Big Brother

(Written 30/08/2010)


Maybe I'm thick - don't all rush to post, I'm about to qualify that - but I have never seen the point of Big Brother from the audiences' point of view. From Endemol's point of view, it's brilliant, extremely cheap TV and a great vehicle for selling advertising. From the contestants' point of view, brilliant too, a chance to join the lowest rung of celebrity and make a few bob if you get the right agent.

For the rest of us, though, it's the equivalent of watching rats in a cage without the excitement of seeing them fight or eat their own young. In other words, boring - immediately boring, too.

There was a feature on "Woman's Hour" (a fine left-wing programme) the other day about instant turn-offs. In other words, some aspect of a chap that, when revealed on a date, would cause a woman to put an egg in her shoe and beat it. Well, if a woman praised Big Brother and tried to explain what was so fascinating about each inmate, that would be my cue to end things. It would reveal a gulf in intellect so vast that it could never be crossed.

Why, on God's green earth, would I be in the slightest bit interested about whether some lunkhead has managed to bonk another one? Or whether some mouthbreather has developed a dislike for some fuckwit? Goodness knows, I don't give a damn one way or the other for the aspiring actors who play the guests on the Jeremy Kyle show, and they at least have some kind of rudimentary talent, from the few bits that I've seen. Truth be told, I don't care that much about anyone who allows themselves to be seen on TV. (Babba's onscreen CV: "Blind Man" - Tommy, "Dockyard matey" - Warship, "Radio DJ" - Hospital Watch, "Guest" - Noel Edmond's The Time Of Your Life. No current agent.)

Remember that Attenborough documentary with the Orcas catching seal pups and throwing them around for ages before eating them? It was an interesting, well-shot few minutes that illustrated Nature "red in tooth and claw". Well, that's Big Brother. Endemol grabs whatever pups it can reach, plays around with them for as long as it possibly can, then devours them. Why that should be of interest for more than a minute or two is, as Toyah put it so well, a mythtery to me.