Oh God No. Not Big Bloody Brother again....

If I had a list of Bete Noirs, the top five things on it would be stupid Big Brother. I hate it with a passion. All those people with no merit whatsoever and an insane desire to be famous. Famous for what? For their erudite interpretaion of Thomas Hardy's bucolic novels? For their ability to knit faster than the speed or sound? For blindfolded wedding cake icing? Singing like Susan Boyle? Composing verse in Iambic Pentameter and knowing who Milton is? NO. Instead they seek fame for snogging someone of their own sex in the hot tub or smothering themselves in spaghetti and then rolling in lawn clippings or whatever it is they do that generates headlines for weeks and weeks of the summer.

The initial idea of Big Brother was interesting. How would 20 odd people get on if locked in a house together for what seems like a lifetime? The actual reality is not remotely interesting. It is an excuse for silly vain people to leap up and down and say 'love me, love me, vote for me I'm meritless but here'. No thank you.

I have a cunning plan for a highly entertaining Big Brother series. The contestants would enter the house in top secrecy and live out their pathetic lives for the cameras etc WHICH WOULD NEVER BE TURNED ON. At the end of each week one contestant would be 'voted off' by the producer, and on exiting and expecting the media and country's eyes to be on them would be greeted by a psychiatrist with a lone camera who would interview them to find out how they felt about the fact that all their scrambling for attention in the house had been for nothing. Now that is an interview I would watch.

I don't understand what grips everyone about this series. The contestants never ever talk about anything except themselves and each other. I'm not even sure if they can read. After all, you never see them with a book, or hear them discussing politics or plays or the world outside their tiny, pea like brains. There are so many things they could do while in the house.

They could make them all read a classic novel and then have a debate about it. They could make them all learn yoga, tai chi and knitting. They could teach them to speak another language, to grow their own food, oh a million things. Instead they treat them like spoilt ten year olds, incapable of doing anything other than bickering, crying and doodling. It's patronising in the extreme and the tragedy is that the thousands of wannabe entrants all think it looks like heaven. I would say it is more like hell on television.