I don’t watch Celebrity Big Brother, so there’s little I can usefully add — not that I usually let that stop me, of course — to the thoughtful discussions from Bel, Ellee, Morag, Matt and the comments in Pickled Poltics (not all of which are wholly thoughtful of course, but none the worse for that) not to mention the endless newspaper coverage. No time to watch the TV, you see, with all this reading to do.
Consequently, apart from noting that, in their different ways, both Sunny and Mr Eugenides get, as so often they do, close to the heart of the matter, all I can do is speculate about the coverage in, for example, the Daily Express — presently of the view that ‘a reality TV show has shamed our country in the eyes of the world’, apparently — had Ms Shetty’s religion been different and we’d been treated to the spectacle of Jade and chums bullying her for being a Muslim. I think we’d than have seen a few interesting contortions.
UPDATE — in fact, while I don’t know how good the young lady’s English is, I think I may have found an ideal foreign, Muslim celebrity for the programme’s next series.
Technorati Tags: BlogPower, Celebrity Big Brother, UK Press
Not Saussure 
This certainly is a sorry state of affairs, thanks for mentioning my site. I understand that Carphone Warehouse has now withdrawn its funding, I’m not sure how long the programme can run without its major sponsorship.
Comment by Ellee — January 18, 2007 @ 5:02 pm
Wow, Roya certainly is a sizzling, ‘singing sexpot’! Christ on a pink bike, Jade, Jo and the other bubble head, would be ripping her face off by now!
Hee hee!
I do watch CBB, and the three British women involved are at worst, ignorant, immature, insecure bullies. They use Shilpa’s culture and race as reasons to insult her. Whether this stems from a deliberate desire to be racist, remains to be seen, it’s certainly insidious, and incredibly ugly.
xx
Comment by queenminx — January 18, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
Roya certainly seems quite a girl, I agree; for the benefit of those who haven’t followed the link, Roya is apparently a hugely popular (at least with young people) singer in Azerbaijan, who
and is apparently likely to cause ructions in neighbouring Iran, where members of the large Azeri minority apparently follow her career with great interest and wonder why they can’t have as much fun as does she. She certainly sounds an ideal participant for Celebrity Big Brother. If anyone’s interested, I’ve found a YouTube video of her (pixellated out at the appropriate moment).
I agree, QueenMinx; from what I’ve read it seems like a lot of very unpleasant bullying.
Comment by notsaussure — January 18, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
I’ve just been commenting everywhere else about this. Is it some sort of compulsory viewing, this show?
Comment by james higham — January 19, 2007 @ 7:05 pm
No, James. Of course you don’t have to watch it to have an opinion on it. It’s not stopped Tony Blair or Gordon Brown from commenting on it, so why should have to watch it to form a view?
Comment by notsaussure — January 19, 2007 @ 7:36 pm