How, then, will television react to this bedlam and ease our worried minds?
By bringing back its unofficial Twat of the Year contest, obviously.
Or, as it’s officially known, Big Brother, a pox I thought had been eradicated when we all developed herd immunity back in 2018, after eight long years on Channel 5.
Without any warning or much demand though, a new variant spread across multiple ITV formats on Sunday night, with a teapotting AJ Odudu and someone called Will Best in the old Davina role.
Over 30,000 had applied, this pair assured us, just 16 would be entering the house and they’d be “more diverse”, according to some brainless sod at ITV who clearly hadn’t watched the original, which was beyond woke before the word had even been invented.
To this sorry and inevitable end they’d selected, among others: gay doctor Matty, who’s the closest thing the Isle of Man has to Weird Al Yankovic, “proud Muslim” Farida, former Miss Great Britain Noky, who isn’t named after a small dough ball without reason, and mobility scooter-driving Kerry, who gave the most perfect response available when AJ asked her: “Why did you apply for Big Brother?”
“It’s an absolute no-brainer.”
It is indeed.
And as if to prove her point we were also introduced to: Jenkin, who’s large, Welsh, gay and looking for “somewhere I’ll fit in”.
(Try Calder Gorge)
Yinrun, who was born in the Chinese year of the Where’s Wally cartoon, and the most obnoxious and conceited of the lot, Olivia, who loves pronouns as much as the next insincere, right-on moron, but says: “I hate men and think they’re all a**eholes.”
I’d say the feeling was mutual, but I cannot summon up that level of emotion for any of the housemates because I’ve seen other versions of them all before on Big Brother and a thousand other reality shows.
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This includes, I should add, egomaniac Hallie, who surprised absolutely no one on day two with the announcement: “I’m trans,” nor even with the declaration the £100,000 first prize would be spent on “a vagina”, rather than, say, something like a BMW Series 5, which would probably hold its shape and value slightly better in the long run.
For there is a long tradition of trans contestants on Big Brother dating all the way back to Nadia, who, despite being a right royal pain in the a**e, won the 2004 series, partly because the others were all equally vile and partly because Nadia was a bit of a novelty who was pushing against the tide.
This is not the case now.
Indeed, the only really surprising thing about the 2023 relaunch was the fact it was pre-recorded, which told me ITV didn’t actually think it could trust its own show or the idiot contestants.
They’re right to be cautious.
Neither before nor since have I seen a show that’s damaged a nation more than Big Brother, which, from worthy and entertaining enough beginnings, left us with successive generations of over-entitled television show-offs who were above working for a living, having any discernible talent or even a sense of shame and dignity.
It’s damage that can never be undone and the only bitter-sweet consolation is that Big Brother did similar things to Channel 4, which, 13 years on from junking the show, is still a basket case of a network that’s incapable of doing anything much beyond churning out lowest common denominator BB copies like Open House: The Great Sex Experiment, Naked Attraction, Sex Box, My Transsexual Summer, Send Nudes: Body SOS and The Circle.
ITV can crow all it likes in public, then, about getting 2.5million viewers for Sunday’s launch — the best since 2012 — but if it’s to get out of the mess it’s now created for itself, it better hope Big Brother 2023 fails, and fails hard.
Great TV lies and delusions of the week
Alex Scott: “I tell you what, it’s going to be a good day here on Football Focus.”
Big Brother, Will Best: “I love them all already. Is that weird?” No, it’s a lie.
Don’t Look Down: “My name is Fats Timbo and everyone knows me as a comedian, podcaster, author, all of the above.”
Literally, no one.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “Which day of the week is known as Mardi in French and Tisdag in Swedish?”
Matt: “March.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “Which South American country has a four-letter name?”
Ella: “The Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
Bradley Walsh: “‘Statue of Elvis found on Mars’ was a headline in what Sunday newspaper?” Anna: “The Sunday Times.”
And Ben Shephard: “The Raleigh Chopper is a type of which two-wheeled vehicle?”
