Celebrity Big Brother promotes the infamous, and like other reality shows lauds the ludicrous
SINEAD O’NEILL
DailyIreland
12/01/2006
If you spend more time with your remote control than with your friends, then chances are you're glued to the latest glut of reality programmes to hit our television screens.
These aren't just 'ordinary' fly-on-the-wall shows, however.
Nope, rather than being subjected to the everyday activities of Joe Public, January's TV gems have introduced us to all manner of celebrity has-beens, most of whom look no more familiar than your next door neighbour.
The worst of the bunch is so-called ‘Celebrity' Big Brother, which features well-known names such as Faria Allam (famous for sleeping with a football manager), Dennis Rodman (famous for sleeping with a former Baywatch star) and Jodie Marsh (famous for sleeping with just about everyone).
With a line-up this bad, it's no wonder bosses asked the contestants to take part in a special show and tell challenge in which they performed a sketch explaining exactly what they do in the outside world.
Further evidence of Big Brother's descent into celebrity Z-list territory is the addition of ‘fake' star Chantelle, a twenty-something wannabe who's been pretending to be part of made-up band Kandyfloss.
It's a testimony of the show's ‘who?' factor that none of Chantelle's fellow housemates have been able to tell that she's a fraud.
Switch over to ITV1 and more famous faces are putting themselves through hell in an effort to become the next big thing (if they even were big in the first place).
The appalling Soapstar Superstar features ten actors trilling their way through a series of pop classics before being savaged by Cilla Black, a former Top Of The Pops producer and some American bloke who thinks he's the next Simon Cowell.
If you cringed at Celebrity Big Brother, you'll be under the covers at this farce of a programme.
So far, we've had Coronation Street's Wendi Peters being told “you're not a tramp, you're a champ", Emmerdale's Sammy Winward showing that she really is just a pretty face and former EastEnders star Michael Greco failing miserably to establish himself as the next big charttopper.
By the time you read this, the misery will nearly be over but it seems there's even more showbiz stars-do-reality mayhem to come.
Dancing On Ice – in which Torvill and Dean attempt to teach a group of (apparently) big names how to ice skate – begins on ITV1 on January 14, The Games bounces back to Channel 4 in mid-March and Celebrity Fit Club returned with another batch of flabby recruits earlier this week.
In fact, there are so many celebrity reality shows these days, you wonder where they get them from. Oh wait, that's right, they don't... they just use any old name who has managed to make it into the papers at least once in their life.
Score two if they’ve already managed to chalk up a previous reality appearance (Rebecca Loos, Fran Cosgrove and Calum Best take note).
Such blatant trawling of anyone with any ounce of notoriety has sucked the life out of reality television as we know it.
While Big Brother and Pop Idol were ground-breaking when they first launched, they're now stale and beginning to show their age.
The addition of household names defeats the purpose of their concept – placing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and seeing how they react.
What’s more, there’s only so much brashness, over-the-top behaviour and blatant touting-for- work viewers can take.
So isn’t it about time we saved ourselves the pain and switched over to something more worthwhile instead?
