ambition appears to be to show up on national television clutching their very own dirty knickers for waving purposes. Perfect student fodder, in other words. Have the people who appear on his show no shame? Would he let his own family behave like this? Are there such things as "Contemporary Family Values in America?"

"I have the stupidest show on television," he admitted straight off after a rousing reception from the finest minds in the country, who chanted "Je-reee! Je-ree! Je-ree!"

"Maybe that's unfair," he conceded. "Maybe the show is just the silliest, and if you're watching, you should get a life.

"But it has a purpose. It's saving the taxpayers a lot of money - nations don't want to take us over any more. We've started dropping vidoetapes on Iraq.

"It's a curious show. People come on and they don't get paid - and no amount of money could persuade me to do it. But maybe they do it because it's one of the few times that people pay attention to them. One week of their life in which they're certain of that. Maybe that's why they come on the show.

"Some critics say the people who appear are trash but I think that's elitism. Two or three years ago, when Princess Di was talking about adultery, bulimia and suicide on television, no one said she was trash. And these people aren't, either. They're just human beings who are upset. "And the reason God gave us remote controls is that we don't have to watch it if we don't want to."

Cue the big applause from Oxford's finest, who approached ecstasy as Jerry went on: "But that's OK. In a free society, TV reflects all elements of that society. Our show is just entertainment - if you can learn anything from it, then you're brighter than I. It's supposed to be an escape, not an influence on your life. And you won't die from it."

The crowd played their part by cheering like - well, the sort of people who regularly appear on the Jerry Springer Show. Oxford elitist? Don't be daft.

Story date: Wednesday 03 March

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.