THREE years on and we love Big Brother more than ever. Eight million of us.

Try getting that many young people to vote in a General Election.

Fewer than 1.7million of the estimated 4.3million 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK bothered to vote in the last election, according to the Electoral Commission.

What does that mean? It means that conservatively twice as many of Britain’s young are watching Big Brother as voted for Tony or wotsisname . . .

You might not like Big Brother but the fact is it IS a mirror image of modern Britain.

Therein lies the secret of its success.

Those critics that pan the show are, in fact, ill at ease with the real Britain out there — to hate Big Brother is to hate reality.

Unlike anything else on the telly — and definitely unlike the current political class (by that I mean both Labour and the Tories) — Big Brother connects.

The contestants are interested in food and diets, celebrity gossip, going out and drinking — just like you and me.

Jade and Adele like comparing boobs — just like you and me.

Spencer likes massages from sexy blondes. Find me a bloke who doesn’t.

People are fascinated and reassured by the Big Brother contestants.

Why? Because they are a gauge by which we can measure our mates and ourselves.

Jade, pictured above right, like many young people today, is the product of a broken home, has dabbled in shoplifting and her father is in prison.

THIS IS NORMAL.

PJ is a trainee solicitor. But he talks about lads’ mags, pulling girls and footie. Not politics, Afghanistan and the refugee crisis.

Again, THIS IS NORMAL.

Evictee Lynne, is a thirtysomething student. Independent and intelligent but unfulfilled and a bit unstable. Like an increasing number of ordinary women today she’s had a boob job. THIS IS NORMAL.

When Tony Blair says we are all middle class now these are the people he’s talking about — ordinary people with service-sector jobs who have reasonably good educations and access to a few of life’s luxuries — designer clothes, holidays and gym membership.

These same people are quite lazy, don’t have hobbies and are only interested in themselves.

This is the REAL middle class — not an outdated, rose-tinted Daily Mail version of middle class.

Generation Big Brother would rather drink Bacardi Breezers than Pinot Grigio and would rather go shagging in Ayia Napa than sightseeing in Tuscany. Relationships, for many, are convenient and throwaway, like a McDonald’s meal.

When Lynne left the house the contestants picked up and carried on, with Sandy even admitting it was a buzz.

People who do well on Big Brother are the Adeles and the Helens, not the Sadas and the Sunitas. They are ordinary people, with faults a plenty.

The contestants may not be world-class scholars but they know being a Big Brother celebrity is more fun than working for a living.

If you believed the Big Brother snobs you would think they were unusual.

But the flirty housemates are typical of the 150,000 other wannabes who applied — fighting for the chance to strip off, flaunt their assets, dance and party for Britain.

The Big Brother snobs — the Daily Mail especially, see BB as a symptom of moral decline, dumbing down and the general collapse of the British way of life.

It is nothing of the kind. It is Britain circa 2002 — that’s why eight million tune in.

This is reality TV that really is reality.