My Thoughts on Big Brother

When the show was launched 5 years ago,it was unlikely that the makers ever foresaw it creating so many headlines during a week,producing questions in the House of Commons and dominating the Chancellor's visit to India.

Yet all this has happened over the last few days and remarkably caused by events that happen on our streets, in our offices pubs and clubs and schools during every day of the week.

The difference is that this dispute is televised in front of 5million television viewers during a month when the population recovering from the excesses of Christmas find life generally dull and depressing.What better way to lift the depression that the topic of racism on our screens.

We can argue for eternity about the rights and wrongs of what was said on the programme,was it racism ,was it a class of cultures or simply the result of ignorance and the underclass in the country.

(As an aside some commentators see this as a slight on our education system that people can leave school not understanding other cultures and wandering whether people in the sub continent eat with their hands.)

There is no doubt that this morning the media are in the process of destroying a celebratory that they themselves created and that Jade Goody may well have had her 15 minutes of fame.On the other side Shipla Shetty is having hers and let's not forget why she is on the show in the first place.

Mistakes have been made this week,especially at Channel Four which refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong until it was too late.In a week when its funding has been discussed,that was surely a mistake and it is now reporting that its Directors are meeting to discuss the future of the programme.The Programme which brings in much of the funding for the organisation.

The Media have lapped it up,all of them anti Jade and anti racism.This morning the News of the World carries an exclusive interview with Goody where she essentially throws herself open to all the criticisms of the past week and asks for forgiveness.

Simon Jenkins in this mornings Sunday Times perhaps sums up the week

"The glorious tiff over racism on Big Brother has comforted every corner of the realm. In most countries the public would look in, mutter and switch off. In Britain the row has invaded those sensitive temples of grace: the class system, race, the empire and public service broadcasting. Channel 4, which aired the programme, found itself in the doghouse on the very day that the BBC subsidy was being given its six years of blessing by government. Just as the shimmering palace of public service broadcasting was being sprayed with golden money it was spattered with mud by its raucous sibling."