Big Brother

I apologise in advance to all those with superior viewing habits but this is another column about Big Brother. It’s getting on my nerves basically. I don’t really watch it anymore. Since me and my flatmate went our separate ways I don’t really enjoy it as I need to slag it off to someone to really enjoy it. Also now Gerry has gone I hate everyone in there.

Brian is disturbing. I don’t want to enter in to the argument about whether he is or is not actually that thick, I don’t actually care. What worries me more is that we are meant to find his thickness endearing and that it is a positive characteristic. It’s not. I used to sit next to someone at junior school who ate chalk and once sat on a glue gun. He was in no way someone you would want in your everyday life. Putting him on national television would only bring back feelings of revulsion. It would not endear me to him in anyway. Why is someone going on tv and pretending they don’t know who Shakespeare is considered a good thing? It’s worrying. He should be shot not celebrated. OK, maybe not shot, disciplined though. In the same way the twins should also be sorted out. And come the Glorious Revolution of Laura they will be first up against the wall. They are 18. At 18 you are an adult. They act like they are about 6. At weekends they dress up in fairy outfits and sing at men in night clubs. That is disturbing on so many levels. Women who want to be children are odd. Men who are attracted to women who want to be children are odd. In the good old days of BB7 there was a woman called Grace Adams Short. She was a cow. She bitched, she slagged people off and left the house after chucking a glass of water in a 45 year old woman’s face. She however explained away her behaviour (and the media accepted this explanation) as “that’s what girls are like”. Er no we are fucking not. You are. And you’re a cow.

Now I know that normal, well adjusted 19 year old girls aren’t going to want to go on reality television but could we not have better representations of womanhood than them? It was Jade Goody who started the idea that thick people are someone to look up to. Now we have to endure people going on reality television and pretending they don’t know how to put their trousers on or thinking Paris is in Wales. It is not amusing, it is not a reflection of Britain today, it’s sad and annoying.

The one intelligent housemate, Gerry was viewed as being Machiavellian and untrustworthy as he tried to talk about history. The other so called intelligent housemate Jonty can only communicate through a teddy bear called Munkity Tunkity and so is held up to ridicule (don’t get me wrong he should be ridiculed but he shouldn’t be on television and he shouldn’t be a representation of intelligence. Being intelligent does not make you odd). It would seem we don’t want people to be intelligent or interesting. We want them to be incapable and thick. We want 21 year old girls to dress up as children and carry Barbie’s around. And it frustrates the crap out of me.

I have aired this view to various people and been told to shut up as it’s just entertainment. But consider this. The twins are training to be social workers (together obviously, possibly dressed identically). You suspect that a child who lives next door is being mistreated. You call social services and a twin turns up dressed in a tutu. You outline the things you’ve heard and seen and ask her what she’s going to do. Sadly she can’t answer as she wasn’t listening. But she has drawn a lovely picture of a fairy.

Can we please encourage little girls to aim a bit higher? Can we also make it OK to be women? Women with opinions and jobs who are self sufficient and don’t sing at men. Without wishing to be a militant feminist, our grandmothers didn’t burn their bras in the sixties merely to give Jodie Marsh an excuse to hold her baps up with belts.