Jenny Jones, host of the Jenny Jones Show, is the key witness in a wrongful death claim by the family of Scott Amedure.

She had been expected to testify on Wednesday, but when the case resumed on Tuesday, only four of the more than 100 witnesses available had testified, prompting the judge to plead with lawyers to shorten their comments.

"If you guys would just stop the hyperbole this would move along a lot quicker, please," the judge said before recessing on Tuesday.

Mr Amedure was shot dead in 1995 after revealing he had a crush on a friend, Jonathan Schmitz, on an episode about same-sex secret admirers.

The dead man's parents accuse the show of humiliating Schmitz by leading him to believe his secret admirer would be a woman.

Schmitz admitted he shot his gay admirer at his trailer home three days after they appeared on the show, which was never broadcast. A second-degree murder conviction was later overturned on a technicality, and he is now awaiting retrial.

Schmitz 'was mentally ill'

Jonathan Schmitz: Was mentally ill, the court heard

Lawyers for the defendants, Warner Brothers and Telepictures Productions, deny the show bears responsibility for the killing, and claim that Schmitz was told that his admirer could be a woman or a man.

Amedure family lawyer Geoffrey Fieger said he would ask Jones about producers' notes from phone conversations with Schmitz. Records prepared for the recording which have the presenter's hand-writing in the margins would be requested, he added.

Fieger - best known for his defence of assisted-suicide advocate Dr Jack Kevorkian - said he hoped that Jenny Jones' testimony would establish that the show aimed to surprise Schmitz.

Fieger, who said Schmitz was mentally ill, may also question Jones about whether the show made attempts to ascertain Schmitz's mental condition.

At Schmitz's murder trial in 1996, Jenny Jones claimed she knew little about how her show was run, and was seldom aware of the show's topics until the night before they were taped.

The talk show host recently told the Detroit News that she was looking forward to testifying in the court in Pontiac, Michigan, so she could "set the record straight".

In opening arguments last week, defence lawyer James Feeney suggested to the jury that something else had happened between the two men to trigger the killing, and that the show had little to do with the murder.

'Humiliated' by the programme

Jones claimed she knew little about how her show was run

On Tuesday, a woman who sat next to Schmitz during his return flight to Detroit after the Chicago recording, told the jury that he had said he was humiliated by the show and feared his parents and grandparents would see it.

Patricia Cielinski said: "For the whole hour-and-a-half flight, all he talked about was the Jenny Jones show and his embarrassment and humiliation."

Cielinski added that Schmitz hoped his admirer would be his former fiancée.

"If it was her, he was going to ask her to marry him on the show that day," she said. "He was quite upset that it wasn't her."

Schmitz was convicted in 1996 of second-degree murder and possessing a firearm during a felony. He was sentenced to between 25 and 50 years in prison for murder, plus two years on the firearm charge.

But last year a court ruled his defence team had been wrongly barred from removing a juror before the trial began, and the conviction was overturned.

The defence did not deny that he shot Amedure, but said he was suffering from depression and had been tricked by the show.

He now faces a new trial in August on the same charges, and will not be called to give evidence in the present lawsuit.

The Jenny Jones Show is syndicated worldwide, and shown in the UK on Sky One.