But on the other it is a poignant tale of a Jewish immigrant made very good And by

But on the other, it is a poignant tale of a Jewish immigrant made very good And, by the way, he has a significant political record too. Not everyone knows that.Gerald Norman Springer was born in Hampstead on 13 February 1944. His parents, Richard and Margot, had escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, just days before Hitler invaded Poland, leaving behind other family members who later perished in Auschwitz. In the last months of the war, young Jerry and his sister lived partly away from the dangers of the London blitz in Warwickshire, not far from Stratford-on-Avon. Then, in 1949, when Jerry was not quite five, the family left for the United States. He sailed right by the words on the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your tired, your poor … the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”, which today might aptly describe the mission of his television career, and of his political aspirations.In a recent interview, Springer recalled asking his mother what the Statute of Liberty signified She replied, Ein Tag Alles – One day, everything.

And indeed, it is fair to describe his life since then as the embodiment of the American dream.The family settled in Queens, Margot worked as a bank clerk while Richard sold stuffed toys on the street. Jerry excelled at school and went to Tulane University in New Orleans and later, armed with a Bachelors Degree, to the school of law at Northwestern University in Chicago.His first stop after his studies – and his introduction to politics – was as a campaign aide to Robert Kennedy. But after the Senator’s assassination at a Los Angeles rally, Springer moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and took a job in a law office But politics soon drew him back. In 1969, aged just 23, he run for Congress from Ohio, losing, but only by a modest margin. The city establishment was shocked.For more than a decade, Springer was a political fixture in Cincinnati. He won a seat on the City Council in 1971 and became Vice Mayor until things went wrong in 1974.

He was recently married to Micki, from whom he has now been separated for several years, when he was busted for having sex with a prostitute in a massage parlour across the state line in Kentucky. He had unwisely paid with a cheque, leaving police an easy paper trail. Springer made a press conference confession and resigned his Council seat It was only a year before he was back on the Council. Then in 1977, he was elected Mayor of Cincinnati with the biggest plurality of votes ever recorded He served four years before running for Governor in 1982 But he was trounced. And so he turned to television, eventually becoming the news anchor on one of the network stations in Cincinnati, for which, over the years, he won multiple awards. It was the owners of the station who, in 1991, came up with the idea for The Jerry Springer Show.While Springer makes his living persuading ordinary people to air their dirty laundry, he has always been relatively coy about his own life, including the 1994 break-up with his wife and where, if anywhere, he has found romance since.