I was Jerry Springer’s ‘pimp’ and booked guests to sleep with him… new Netflix doc is a ‘whitewash’, says ex-producer

JERRY Springer’s sex scandals were just the tip of the iceberg, with the legendary host regularly hooking up with guests invited on to his TV show, one of its most infamous producers claims.

Norm Lubow – who was bizarrely hired as a staff member after appearing on the Jerry Springer Show six times himself – admits he would often hire “fake” guests that included strippers, porn stars or prostitutes he knew from his time in a band in LA.

Speaking about his time on the show for the first time ever, Norm has hit out at the new Springer Netflix documentary as a “whitewash”, saying the real story is even more jaw-dropping.

He claims Jerry knew many of the guests were fake and even more shockingly alleges he acted like a “pimp” for the chat show host, finding attractive females guests to do “double-duty” – appear on the show and then sleep with him afterwards.

Jerry was no stranger to love scandals, having admitted to paying prostitutes for sex using personal cheques in the 1970s when he was a politician in Cincinnati.

In 1998, he was also caught on camera having a threesome with a show guest – a porn star named Kendra Jade – and her stepmom in a scandal that is briefly covered in new Netflix series Jerry Springer : Fights, Camera, Action.

While the documentary paints this as a shocking one-off incident, Norm claims it was in fact standard behavior for the US telly star, who died in 2023.

He and his pal Al Bowman, a Hollywood celebrity limo driver, were hired as freelance guest bookers in 1996, before Norm was hired as a full-time producer.

“When we were first hired Jerry came out to meet us in LA and picked us up in a limo,” Norm told The Sun.

“The first thing Jerry said to us was, ‘I want to get laid, where are the hookers?’

“We were like, ‘Whoa!’ but basically we realized right away, it wasn’t just about getting guests for the show, it was about getting him laid, which of course we did.

“That just became part of our job and that’s why we were so successful and we moved up the ladder. We found him women who were happy to do double duty, come on the show and look after Jerry after filming.

“I realized right away that the most important thing was not finding guests, but finding women for Jerry.

“Luckily I knew a lot of good-looking women – strippers and things – from my days in a band in LA so that meant I quickly went from a freelance guest-finder to a full-time producer on the show.

“When I became a full-time producer, I’d bring on a good-looking guest and Jerry would go, ‘I want to meet that guest’.

“I’d go up them and say, ‘Uh, you know I’m a new producer here and it would do me a huge favour if you would go out with Jerry tonight, he thinks you’re great’, and they would – so I was like the pimp.

“It didn’t take much persuading, the girls were happy to go off with him.

“The thing with Jerry was that when he suddenly found fame he couldn’t control himself because he had always been very unpopular and kind of a geek at school.

“He couldn’t control his urges because he was finally getting attention and getting women that he never got before – he was like a kid in a candy store.

“It was just an accepted part of my job being his pimp and on the Netflix show they make out that he had this one sex scandal. No way, that was just the only time he got caught.”

Fellow producer Al corroborated Norm’s claims, telling The Sun: “Yes, we did that. And many other things as well.

“I co-produced nine shows. We forever changed how television works. We opened the floodgates for reality TV to thrive and grow.”

On a high

Norm is a hugely controversial character who appeared on several US talk shows in the 90s to talk about a religion he founded in southern California called the Religion of The Holy Herb, which attracted 1,000 members.

He would often openly light up a marijuana joint on screen, shocking audiences and getting kicked off shows.

Norman sang in a heavy metal band called Just Say Yes and even made a bid for presidency under his alter ego Reverend Bud Green.

Years later he appeared in the Nick Bloomfield documentary Kurt and Courtney in disguise where he introduced the filmmaker to El Duce, a heavy metal singer who made an unverified claim Courtney Love paid him to kill Kurt Cobain, who died by suicide. El Duce died just days later.

He also briefly represented a woman named Katie Johnson who filed lawsuits claiming she had been raped by Donald Trump – although she withdrew the lawsuits shortly afterwards.

One of the six times Norm appeared on Jerry Springer as a guest, he claimed to be a “modern day Robin Hood” who during the LA riots looted stores and gave the items he got to the poor.

On his last appearance on the show, he showed up wearing stars and stripes with two bikini-clad models in tow alongside pal Al. They said they would legalise cannabis if people were to vote him in as president and give everyone a free limo.

‘A lot of guests weren’t legit’

Shockingly, just one month after their bizarre appearance, Norm and Al were approached to work on the show as guest-finders.

“We were guests-turned-producers which nobody has ever done in the history of TV,” Norm said.

“This is how quick it happened: me and Al were on air as guests in September 1996 and then within a month we were guest-finders and within three months, producers on the show.

“The very first time they hired me as a guest-finder, they wanted me to find Hollywood street kids, drug users. They liked those kind of shows because Jerry used to have a guest named Tweaky Dave that used to go on the show and they would try to help him and stuff.

“The word ‘fake’ was never used, but producers would say ‘Find us someone who says they’re a pimp or says they’re a drug user’.

“As I put it, they wanted to eat steak but they didn’t want to know how you butchered the cow.

“But they knew a lot of these people weren’t legit – and they preferred the fake shows as they were more fun and less trouble.

I realized right away that the most important thing was not finding guests, but finding women for Jerry

Norm Lubow

“I did used to do shows with ‘real’ guests too. Because I had been a guest on the Jerry Springer show and loads of other chat shows, it meant I could relate to the guests, so I was good at it.

