Last week The Jeremy Kyle Show was branded as a human form of bear-baiting by District Judge Alan Berg. He is probably quite right. I say “probably”, because I have not actually sat down and watched a full episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show. The man’s demeanour is enough to put you off after just a few seconds.

I was going to say that it is not a surprise that The Jeremy Kyle Show should be compared to bear-baiting. Modern-day freakshow is how I usually describe these programmes. The predecessors to Jeremy Kyle (Trisha and Vanessa) were mostly the same. Some — interestingly enough, mostly the American ones — can be sympathetic to the programme’s participants. But Tampon Teabag’s summary suggests that Jeremy Kyle is by far the most despicable example of the genre.

Most of the time these programmes pluck out the most grotesque failures of humanity and plonk them under the spotlight for the rest of the nation to point and laugh at. I suspect the main reason for these programmes’ success is that it allows the utter failures that watch daytime television feel slightly better about themselves.

For me, though, the interesting aspect of this story is the fact that the programme’s sponsors only felt the need to pull out of the deal after District Judge Berg made his comments. Some are revelling in the fact that it was a publicly-funded organisation — Ufi’s Learndirect.

But let us be fair here. Most of Learndirect’s target audience probably watches Jeremy Kyle, because it is a programme for thick economically inactive people. So this was probably the most cost-effective way to get their message out.

But it’s the hypocrisy that gets me about it. Ufi’s response has basically been: “What? You mean to say that The Jeremy Kyle Show is a modern-day equivalent of cock fighting, but with chavs instead of cocks? I am shocked, just shocked!” Nobody who has seen these programmes before should be so surprised.

The real reason Ufi have pulled out is, of course, because the spotlight turned to them. The same happened when Carphone Warehouse pulled out of sponsoring Celebrity Big Brother in the wake of the Shilpa Shetty / Jade Goody controversy. They said they pulled out because they couldn’t condone racism. So did this mean that they took the blame for all of the other bad behaviour that went on in the Big Brother house in years gone by?

The same goes for this year’s debates about “trust in TV”. Hypocrisy from top to bottom. When it isn’t feigned horror that premium rate phone-in competitions are indeed in existence merely to fleece viewers, it is the Daily Mail treating some set-up shots in Bargain Hunt or Nigella Lawson’s programme as heinous crimes punishable by hanging. That would be the Daily Mail, a newspaper well known for its rigorous honesty and integrity!

Learndirect knew full well what they were sponsoring before Judge Berg made his comments. As Jonathan Calder says, The Jeremy Kyle Show didn’t suddenly become inappropriate because a District Judge said so.

But I don’t think they should have withdrawn their sponsorship. As I said, this was probably the best way to get their message out. I just wish Learndirect would have the honesty to say so.

I am sure that, for most people, the most surprising thing about the story about a scene in The F Word being faked is the fact that it is a surprise to some people.

I mean, making it look as though Gordon Ramsay caught a fish when he actually didn’t is a bit lame compared to most of the media’s crimes. There surely can’t be a single thinking person in the country who does not believe that this kind of behaviour is actually standard MSM practice.

Surely whenever they switch on the radio or read the newspaper, most people bear in mind that somewhere along the line a journalist will have used artistic license to sex up a story. I am sure this happens all the time in actual news reporting. So lying about catching a fish seems relatively innocuous to me.

I first heard the story on the Up All Night paper review. I couldn’t really believe that I was supposed to be shocked by the story. The editor of The Sunday Times was going on and about how important this story is, particularly given the recent Channel 4 scandals that everyone now likes to pull out of their bums whenever it suits them: the shocking realisation that Jade Goody is thick and that quiz scams are indeed scams.

It was like the bloke from The Sunday Times was blowing a big balloon. Comparing Gordon Ramsay not catching a fish to Jade Goody being a diabolical racist and Richard & Judy producers scamming thousands of viewers out of money kind of undermined his case enough. But Up All Night presenter Dotun Adebayo smartly put a pin to the balloon by saying, “Of course, you’d never see that kind of thing happening in the newspapers.” Stony silence from the bloke from The Sunday Times.

I imagine it’s going to be the cool new thing for all of the papers to do now, just because last week the Queen happened to be the victim of the common media trick of making boring footage seem interesting using clever editing. This kind of thing must have happened to thousands and thousands of people in the past. But as soon as it happens to the Queen people are shocked, just shocked!

Whenever outlets like The Sunday Times question competitors over the honesty of their editing, they will have hypocrisy pouring out of every orifice. It is like the bandwagon against premium rate phone quizzes that started earlier this year. The papers bleated on and on about it — quite rightly, because they are scams. But rather conveniently, they failed to turn their guns on similar premium rate phone lines used by the very newspapers who were criticising broadcasters.

A lot of people are really snooty about Big Brother. But I have always respected it quite a lot. It is not merely a stupid programme full of stupid people. It is a lot smarter than almost every other reality TV show out there.

