Preview: Celebrity Big Brother

by Alex Allen

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Recently, I've been feeling like we just live in some kind of mind numbing limbo, flitting from one reality TV spiel to the next. X Factor, to Strictly Come Dancing, to people sliding around on the ice. Before we know it, we're right back round to Simon Cowell hijacking Christmas again with another over produced cover version. One show I definitely didn't think would ever grace our screens again was Celebrity Big Brother, more fool me. You would be forgiven for thinking that after the shambolic Shlipa Shetty race row of 2007, Big Brother had become stale, desperate, and increasingly out of the touch with what viewers wanted. You were right. This year's newest roving news reporter? Michael Barrymore. It's almost unbelievable, I can only imagine how the producers decided it was a good idea, 'well, the swimming pool incident was a bit of an unresolved black mark on his CV, but you can't deny, nobody could touch him on Strike it Lucky!'.

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Celebrity Big Brother, and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, both suffer from the same problem. They work on the assumption that the people they have cajoled in to participating are actually celebrities, and that by putting them in a strange, foreign environment they will be completely out of their comfort zone which will make great television. The reality, however, is that these people are desperate burnouts from television's past. They realise that the only way to reach the dizzy heights of prime time and taste the sweet nectar of popularity is by eating more kangaroo testicles and earwigs than their competitors. The people that you really want to see have much better things to do. It's the importance of finding people who don't need the exposure that matters, this was, after all, a programme that was supposed to be a social experiment. It was supposed to be about social interaction, class, race and cultural divides. Ironically, in 2007 it was all about class, race and social divides, but people knowing they're being watched by x million viewers has changed the face the programme. Instead, it's become the accepted medium for the idiots to pedal their various wares - the autobiography, the album of studio enhanced cover versions, the seasonal calendar. If there's really a spark, there might even be a digital channel TV show to present, too. We still see people's innate racism, xenophobia, sexism and other unenviable traits as they attempt to stampede over each other to stardom, but frankly, it's a level of vulgarity that only Celebrity Love Island can match. It's almost sad watching these people jostle for celebrity status, even though they've completely lost sight of what that word even means anymore, and the last thing these people are, to most, is celebrated.