“As you can see from the documentary, many of the guests were looked down on and there was no real interest in their wellbeing, whereas they saw me as a friend.”

Al added: “I would monitor incoming stories from unattractive people and then find good-looking actors from LA to play those roles. There was a specific method we used to do that.

“Without me escorting the guests from LA to Chicago, the biggest rated shows during the time period when we were beating Oprah Winfrey in the ratings would have never happened.”

Tragic murder

The new documentary covers the tragic story of Nancy Campbell-Panitz, who appeared on the show with her cheating ex-husband Ralf.

After watching their episode on TV, Ralf went on to kill his former wife in a sickening murder that rocked America.

Nancy’s son expresses anger at how his mother was ambushed to be on the show and how producers and Springer himself never admitted any guilt for his mum’s murder.

Norm says it is not shocking that a murder was related to the show – and was one of the reasons he preferred to book “fake guests”.

“One time I produced a show – using real guests who who both threatened to kill each other after the show and I had to bring security guy Steve Wilkos in and say, ‘Look you need to talk to these guys, they’re talking about going home and killing each other’.

“That’s why the murder was not surprising because when you do a real story and you put these crazy people together, it doesn’t end after the show.

“Often it would inflame the situation and make things worse.

“That’s why it was advantageous to do the fake shows – you didn’t have to worry about people killing each other.”

Mexican strip club

He also recalls another time where he used “real” guests on the show – young strippers from the US who were working in clubs in Tijuana, Mexico – but things did not go to plan.

“Me and Al went down to Tijuana and found these young girls who were working as strippers,” he said.

“We had been in the music industry for years at this point, I was in bands in LA and had groupies. So we thought we had seen everything, but were shocked when we saw a man lie down and hold a one dollar bill in his mouth, then they’d come and bend down over him and pick it up with their ‘hoochie-coochie’.

“We knew that would shock Jerry’s audiences so we flew them up and tried to get them to recreate the scene in the studio but they got all embarrassed and wouldn’t do it.

“I called it ‘real people syndrome’. Some people would have the most shocking lives and talk all about it off-camera, but as soon as the camera was rolling they’d be silent because they’d get embarrassed.

“At least with the fake guests you knew they would deliver what they were told to. And it was easier because you didn’t have to deal with the aftermath.”

Doc ‘whitewash’

Speaking about the new Netflix show, Norm – who says he was asked to take part in it but declined – said: “This doc is a total whitewash of the true story of what the Jerry Springer show was all about and how much Jerry knew about how phoney it was. 

“The new doc misses out loads, they don’t talk about Jerry and his lecherous behaviour – like I say, it’s a total whitewash.

“The producer in the Netflix show Toby Yoshimura talks about getting guests from Georgia and Tennessee, calling it the ‘Springer triangle’. Well that was later on, when I worked there I got the guests from strip clubs. I got good-looking guests.

“I helped get the really good-looking strippers and people that Jerry wanted to sleep with, Jerry didn’t want to sleep with the people that Toby got.”

On a budget

Norm also said he never saw guests being put up in fancy hotels or sent limos when he booked them.

“When we were booking guests they’d fly them out on the cheapest airline where they’d give you a two-day-old turkey sandwich then put them up in a Motel 6, there was no fancy hotels,” he said.

“We gave them coupons to spend in the local diner – I called them Jerry Dollars – and they spent most of that on liquor, then get them to perform on TV.

“We were like magicians to get people to appear – I’d like to see producers on other shows do what we used to do.”

He said he often have to take guests to the dentist if they had teeth missing to get what was called a “partial” fitted, to make them look more TV-friendly.

“In the very beginning we actually gave them teeth,” he said. 

“Later on they got their teeth knocked out. What was that?!”

Fake guest expose

Norm was eventually fired as a producer in May 1998 after an expose by news show 20/20 ran an interview with some of his fake guests, who revealed they had been coached and even given a script on what to say by him.

But he claims he was “thrown under the bus” and says hiring fake guests was a widespread practice before and after he worked on the show. Other Jerry Springer guests unrelated to Norm have claimed they were scripted or paid to fight on the show over the years.

“When I first started working on Jerry, people would say ‘oh is he still on the air?’ and then within a year when I was working there full-time it changed from ‘Who cares?’, to ‘Oh my God you work for Jerry Springer!'” he said.

The word ‘fake’ was never used, but producers would say ‘Find us someone who says they’re a pimp or says they’re a drug user’

Norm Lubow

“And I do take credit for that. There were 20 shows in the final period that had beaten Oprah in the ratings while I was there and 12 of them were mine.

“Then when the whole scandal happened they threw me under the bus, making out I was the mastermind of it all, when I was like a German soldier – just doing what I was told.

“They made out they didn’t have a problem with fake guests just one rogue producer.

“They had Jerry say ‘If I have a producer doing fake shows I don’t want him in here anymore’.

“For them to blame me for fake guests is bogus because previous producers hired fake guests and then producers after me have hired fake guests – so many guests have come out and said they were fake.

“That’s why some people never mention they worked at Springer on their resume.”

Naked truth

Norm, Al and a third unnamed producer have now co-written a book about their time on the show called The Naked Truth: The Jerry Springer Show Exposed – and are currently looking for a publisher.

Norman maintains nothing could have prepared him for what he experienced working on TV.

“Honestly TV was the dirtiest business I ever worked in – some of the stories I could tell you wouldn’t even believe,” he said.

The Sun reached out to Toby Yoshimura and other former producers for comment.