The story that’s dominating the UK headlines at this moment is about a reality tv show called Celebrity Big Brother and the racist bullying of one of the contestants, Indian actress and Bollywood superstar Shilpa Shetty, by three English girls on the programme. The show includes ‘Celebrity’ in the title but its really Jermaine Jackson, Face from the A Team, Shetty and a bunch of no name British Z listers, who are are confined to a house and filmed 24/7 for three weeks.
Its been on for a couple of weeks and I’ve consciously tried not to watch any of it until yesterday when this bullying and racial harassment episode really caught fire, with a record number of complaints about a tv show made to the television regulator and Tony Blair being asked about it in parliament and Chancellor Gordon Brown fielding questions on it while in India.
From what I could gather from watching different news clips and last night’s show, the producers have put a beautiful, successful, intelligent, respectful and courteous Indian woman into a confined space with a group that includes three of the most moronic, stupid, monosyllabic, uneducated, uninteresting, predjudiced and just downright thick ‘celebrities’ they could scrape up in England.
If the girls on Celebrity Big Brother, all in their 20s, are a reflection of Britain and especially the education system here, we are in big trouble. Here are some of the remarks I saw yesterday. Big Brother asked one girl called Danielle (who says she’s a model and footballer Teddy Sheringham’s girlfriend), who Winston Churchill was. Her answer, ‘Was he the first black President of America.’ Unbelieveable. Teddy Sheringham, conversations must be a highlight in your house.
Another one was asked if a situation would be a dilemma for her, ‘what’s a dilemma’. Two were talking and one said ‘Why did the first person who called a shoe a shoe, call it a shoe?’ reply ‘well they couldn’t have called it a grape’.
As to the racist bullying, from what I saw Shilpa Shetty just goes way over their heads and the only way they can deal with it is through constant dumb, petty and prejudiced remarks. Jermaine Jackson was sitting there opened mouthed, like do people this stupid really exist. Afraid so and the UK we put them on tv.
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