De-reality

Sad times are upon an ever-decreasing audience, as the bloated toss-filled battleship labeled Big Brother creaks leakily into a disinterested port. I say sad times as now it only has a week to go in the current series, so there are only another 14 weeks (ish) of Big Brother…ever! (I’m thinking of hosting a street party). You see the audience is dwindling to such an extent that Channel Four are canceling the “show”. I put the word ‘show’ in airquotes because a) I’m an unbearable arse, and b) to call a programme in which a dozen unknowns walk around a plastic fishtank scratching their bums all summer a show is, quite frankly, ridiculous. This is a show. This is not a show.

Of course, when it began many moons ago I was one of the (if we’re being honest) majority who watched with (again, if we’re being honest) a surprising amount of interest as people were being filmed twenty-four hours a day. We had seen docu-soaps develop from the likes of Driving School and Airport, each making stars of Maureen Rees (seen here struggling with a particularly taxing left turn) and Jeremy Spake (seen here smiling through a particularly stubborn bowel movement) as they went, through to MTV’s almost-certainly-not-scripted ‘The Real World’. It seemed that as a public we were hungry for more details of strangers’ lives, so it was inevitable that sooner or later we would round up some free-range civilians, put them in a box and stare at them whilst they brushed their teeth and argued over tea-bags.

What made the first series curious was that noone knew where it was going. Once the exhibits from this human zoo were released back into the wild, what would become of them? Like beagles released from laboratories by animal rights activists, freed to stumble about the moors dying for a fag, Big Brother housemates generally perished but there are one or two survivors. Jade Goody being the most famous (okay, so I use the word ‘survivor’ loosely) and Aisleyne Horgan Wallace is still gracing the pages of Nuts and Zoo magazine every now and then. Aisleyne aside, not all contestants have taken part purely to be masturbated over. Some have entered the house in an attempt to prove something to themselves. This woman for instance used to be a man and wanted to prove that she can be accepted as a woman without people thinking that she looks like a Spanish bricklayer with tits. To the most part, she succeeded and won the show. She hasn’t been seen again, but this is to be expected since the credit crunch has seen many builders out of work. For her sake, I hope she can still afford Nuts.

Ten years is a long time, and now interest in ‘The King of Reality Shows’ is looking very unwell indeed. It may not have died just yet, but it is terminally ill and its grandchildren are already sorting through its jewellery. Its friends may smile sweetly and chuckle awkwardly at its wheezy jokes, but when its back is turned they shake their heads gravely at each other, knowing that their once strong chum is fading fast. Interest is at such a low ebb in fact that three people left the current series because they simply couldn't be bothered to carry on.

The days of post series ‘uncut’ highlights dvds flying of the selves are also at an end. In fact they ended around series 3 (we are now on 10). This could be because laptops are more common so people can watch proper porn without having to go to a sex-shop, and so the prospect of pert un-pixelated bottoms being soaped up and showered isn’t quite as alluring as it once was. Alternatively it could simply be because people were bored whilst the series was on so they see no reason why they would want to have a dvd to be bored in front of until their dvd player crumbles to dust and Death wraps his bony arms around their yawning bodies. This is naturally the more realistic option as pert un-pixelated soapy bottoms will never lose their allure. The very idea is, quite frankly, ridiculous.