In George Clooney’s forthcoming McCarthy-era drama Good Night And Good Luck, Ed Murrow, the legendary television journalist, spends much of the film bemoaning the space given to the $64,000 Question and other frivolities.
Such confections, he notes, eat up broadcast hours that might more usefully be given over to discussing policy in the Middle East.
One can’t begin to imagine what Mr. Murrow would’ve made of such car-crash delights as Celebrity Big Brother, though bizarrely, this year’s series has indeed inspired political discourse of a fashion.
At the very least, it might be said that George ‘Gadabout’ Galloway’s participation has given folks of all stripes reasons to be outraged.
His constituents are understandably less than thrilled with the spectacle of their elected representative sitting in a hot-tub while parliament reconvenes. His political enemies, meanwhile, have much cause to be cheerful. The Tower Hamlets Labour Party has already set up a website displaying his many impressive extra-curricular earnings (£5,000 for his appearance on The Late Late Show alone), while those on the right have revelled in the politician’s astonishing capacity for self-promotion.
Indeed, cash and neglected duties aside, it’s impossible to see how Galloway’s stint in the Big Brother house can improve the fortunes of the Respect Party or the anti-war movement.
Since day one, the Glaswegian has appeared boorish and duplicitous – miaowing about the floor with Rula Lenska one moment, only to dismiss her as a drunken ‘old tusk’ some days later.
While Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, has always insisted on keeping contestants in a culture-free void – no books, no television – the current environment is hardly entropic.
To date, there’s been bickering about racial issues with former ‘Sneaky’ Sven conquest Faria Alan insisting that neither she, nor transplanted Americans Traci Bingham and Dennis Rodman, could win on account of their ethnicity.
Another intrusion from without came when the police seized Pete Burns’ gorilla skin coat under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Tests conducted by the Natural History Museum would establish that the garment was actually made from the fur of the super-cute Colombus monkey. Oh, so that’s alright then.
Not to be outdone, the family of Stuart Lubbock – the young man who famously expired in Michael Barrymore’s pool – have attempted a raid of their own. Last week, Tony Bennett, a solicitor acting on behalf of the Lubbock family, was given permission to proceed with a civil case against the visibly broken-down entertainer. Endemol have refused to co-operate with their efforts, wisely not allowing legal representatives to access Mr. Barrymore until the show finishes at the end of January.
Still, the whole sorry affair has generated plenty of juicy headlines. Nuts magazine, that well-known bastion of journalistic integrity, has suggested that Lubbock’s autopsy revealed three separate varieties of semen in his system. Others shouting from the sidelines include Camille Aznar, model and girlfriend of The Ordinary Boys’ front-man Preston. Put out by the singer’s now waning flirtation with token civilian Chantelle, Camille keeps insisting to interested tabloids and random passers-by that Preston is “on his very last chance.”
Elsewhere, more up-market publications have covered themselves in glory by printing ‘academic’ articles on the Big Brother, or more accurately, the same title tattle as everybody else prefaced by a quote from a psychologist and a lament for society. “BB Contestants at risk of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” trumpeted one low-brow broadsheet recently, citing the case of a contestant in Poland who had to be hospitalised as a suicide risk.
We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. If anything, the current series has reinforced the sense that Big Brother – either with mortals or ‘celebrities’ – is every bit as formulaic as an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
Given that the voting contingent are largely female, for example, the first casualty is invariably the prettiest girl, in this case, Jodie Marsh and her marvellously boot-like proboscis. Rula Lenska, a demi-aristocratic middle-aged lady never stood a chance.
Only Chantelle, an Essex every-girl who is neither prepossessing nor smart enough to pose a sexual threat to anyone (excepting Camille), will come out of this debacle with her dignity – such as it is – intact and a slender shot at winning.
Alas. it’s schadenfreude a go-go. Gosh ladies. Why can’t we all be friends?