4th December:

The author and comedian Ben Elton appeared on the ‘Parkinson’ chat show in the UK on Saturday night to promote his new novel that deals satirically (but also affectionately, apparently) with the whole issue of reality TV.

Mr. Elton said that he found TV shows like ‘X Factor’ and ‘Pop Idol’ compelling viewing and great entertainment but was concerned at the sinister undertones that flow gently but visibly below the surface.

I would go one step further: these shows are no better than the freak shows that toured the cities of the world in the late 1800’s. We find watching contestants on Big Brother voyeuristic and compelling in exactly the same way our contemporaries a century ago paid money to stare at the kid with the crab hands. What makes it even worse, in some ways, is that the contestants on reality TV shows are complicit and consenting because there is an endgame: fame. And their desperation for it is palpable. Bethany may have a face like a torn accordion and a voice that sounds like a cat being strangled, but she has to be allowed to go through to the next round because she is special and she has a dream™.

On paper, these shows shouldn’t work. In many other European countries they have not – they have been a spectacular failure as the public quickly saw through the façade and turned off. And yet we British, with our super-soar-away-tabloid mentality, have embraced these shows and allowed them to become embedded in popular culture. What does this say about our society? Despite the official party line, these shows are not valuable social experiments nor are they genuine attempts to unearth hidden talent. They are formulaic, manipulative money-making machines that take advantage of naïve people and generate massive profits thanks to premium rate phone lines that subsidise production costs. It’s an open secret that researchers are now going out of their way to find dysfunctional people to appear on these shows in order to make the viewing that little bit more spicy. But it’s just fun, right? Harmless fun and entertainment? I’m not so sure. As has been noted before, there seems to be only one real winner.

Some may wish to accuse me of intellectual snobbery but I think that would be missing the point. Your congenial host has no issue with either fun or entertainment - it is more the idea of that fun being had at the expense of personal privacy and dignity and through the exploitation of people’s hopes and dreams, regardless of how gullible those people may be.

Who is going to be king of the jungle this time? Frankly, I couldn’t care less…