Celebrity Big Brother

This Celebrity Big Brother programme on Channel 4 here in the UK is despicable on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. I have not watched it for many series but, given current debate, I have just had a look at a programme.

It is manipulative and takes advantage of the thick and stupid (not only the “housemates” but also the regular viewers), delighting in causing unnatural and incendiary social situations, encouraging two-faced behaviour, and making “celebrities” of ignorant, unpleasant, small-minded and otherwise unremarkable people.

In its cynical exploitation of the stupid (including the narrator, in my opinion) and its lack of substantial intellectual content, it is similar to the tabloid press. But it has even more severe delusions of grandeur than they do, and insults George Orwell by taking its name from his important novel, with which it actually shares only utterly trivial and superficial features.

Needless to say I won’t be watching it again. I urge you not to either.