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newsandstar
Published on 23/08/2005

No 10? Vote Anthony Hutton

All the rewards nowadays are for notoriety. We live in a world of the chavs and the chav nots. And the chavs have got it all.

Do we glorify our true national heroes; the adventurers, the explorers, the entrepreneurs who create employment?

Well a little bit perhaps. But only when the media can’t get hold of the latest candid shots of Wayne Rooney’s Colleen shopping ’til she drops, of King David and Queen Victoria making their latest public appearance, or of some brain dead Big Brother housemate undertaking yet another publicity stunt.

OK, so his mum maintains he’s not a bad lad at home. Just an ordinary Geordie who likes his beer, his football and the girls.

But what has it come to when they appoint a Big Brother winner as an “Ambassador For Young People” as happened in the case of Anthony Hutton’s local youth forum last week?

Instead of celebrating the achievements of young people, it’s giving out the message that we prefer the shameless and the brainless.

A message that booze and promiscuity are OK. That a TV programme which implies the appearance of a trio of teenage mums, the youngest of them just 12, is something brave and admirable. That morality and manners really are extinct.

The inhabitants of the latest Big Brother house had the combined brain cells of one average Herdwick.

Yet every day since the show finished it’s been nice but dim Anthony and gold-digging publicity-seeking Makosi that have occupied the headlines.

I guess it’s a disagreeable part of human nature to look on at the antics of these people with a certain degree of fascination. We’re all a bit guilty of that.

But when the winner of a so-called “reality” show gets more votes than the Prime Minister you have to ask some serious questions about whether British people are fit to live in a democracy, and some even more serious questions about the merits of Tony Blair!

That always makes me laugh, that comparison, its not the first time its been aired.

Im not entirely disagreeing with the newshound in question, it has to be said, but I would love to know where they get the information that the winner got more votes than the prime minister, because Endemol have been curiously silent about the actual number of votes cast in the last few series.

I certainly dont agree with Mr Hutton being bestowed with that honour, but thats another thread and I dont think I would be adding anything new to that pot with my opinion.

As for the whole media frenzy thing...

I would have no problem with it, if it wasnt factoring in the housemates appearance in the house. Throughout all of the series one or more of the housemates has at some point played to the cameras, or been a character, rather than their true selves. For the most part, I think this tends to wear off within a short space of time, and the real housemate starts to show themselves.

Not so much the last couple of series. If Tablegate and Poolgate and Fight Night had never happened, then the interest would not have been so high when the housemates left. I think this is the first series so far however, where I have seen a housemate play a continous game throughout their entire stay in the house, and Makosi played a blinder in that regard. The fact that we never saw the real her, for anywhere near the time we would have needed to be able to ascertain that it was indeed the real her we were seeing, has left the tabloids HUGE scope for trying to find things out about her.

I suppose the same could be said for Anthony. I know as much about him now as I did when he entered the house. I have no desire to find out more about him, but other people will do, because they fancy him, or thought he was a good housemate, and they will buy the papers about him.

Papers print what they think the people want to read. For the most part, they are right. Not in every case, but if it didnt sell papers, it probably wouldnt be there. We cant slate the tabloids for telling us the things we are prepared to pay to read about.