Most reality television shows are about which celebrity can eat the grossest animal gonads, or completely fucking up somebody’s family life, or just embarrassing poor unwitting members of the public. In Big Brother, the ‘game’ element is seeing how people interact with each other. By any other name, this is anthropology.

Besides, for somebody as intensely misanthropic as me, Big Brother can be nothing but excellent viewing. I have come to see it as an annual affirmation of my beliefs about the human race.

Anyway, there is something that I have noticed about the housemates that I can’t really understand. Every Friday night, most (though not all) of the housemates get dolled up and dress really smartly.

In one way, you might expect this. If a housemate is up for eviction and they are expecting to leave the house, meet a big crowd and get interviewed by Davina, it is understandable.

But it cannot be put down to them appearing on television, because they are appearing on television 24/7 anyway. And here is the puzzle. It is not just potential evictees that dress up on a Friday night. Most housemates do it, regardless of whether they have been nominated or not. I don’t think I understand why.

I’ll admit to a prejudice here. I loathe dressing up. Looking smart is all very well, but dressing up in posh clothes is just pretentious. It is like those chavvy people who hire limousines. They are lying to themselves and to others.

Anyway, why do Big Brother contestants often choose to dress up for the Friday eviction show? You might say it is because the Friday show is the most important and most watched episode of the week. In essence, the housemates are guaranteed to appear on television, and to a larger audience than other times.

But their superficially smart appearance is ruined by the fact that everyone has just spent the past fifteen minutes of the same programme watching highlights of them sitting around in their boxers scratching their crack.

I was also amused by that time when Shabnam had her make-up confiscated by Big Brother. Shabnam protested quite strongly. This was despite the fact that whenever I tuned into the live feed she had a face covered in so much cream that she looked like the goth from The IT Crowd.

One of the side-effects of appearing on Big Brother is that we see contestants at their worst. Dressing up on a Friday is like putting a sprig of parsley on a plate of mud.

If housemates dress up on Friday because they are guaranteed to appear on television, it follows that they ought to dress up when they have a big argument — another event which is almost guaranteed to be televised. I can just imagine it. “Let’s not have this argument just now; I haven’t changed out of the t-shirt that I spilt Pot Noodle down.”

So the attractive-but-punchable one from Big Brother, Emily, has been booted out and will now be known as the attractive-but-racist one. I can’t help thinking that Channel 4 have overreacted a bit. But I suppose that’s the sort of thing that happens when Ofcom are in charge.

Even though she was easily the best eye-candy in the house, she was intensely annoying right from the very start. Her introduction video was almost painful to watch.

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There are so many bad bits in this video, but the absolute worst is this:

There's a new music that's taking over this country and it's called indie.

That one sentence alone was enough to send me bouncing round the room with rage when I saw it. It was almost enough to have me lapsing back into the state I was in when I was 15, when I was turned off by indie music and everything it stood for. It took me years to even accept it when an indie band did make good music.

I might have to brace myself, because whenever I criticise any music on this blog, some poor soul feels like he's been violated and launches into personal attacks in the comments. But I will do this anyway.

Here is my list of things I hate(d) about indie music and why Emily personifies its problems:

1. This generation does not have its own sound. Emily says "There's a new music", but if there is then indie is not it. It might not have been called indie since the start, but the approach and the style of music have been around since at least the late 1970s. Not much has changed since then. A lot of youths think that this is their sound, but it is the same sound that their dads were listening to. Shame on our generation for being the first since at least the 1950s not to have its own scene!
2. Indie is not as gritty as its listeners would like to think. Many indie fans see the music as raw, gritty, rebellius and working-class. But over the past five or ten years, indie music has become as bland and commercialised as the pop and R&B that its fans deride. But many indie bands are made up of middle-class people pretending to be working class. The Kooks are the worst example. Kaiser Chiefs might predict a riot, but it is the politest, most middle-class riot you will ever see.

   Of course, there is nothing wrong with rich people forming a band. But Emily is deluded. She acts embarrassed about her wealth while simultaneously flaunting it. "I'm not a rich bitch," she says, before describing how she owns hundreds of handbags and shoes. Davina McCall then reveals that Emily's teeth cost £4,000.

3. Indie is not as radical as its listeners would like to think. At least Emily does not suffer from this, as she is open about the fact that she considers herself to be right-wing, and intends to vote Conservative in the next election. While this information on its own shouldn't make her a villain, there is something wrong with a 19-year-old complaining about "the youth of today" for not embracing education. And now we have the racism issue to top it off.
4. Indie music thinks it's superior to your music. This is an all-too-common thing to hear from an indie fan: "the music I listen to is smarter and more intelligent than [dance / hip-hop (delete as appropriate)]. Clever people like me listen to it. Stupid people like you listen to [dance / hip-hop].” Emily clearly thinks she is at the top of the tree. At one point she asks, rhetorically, “Isn’t it time you put some intelligent women on the show?” Davina McCall also reveals that Emily gives herself 10 out of 10 for intelligence. Not that we saw much evidence of this intelligence while she was in the house.
5. Indie heros are wankers. Emily hoped that the house would contain “dirty kind of Pete Docherty kind of rocker boys.” Need I say more?

