'Trisha' guest provoked into fighting

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

A guest on 'Trisha Goddard' said show staff got him drunk and provoked him to fight a love rival on the show.

Ian Wallace avoided jail after he told a court producers paid for him to drink alcohol, then locked him in a room and encouraged him to be aggressive before he faced his love rival on the daytime talk show.

Ian appeared on the programme - where people with social or relationship issues discuss their problems in front of a live studio audience - in February to confront his housemate Scott Newey, whom he believed had an affair with his girlfriend, Rachael Harris.

On the show, fronted by host Trisha Goddard, Wallace was seen running up a flight of stairs and grabbing Newey by the chest.

Speaking in his defence, Bill Miller told a magistrate's court in Skegness, Lincolnshire: "He was spoken to for two to three hours.

"The researcher in effect taunted him and wound him up - he was being wound up for several hours.

"He was told Mr Newey was there and to 'get in his face'. He was told not to 'take any s**t' and to scare him to get the answers he needed.

"At the very least Mr Wallace was subjected to extreme provocation before this offence - and it was all for the purpose of making good television."

Unemployed Wallace pled guilty to assaulting Newey on the show and was fined £100 with £60 costs.

He said: "All I did was what the people on the programme wanted me to do. They told me to lunge at him, to get right in his face - and that's what I did. It's all fake."

'Trisha Goddard', which was aired on Channel Five, is no longer in production.