Rohan: “Helicopter.”
Random TV irritations
C4 ruining all the potential of celebrity tightrope- walking series Don’t Look Down by including safety harnesses.
Boiling Point turning out to be The Bear with an added layer of woke.
Have I Got News For You returning with the same old political agenda and tired list of approved targets.
And Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins getting its C-list cast to write “final letters home”, as if they were really about to die behind enemy lines, rather than take part in Channel 4’s ratings war against Big Brother.
For at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we won’t remember them.
Savile’s therapy for BBC
WHEN ITV claimed it made The Long Shadow to put the Yorkshire Ripper’s victims “at the heart of the story”, rather than feed the network’s weird obsession with serial killers and signal its virtue, I thought it was the height of bad television taste.
It’s got nothing, though, on the BBC, who’ve used the Jimmy Savile saga as its own therapy session.
The result is The Reckoning, starring Steve Coogan, who absolutely nails the Savile impression, which is neither here nor there, frankly.
Because this story should’ve been told via a documentary where everyone at the BBC, who enabled this monster for decades, confessed all.
Instead of accepting its full share of responsibility though, we get a drama, which allows them to reassert artistic control over the story and piously, shamefully nudge viewers towards those people the BBC clearly believes make more deserving villains, like Margaret Thatcher, the Queen and the Royal Family who, despite there being no evidence they knew what was going on, are always accompanied by sinister music on The Reckoning.
While putting others in the frame, of course, the Beeb’s taken one step back and relegated the infamous pulling of Newsnight’s posthumous Savile investigation to a paragraph in the closing credits, where you’ll also hear the simpering voice of Auntie’s HR depart- ment tell us: “If you’re having feelings of despair, details of support are available at the BBC Actionline website.”
Which I am, as a matter of fact.
The state broadcaster is gaslighting Britain, you see, and charging everyone £159 for the privilege.
Any suggestions?
BEAMING away at his newborn baby daughter alongside mother-in-law Judy Finnigan on ITVBe’s Chloe Madeley: A Family Affair, James Haskell reported: “My mum asked, ‘Has she done anything for the first time?’
“I said she sneezed, farted, s**t herself and coughed, all at the same time.”
And the baby?
Lookalike of the week
Great sporting insights
MICHAEL DAWSON: “He chanced his arm with that right foot.”
Jamie O’Hara: “Sometimes you just have to draw a line under the sand.”
And Aaron Ramsey: “We’re determined to get a result to send our fans home unhappy.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV Gold
MICHAEL McINTYRE somehow ensuring The Wheel remains Saturday night’s best show, despite the presence of Nick Knowles, Anita Rani, Gyles Brandreth, Josh Widdicombe and all manner of irritants.
The beautiful Zermatt to Sarajevo leg of BBC1’s brilliant Celebrity Race Across The World. And the more than welcome return of a shingles-ridden Bob Mortimer to BBC2’s masterpiece Gone Fishing, where he contemplated his own demise with Paul Whitehouse. “I want to die peacefully in my sleep with hundreds of awards around me.”
Pause . . . “You’re going to have to put the effort in then, mate, aren’t you
OCTOBER 7, 2023 should go down as a day of shame not just for the Palestinians who murdered hundreds of innocent Israelis but for BBC News cowards who doggedly referred to them as “militants” instead of terrorists.
Throughout an horrendous weekend, I also witnessed vile Palestinian propaganda go unchallenged by anchors, while presenter Samantha Simmonds wondered if Hamas “Had to refresh its credentials as a resistance movement” (by spitting on women’s corpses and murdering children?) and a succession of BBC employees followed The Guardian’s lead by suggesting the event would be “remembered as an Israeli intelligence failure for the ages”.
It won’t, obviously. The civilised part of the world will remember it as a catastrophic failure of humanity by Hamas.
And if the BBC is either too afraid of the Islamic lobby or too compromised by its own political bias to address their depravity, then it doesn’t deserve the privilege of broadcasting on Britain’s behalf.