To
paraphrase Lady Bracknell: “To enjoy one series of Big
Brother is misfortune, to watch two is carelessness, but
to be this excited about Big Brother 3 means that you
got problems, lady.”
And indeed, I have got problems. I am fully aware that
while the nation treated the first two series of Big
Brother as the frolicking of televisual innocents, Big
Brother 3 has the slight suggestion of sadness about it
– as if Channel 4 is still going out and pulling the same
dim blondes it used to hang around with when it was 17,
while the other channels have moved on to a sensible
brunette who gets on with their mother.
If we have learnt nothing from putting random dolts in a
televisual Petri dish twice before, why repeat the
experiment a third time? And doesn’t this enjoying of
trashy television, and revelling in its kitschy awfulness,
make us like students stealing traffic cones to
“decorate” their horrible rooms?
Underneath it all, they’d like a couple of nice prints
and a leather sofa from Liberty’s, and we’d like The
Blue Planet and re-runs of Brideshead Revisited,
but we’ve all got to make do with what we’ve got. On top
of all of this, given that we are all in agreement that the
people who enter Big Brother are among the most
psychologically grotesque on Earth, are we not, in watching
them, little better than Michael Elphick when he’s
laughing at the Elephant Man in The Elephant Man?
In short, in coming back for a Big Brother hat
trick, I feel I have unknowingly made the transition from
child-like eccentric to cat-hoarding bag lady in the eyes of
normal Britain. I’ve taken it too far. I’m doing wrong.
I have the morals of a codfish. But then, I can’t believe
something that feels this good could be so bad.
When the theme-tune struck up last Friday night for the
first time in nine months, I cried the same kind of excited
tears that I did in 24 when Jack Bauer shot Nina in
the flak-jacket. Half-way through meeting the new
contestants, I got so hysterical that I had to lie under the
rug and get Charlie to hit me with the phone until I shut
up, and after the programme ended on Channel 4, we watched
live coverage on E4 until 5.30am — which compares quite
badly to my 12.30am bedtime on the millennium, when we had
20 guests over and everything. Clearly I am going to have to
come up with a great many excuses for why I am so enthralled
by something that could easily be dismissed as the DNA
splicing of a peep show and a special school.
Except there are no excuses necessary, because in the end
a deeper truth will set me free. I believe that Big
Brother is, contrary to everything you may have assumed,
one of the most remarkable indices of human progress in our
history. Indeed, so urgent is my need to explain why Big
Brother is as great a marker of human progress as
universal suffrage, the NHS and the smooth-action
retractable cup-holder on recent makes of Saab, I have
compiled a list.
1. Much has been made of the “price” of Big
Brother fame: ten weeks of unavoidable public nudity and
humiliation in exchange for what? At best, a couple of Sun
front pages and the occasional appearance on Channel 5’s
karaoke show Night Fever. It’s exploitation, pure
and simple.
I tell you something, though, our grandmothers would have
thought that luxury. Your nan and my nan would have had to
be flat on their backs on a casting couch for weeks for even
a mention on the gossip pages. They would have had to work
their way around every director’s office in London on
their knees in order to sing Robert De Niro’s Waiting
on a karaoke show in front of a potential audience of 0.4
million.
Contrary to accusations of exploitation, I actually think
it’s a mark of societal progress that these women’s
grandchildren have to do little more than wee in front of a
hidden camera crew and overcome a phobia of chickens in
order to be in with a chance of releasing a flop Christmas
single.
2. It stops genuinely talented people from killing
themselves. We are a gossiping breed — those copies of Heat
and The National Enquirer don’t get blown off the
newsstands by the wind, and we need a certain number of
people in the public eye to mildly obsess about. Before Big
Brother, the only candidates for obsession were people
who’d come into the public eye under the power of some
kind of talent or likeability. Often, the glare of publicity
would ruin the very quality that brought them to prominence
in the first place and, distraught, they would kill
themselves. But, admittedly, no example springs to mind at
present.
