BIG BRO BONKERS

We're only in the fourth week of the new Big Brother and already the celeb factor is all over the media. You can hardly trip over the wrong paving stone and fall into a random newsagents without bumping into an Angry Alexandra getting kicked out or a Sassy Stephanie showing all and sundry just how famous she intends on being. More often than not Evictee No. 1 is gone and forgotten within minutes, but not our Steph, plastered across the front page (and 10 pages inside) of Nuts Magazine - well enjoy it while it lasts.

Britain's obsession with celebrity continues to amaze me more and more - and everyone is obsessed by it; whether they want to love or hate it; and the same can be said for Big Bro - everyone has an opinion, even if it's how much they wish they'd get this rubbish off the tele.

I was fortunate - or unfortunate, I've not decided yet - enough to go onto one of the Big Brother spin off shows, Big Brother's Big Mouth. In case you're not sure what that is, it's a debate show which is played after the main programme. They basically look for gobby people who will shoot their mouths off about what goes on 'in the house', and I was asked to be in the audience. "Why not?" I thought, "it might be a giggle," and do you know what, it was.

I was a little shocked though at one of the 'celebrity guests' who'd been asked to voice his views. Normally it's some trashy celeb, ex-housemate or gossip columnist. This time it was Tim Teeman, who is the Deputy Arts Editor of The Times. Yes - that's right - The Times!?

Not a gossip columnist, not a consumer mag, not even Vanessa Feltz, but the Deputy Art Editor of one of the UK's top-end, top-market national newspapers - I couldn't help thinking to myself, "does this mean that Big Brother is becoming more and more acceptable among the so-called ABC1 people in the country or does it mean that The Times is starting aim at a different market and readership?" It could be either; or indeed neither. Maybe they simply needed a journalist and he simply seemed interested- and why not? I suppose just because you write for The Times doesn't mean you're not allowed to enjoy some of the country's so-called 'dumbed-down' forms of entertainment. Art is art is art at the end of the day.

Either way, the day was fun and interesting, and I enjoyed it - however 'dumbed-down' that makes me.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of entertainment for entertainment's sake.

Cheers,

Paul