WHEN it comes to analysing the causes of a riot, experts often look to social deprivation, inequality and a distrust of authority. But perhaps another factor should be brought into play - the influence of Blind Date.

Cilla Black may seem an unlikely instigator of civil disobedience, but, according to one academic, her Saturday evening show is part of a worrying trend in television, as viewers lap up the ridicule heaped on members of the public.

Along with reality television, from Big Brother to programmes on the world's worst football tackles, the popularity of confrontational shows, such as Jerry Springer, provide an escape from the regimentation of everyday life.

And the end result is to create the feeling that the best way to resolve tension is through humiliation and violence, claims Sunderland University's Mike Presdee.

"There is reality television and there is humiliation television," says the criminologist. "Reality television is those things that exist, which we like to watch, and videos of football violence.

"And humiliation television is where things didn't exist but are created specifically for entertainment.

"Blind Date is based upon put-downs and giving away confidences and Big Brother is based on eavesdropping, and these are exactly the opposite to the things you get praised for doing in school."

Mr Presdee, who details his theory in a new book, claims that the public appetite for humiliation television is a reaction to the mass of rules which now reaches into almost every corner of society.

"We now live in a society which is more and more regulated and controlled, with targets and performance indicators and league tables," he says.

"There is no way of escaping. We measure what everybody is doing, from bus drivers to postmen. We seem to have given up on the concept that you can ever get people to be nice, so we will make it the law.

"My view is that, the more you pressurise people, the more they look for an escape valve and a release from the feeling that life is a league table. One thing you can do is go away and do wrong, transgress, be naughty."

For Mr Presdee, the desire to watch other people come a cropper is the adult equivalent of school pupils sneaking behind the bike sheds for a crafty smoke.

"We're doing the same as young people used to do, we go home, close the front door, go into the sitting room put on the television and enjoy all the things you are not supposed to.

"Or we go on the Internet and enjoy the porn sites or the violent sites or go into chat rooms and laugh at all the wrong jokes, then the next morning we go back into our league-table lives. "But if we want more and more of this humiliation television, then more and more has to be created so we have to go out and hurt more people. It is hurting people for entertainment who would not otherwise have been hurt."

Humiliation television, he claims, is the modern-day equivalent of the carnival or the Roman arena, entertainment as a release from everyday life.

But, unlike gladiatorial combat, this distraction is not imposed by our rules but demanded by the public.

And, he believes, one of the chief culprits in forcing us to look for an escape valve is the New Labour Government, with its obsession on measuring performance putting increasing pressure on its citizens.

"We have a Government which is more into a rational life and doing the right thing," he says.

"In a very obscure way, this Government is creating the conditions for doing wrong."

Humiliation television has already directly claimed a number of victims, the most recent being a woman battered to death after appearing on the Jerry Springer show.

Nancy Campbell-Panitz was part of a love triangle featured on the show last year, when she was accused of stalking her ex-husband Ralph Panitz and his new wife Eleanor.

But 52-year-old Nancy seemed stunned to discover her ex-husband had married again and stormed from the stage, with Panitz and Eleanor seen hugging and cheering as she was humiliated.

Hours after the programme was shown, Nancy was found bludgeoned to death, with Panitz and his new wife the prime suspects.

Alongside the popularity of Springer's show, there has been a huge boom in the market for reality television, from savage football tackles to spectacular car crashes, all carrying a strange fascination.

"You get seduced into watching this violence," says Mr Presdee. "It is like when the snow comes, it all looks very beautiful and the first thing you want to do is jump into it and destroy it.

"There is something seductive about doing something wrong and the problem is we have moved away from drama. We don't want to watch that any more, we want to watch the real thing."

Recent criticism over violence in the media has tended to focus on films, but this is aiming at the wrong target, according to Mr Presdee.

"I don't worry about the impact of Pulp Fiction, I worry about Blind Date.

"In Pulp Fiction they all get up and go for a drink, in Blind Date they go into trauma therapy.

"If you look at some of the people in these programmes, they really do get crestfallen, they really do feel cornered, and the idea is to capture them at that particular moment.

"Blind Date has moved on a bit in recent years because it got so much criticism but it is still the art of the put-down. It rests upon hurting people and humiliating people. People watch it to see people slagging each other off."

Big Brother's Nasty Nick may have been a willing participant in a programme which held out the prospect of instant fame, as well as £70,000, but he was also humiliated in front of millions when his housemates discovered his duplicity.

"We have created a situation where somebody is put down just for our fun, and that is feeding on something in our society which is a negative thing," Mr Presdee says.

"It is bad in itself, in the sense that we are creating emotions for our own ends."

But end result of all these programmes, and Mr Presdee believes Blind Date is by no means the worst offender, is not just the trauma inflicted on the people taking part.

"The overall consequence is a society which is solving its emotional problems in that way, rather than through social structures.

"And it will blow up and you will get riots on the street. You can move very quickly from Big Brother to something quite dangerous.

"We're learning that the way to resolve tension is to humiliate people and be violent, and that can't be a good thing for society."

* Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime, by Mike Presdee, is published by Routledge, at £16.99.