What We Think About Celebrity Big Brother...

posted: 23 January 2007 Damien Morris

The house fell apart the moment the Goodys arrived. It's as simple as that.

The twist too far, of Big Brother's first family, dissolved one of the bedrocks of the show as speedily as if WH Smith himself was sat in the Diary Room selling phone credit and newspapers. The housemates should not know each other well, and ideally not at all. With three (and at one point five) Goodys in the house, Jade and Jackiey in particular felt most secure of all the housemates. Sure, create artificial divisions in the house, but everyone must start the game on a level playing field.

Jackiey's horrendous clashes with Shilpa led to the elder Goody's eviction, and when the conversation between Carole, Cleo and Shilpa eventually caused Carole's exit, the die was cast. Jade and Danielle both had their mother figures summarily removed from the house - and in a house which essentially comprises your entire world, this cannot be underestimated.

Both blamed Shilpa for their bereavements, and the cabin-fever conditions BB depends upon to create conflagration from splinters of driftwood allowed the pair to feed off each other's grief endlessly, and scapegoat Shilpa, in the absence of Carole. The arguments have been so petty, so meaningless, that they would have been dealt with in seconds at a six-year-old's teddy bear party. Yet the inability and unwillingness of some housemates to communicate effectively with each other - over Oxo cubes! pink chicken! - has ruined them all.

As unpopular as she is with the BB viewers, Carole performed a vital function in the house of providing perspective as well as being able to communicate clearly with the others. Had Carole been in the house, this week's events would never had been allowed to happen. For bullying to take place, you need a victim, a bully - but also people prepared to ignore the signs of it, and prepared to do nothing to stop it happening. In terms of sins by omission, Jo has been by far the most guilty of the housemates. More intelligent and empathetic than Danielle and more articulate and considered than Jade, she would have been able to defuse all of these petty, pathetic situations had she wished to, rather than alternately cower or giggle behind her various security blankets.

H, Jermaine and Dirk, as well meaning as they may be, have been meringue-tough, either retreating to the garden to let 'the girls' get on eviscerating each other in the lounge... or, even worse, making mealy-mouthed trips to the diary room. Cleo has, at best, a brittle spine, and an understandable if somewhat despicable aversion to confrontation on national TV, attempting to placate both sides, where the boys have at least backed Shilpa up.

So the house lost its mother figure, and never had a father figure. As a result, chaos is never far from the surface. The 'bonding' BB is supposed to build up and knock down has been obliterated, and been replaced by the ugliest, most basic instincts. The housemates' fallback position in a hostile environment, where both fight and flight are punished by disqualification, has been to revert to atavistic impulses, to cleave toward the familiar and away from the alien. She/he looks/speaks/is the same age/colour as me, so must be OK. So the wolves split into packs. Jermaine/Shilpa. Jermaine/Dirk. Jo/Jade/Danielle. It seems unlikely that even Danielle, the most indiscreet and occasionally loathsome of the trio at the centre of the 'race war storm', is racist to the extent that she discriminates against people of other races, but fact has ceased to matter when people begin burning effigies based on a television programme they've never seen. Perception trumps reality.

Of course, none of this will matter in a week's time. The fallout from the events of Days 12-15 of Celebrity Big Brother 5 might even have sprinkled on a prospective Prime Minister on an ill-timed trade tour of India, but claims that Jade and Danielle's careers will suffer are far-fetched. The week will be resolved with the soothing cycle of nomination and eviction, and everyone will move on. Possibly to Dancing On Ice. The last word on the subject of Celebrity Big Brother 2007 will surely be farce rather than tragedy. And all because the lady wanted one more Oxo cube.