From Fringe to West End to infamy, Jerry Springer: The Opera began life in early 2001 as a workshop at south London’s Battersea Arts Centre. Word-of-mouth turned it into a hit musical. As several people, including Springer himself, note in the DVD extras, the white-trash talk-show already had all the elements in place for a classical opera – love, betrayal, tragedy, redemption and a baying chorus/audience – it just needed creator Richard Thomas and co-writer Stewart Lee to shape it into a foul-mouthed crowd-pleaser, comprising chicks-with-dicks, scat-obsessed infantalists and wannabe pole-dancers.
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