What I find most strange about this whole Celebrity Big Brother hoo-ha is the idea that Channel 4 should apologise and the fact that the Carphone Warehouse have felt the need to withdraw their sponsorship of Big Brother.

So Carphone Warehouse finds the racism broadcast by Channel 4 deplorable. Presumably Carphone Warehouse want to dissociate themselves from the racist comments made by Big Brother contestants.

But Carphone Warehouse has been sponsoring Big Brother in some form or another for years. So are we to assume from this that Carphone Warehouse condoned the several instances of bad behaviour that have happened in the Big Brother house since they began sponsoring the programme?

Did anybody, for instance, say that because Carphone Warehouse sponsored Big Brother then they must have supported Sandy taking a massive slash in the kitchen bin? Of course not. If you sponsor a reality programme, you ought to expect reality — good and bad — to be associated with your brand. But nobody will expect you to like everything that makes up reality. None of us do; why should Carphone Warehouse be made to feel any different?

Clearly, the entire row has been blown out of proportion. This whole thing does stink a little bit like a coordinated campaign. People are amazed that Ofcom has received so many complaints about Big Brother now, but that is just the nature of campaigning today. The internet spreads the word and empowers people to do this sort of thing very easily.

Just like the complaints about Jerry Springer: The Opera, the numbers will be misleading because of the nature of the campaign. In future, complaints on all matters will be measured in tens of thousands — not dozens like they were just a few years ago.

As Chris Dillow says, criticising Channel 4 is just shooting the messenger. Besides, surely Channel 4 should be applauded for bringing the issue to the fore.

It is a cliche to say that Big Brother isn’t a “reality” television programme. But it is really. What we are seeing here is what Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara et al really think. Of course, were they not shielded from “the outside world”, the protagonists would have stopped bullying Shilpa Shetty as soon as the issue of race came up. But because they are not aware of the public reaction we continue to see their true colours; we are seeing the real reality.

I have always liked Big Brother compared to other reality television shows because it focuses on these kinds of issues that affect us all. Other reality shows focus instead on, for instance, which celebrity can eat the grossest animal gonads. Big Brother is smarter than that.

So imagine now if Channel 4 had decided to censor Big Brother by deleting all of the comments made by Jade et al against Shilpa Shetty — which I presume is what those who are complaining would rather have happened. That would have completely gone against the entire point of the programme. Channel 4’s job is to show us what is going on inside the house and to ask us what we think of it (by the mechanism of the regular public vote for eviction). What else are they supposed to do?

As things stand at the moment, you can probably expect Jade to be evicted unequivocally and she will face a fierce and worldwide public reaction. She will have paid her price for her racist comments and for losing the game of Big Brother (ironic, given the fact that Jade — having been on Big Brother before — was said to have an upper hand over the celebrities in terms of winning the game). Everybody looking on will have a pretty good idea that racism causes a great deal of offense.

Had Channel 4 censored the comments, nobody would know anything about it and Jade et al would have got off with their bullying. Then there would have been a real reason to criticise Channel 4 — for covering up the misdemeanors of the racist housemates and allow them to get away with it without having to face the reality of the offense their comments make.

Put simply, it is not Channel 4’s fault of some of the people in the Big Brother house turned out to have racist views — although it’s clearly not as simple as racism, as Robert Sharp excellently points out in a good post looking at class and other issues surrounding the row as well, as does Cassilis.

As for those people who claim that people like Jade Goody and Jo O’Meara are role models for young people — bollocks! If anybody has Jade Goody as a role model — which I highly doubt! — then they are already a lost cause.

I saw Big Brother’s Little Brother the other day. On it was Paul Morley, who rather optimistically saw this as a potential turning point. He said perhaps this was the turning point where people realise that celebrating non-entities is pointless because there’s nothing to celebrate about them.

I also saw a few people comment on the fact that it was the foreign housemates — Shilpa, Jermaine and Dirk — who were smarter than most of the British housemates. I think this says something about celebrity culture in the UK. I’m not a snob about this, but the Celebrity Big Brother gig probably only appeals to a certain kind of celebrity.

An funny comedian, for instance, would not be seen on CBB today — although you did when Big Brother was still new. That’s because Big Brother is now associated with the Jade Goodys of this world. Shilpa, Jermaine and Dirk probably didn’t realise this. Shilpa said in the house, “This is what the modern UK has come to?”

Fortunately, Shilpa is incorrect in this instance — because she has only been living with the real dregs that British celebrity has to offer. It is a pity that it is this shameful side of British culture that the world is seeing. Come the eviction, everybody will be reminded of the downright mediocrity — and unpopularity — of Jade Goody.

Update 23/01: I can’t believe it took me this long to realise the mistake I made in the title…