January 14, 2005


'Bullying' TV show loses its appeal

NOT worth watching: That's the verdict on Celebrity Big Brother now that Germaine Greer has walked out.

Dr Greer left her incarceration in the television show's house prison after less than a week, accusing the producers of bullying.

While some critics and commentators have condemned the feminist academic as naive, Ms Greer's dignified exit has not only deprived the show of its biggest single attraction, she has also opened a wider debate.

The tragic figure of horse racing journalist John McCrirrick probably provided the biggest clue to the cruelty that the housemates were encouraged to practice upon each other.

His revelations about his childhood at a boarding school for boys, where he was sent as a six-year-old, were prescient.

Dr Greer described the celebrities' behaviour as childish. She was right: they did descend to the levels of boys' inhumanity to boys that were so painfully documented by William Golding in his classic novel Lord of the Flies.

She also said that she wondered whether an increase in school bullying had coincided with the appearance of Big Brother on television.

Although she gave a couple of brief interviews after leaving the house, the longer, more considered analyses that she will undoubtedly write are worth waiting for.

The surprise arrival of Jackie Stallone, the former mother-in-law of housemate Brigitte Nielson, and its effect on the group dynamics, co-inciding as it did with one of the more demeaning tasks that they had been ordered to perform, has provided no replacement for a woman of far greater stature.

Without the majestic Germaine, the programme has fallen by the wayside, returning to its shallow excesses, pettiness and not being worth watching.