Big Brother and the limits of television

Big Brother is dead. This is terrific news – particularly if you’re one of those morbid hacks who specialise in articles lamenting ‘the excessive trivialisation of our culture’. Even now the long dreary ‘think-pieces’ are being commissioned for the Sunday papers. We all know what they’ll say. Big Brother (born 2000, died 2010, RIP) is responsible for creating the great scourge of modern culture, the noodle-brained, cross-eyed, half-witted celebrity. The ‘bad’ celebrity, in other words, of whom Jade Goody, (a BB graduate) is the outstanding examplar. Jade Goody will be contrasted – amidst much weeping and rending of garments – with the Platonic ideal of the ‘good celebrity’, the late Kenneth Clarke whose series ‘Civilisation’ is often cited as a paragon of TV excellence.

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Ameer Kotecha

Lindt has cheapened itself

But Ken and Jade have more in common than meets the eye. To me, in fact, they’re identical.