With Big Brother, however, we now have 12
ultimately expendable people a year who volunteer themselves
for the rather unpleasant task of being publicly dissected
in minute psychological detail, in lieu of someone with more
palpable skills. Rather than Channel 4 taking advantage of
some desperate media wannabes, I see this more on a par with
certain systems in Scandinavia, where citizens spend a few
weeks a year doing community paperwork on bicycle thefts, to
ease the burden on proper coppers, who concentrate on
murders and stuff.
3. Morality wise, on its worst level, Big Brother
is only as bad as a single man seeing a well-paid and
willing prostitute. Sure, if we could, we’d love to spy on
12 exhibitionists locked in a house for ten weeks within the
context of a loving and equal relationship, but we still
hadn’t found the right people on the dinner-party circuit
and we had these urges.
Besides, Big Brother gives as well as takes. When
Nasty Nick was cheating, Helen was unfaithfulling with Paul
and Mel was putting it about, people who usually do little
more on a Friday night than fight with a cousin in a car
park were suddenly having intense and involved pub
conversations about comparative ethics. I well remember
hearing one beefy, tattooed man in a pub on Holloway Road
standing up and shouting, “But Helen loves him!” Eat
that, The Moral Maze.
4. It has normalised varieties of race, sexuality and
behaviour. Before Big Brother, Britain had never seen
a poof in his jim-jams making bread. Likewise, despite 30
years of well-meaning equal opportunities, I had never seen
a black man put a chicken on a seesaw, or an Asian woman
dance badly to her own, badly whistled version of Janet
Jackson’s Nasty Boy.
When we no doubt finally see the first Big Brother
incident of The Sex, it will be the first example of two
people who genuinely fancy each other having some vaguely
affectionate, normal sex on television. That we have left
something so important to be accomplished as the by-product
of someone’s ambition to sing Robert De Niro’s
Waiting on Channel 5 is an astonishing oversight.
Maybe we were all just subconsciously waiting for the
advent of Big Brother 3 contestant Spencer, who has
buttocks so perfect I believe an act of sex involving him
would come under the heading of “A Piece of Art of World
Importance”, and would cause the more finely tuned among
us to cry.
5. Of course, if there was no Big Brother lending
counter-weight to the World Cup overkill this year, we would
be staring at the prospect of the world’s first Women and
Gays Riot straight in its mad, desperate, unseeing eyes.
These days, it is neither religion nor opiates that are
the opiates of the masses, but the constant reassuring
flicker of E4 showing live coverage of a woman in trackie
bottoms using a carpet sweeper while 11 other bored
housemates smoke cigarettes and watch her. So-oo soothing.
Indeed, the only way I can see out of the impending Third
World War is if Channel 4 quickly syndicates the show to
India and Pakistan, allowing them to unite in order to
defeat their real foe — dull, drippy, do-nothing Lynne.
And if they should suddenly launch an unprecedented nuclear
attack on her, well, with my regular text updates from the Big
Brother website, I won’t miss out on any of the
action.
Caitlin's guide to the housemates
Lynne
A dull Hibernian creature. Like watching paint remain wet.
Sunita
Precious. “As a barrister, I don’t really want to play
that game.” She left. We were thankful.
Jonny
This wearisome Geordie throwback has repugnant athlete’s
foot. Inexplicably 6-1 on for winning.
Alison
A cackling, sub-Rusty Lee vexation. Thinks junkies go
“cold chicken”. Ate all the defrosted ice-cream.
PJ
Not much going on here. Likes innuendo. Looks like a thumb.
Lee
Not much going on here. Apparently has a body-fat index of
13 per cent. Looks like a bigger thumb.
Kate
Guess which half of the population likes this flirty blonde
in tiny shorts?
Adele
Inexplicably normal and nice. Wants to be a DJ.
Jade
Represents a good bet for future entertainment. “What’s
a ‘paragus?’” she asked, reading the labels in the
vegetable garden.
Alex
Posh ex-model, hasn’t been able to go to the lavatory
since entering the house.
Spencer
Sulky totty from Cambridge. Needs to get out more.
Sandy
Battered bear of a man. The brains, heart and kilt of Big
Brother 3.
3
AT
GARDENCROFT
