Television
An exercise in cynicism
Simon Hoggart
I had the gravest fears for Big Brother (Channel 4) when they started introducing the ten people who are going to share the house and be filmed every hour of the day. Caroline, 37, from Birmingham, announced: 'People have described me as mad!' in the crazy, fun-loving, self-satisfied way some people say, 'I'm a bit outrageous, me!' which invariably translates as: 'I'm deeply boring, but I make a lot of noise.' Indeed, Caroline's laugh is an astounding natural phenomenon. It is long, eldrich, screeching, primal and very, very loud, quite unlike any laugh I have heard, though I imagine that a hyena might make a simi- lar noise when, after starving for days, it sees an especially maggoty zebra carcase being hauled off by a lion.
But then most of them have been chosen because they are the kind of people who make faces in their holiday snaps and wear babies' clothes in pram races. Craig, 28, a Liverpudlian, toe-curlingly said, 'Naturally, being a Scouser, I'll be able to entertain in the house.' (Note to Merseyside readers: we don't hate Scousers; what we dislike is their complacent assumption that they're all delightful and amusing. There are warm and cuddly people in Godalming, too, and many are wittier and more entertaining.) Then Nichola, 28, from Bolton told us, "Cos I'm up for anything, I do sometimes drive people round the bend.' A perfect qualification for Big Brother, and it was Nichola's decision to cover her naked body in clay, then splodge up against the wall with her housemates which took the glitter off the first show's previous highlight — Darren's wheeze of making a pottery penis and leaving it outside the girls' dorm. My, how they laughed! I, by contrast, took a thoughtful swig of beer. The chap I felt sorry for was Tom, 31, a farmer from Northern Ireland, who already has seven sisters, and is now stuck with nine zany, madcap flatmates instead. He kept himself to himself, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him voted out pretty soon. No guest spots on cruise liners beckon for him.
There's been a lot of talk about how this programme carries intrusiveness to new heights. I'm not troubled by that. If people like Sada, 28, want to go on live television and reveal themselves to be thoroughgoing idiots by saying 'I'm a complete hippy, I'm into crystals, I'm into tarot, I'm hoping for some good karma ... ', then we don't need to worry about the invasion of their fragile psyches. You might as well complain that porn stars have no privacy.
What bothers me more is the cynicism the makers have for the audience at home. For a start, the winner's prize (each week the ten vote for a pair they want to lose, and viewers choose which one is slung out until the last remains) is a curious, and in television terms pitiful, £70,000. This is roughly what any astute television execu- tive would pay himself for ten weeks nor- mal work; indeed I wondered if the sum wasn't a private joke along those lines.
The main problem is that, so far, not an awful lot of interest has happened. The nude clay-coated frolics have excited the tabloids, but that's the kind of thing that we all grew weary of in the Sixties. The inhabi- tants are thrilled that Nick, 32, went to school with Prince Edward, but I was able to still my beating heart when I learned that, and also when Anna, 29, revealed she was a lesbian. Obviously, the hope is that they will develop interesting, preferably sexual relationships, and have plenty of blazing rows. But not so far. And to demonstrate their power as big brother, the series's makers have laid down all sort of silly rules, one of which is that if they don't ask for something in the weekly shop, they don't get it. They are now out of toilet- paper, and we left them deciding to follow the Asian example and use their hands instead. That's the thought we're left with until next week, and which will be stuck in our minds when we meet the boys and girls again. Great editing, guys. You Only Live Once (BBC 1) had Boy George reliving the failures of his child- hood. As with most TalkBack productions, it was over-scripted and so had humour without spontaneity. And what rock star's headmaster didn't predict a life of failure? I'd like to see someone say, 'My headmas- ter said I would have a string of number 1 hits, but what an idiot he was I'm a road- sweeper now.' That would be interesting.
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