1) Overweight, unsightly, totally talentless and utterly brainless young woman, Jade Goody, from Bermondsey in South London is plucked from obscurity and filmed for weeks living, literally, in a glass house on television.
2) During that time she is filmed nude, threatens to 'smack up' another resident of the house, announces that the city of Cambridge 'is in London' and thinks Saddam Hussein was a boxer.
3) As a result of this combination of talent and charm, she becomes a national heroine and receives product endorsements making her worth £8 Million!!
4) She returns to the glass house, as she is now a 'celebrity' and there meets an attractive Indian 'Bollywood' actress, Shilpa Shetty. Before long the Indian actress is treated to an obscene racist rant which prompts 20,000 telephone calls.
5) The news of this rant flies across continents to the home of the actress, in India, and people come out in force with placards on the street demonstrating against 'this example of British racism'.
6) Britain's next Prime Minister' Gordon Brown, is on an official visit to India at the time to talk about economic co-operation and a nuclear non proliferation agreement. Instead his visit is hijacked by the demonstrations and he has to make a speech on Indian TV imploring viewers in England to vote the Bermondsey girl out of the TV house 'in the interests of racial harmony'.
Questions are also raised in the British Parliament where the current Prime Minister is obliged to add his voice to those decrying racism in all its forms.
7) As a result, big Bermondsey girl and Indian actress get together in a much hyped TV press conference to express their respect for each other!
Dunno about you but it seems to me like a Monty Python sketch gone barmy! How can we get to the stage where reality TV in the shape of 'Big Brother' occupies the minds of not only 3/4 of the nation, but who stays and who goes from the 'Big Brother' house is reported as part of the main national news.
How can our politicians, paid to go on serious state visits out of taxpayers money, get hijacked into an involvement in some idiotic spat between a brain dead slapper and an over opinionated Indian prima donna!.
Truly we have reached the Andy Warhol prediction of fifteen minutes of fame when we create celebrities from nobodies and discard them once the public becomes bored. That wouldn't worry me so much if the type of celebrity we create did not so often represent the boorish, thuggish and downright unpleasant side of England's national character. I hope that soon the public gets tired of reality television and that we go back to progammes made by and starring people of genuine worth
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