Unreal Lives

You know, I think I've been very restrained so far this Summer - I haven't said a word about the bloody 'reality' TV which is clogging up the television schedules. Usually, by this point in the year, I'd have ranted to the point of exhaustion on the subject in my editorials over on The Sleaze. But really, what's the point? These things are ultimately self-destructive, and this year's Big Brother has found both the format - and its 'fans patience - strained to the limit. With every passing year this programme has seemed to become more a freak show as, in their desperate attempt to keep viewers interested, the producers have trawled every mental health day care centre in the UK in search of contestants. From what little I've seen of it this year, the two favourites to win are some bloke who supposedly suffers from tourette's syndrome and what appears to be a mentally retarded girl - she really does appear to have have a mental age of about ten. The question is, of course, how can they make it even more bizarre next year, to try and keep the viewers watching? The obvious answer would be to simply film the whole thing in a psychiatric ward, with the inmates as contestants, having to perform tasks to get their medication, and so on. Those voted off by viewers would be led away in strait-jackets and forced to undergo electric shock therapy.

Alternatively, they could recruit a load of down and outs as contestants, house them in luxury and force them to perform demeaning tasks to prevent being thrown back out onto the streets. Anyone evicted would be stripped naked and chased off of the grounds by a pack of dogs. It would be a winner - trust me! There'd be enough care in the community psychos amongst the down and outs to provide plenty of entertainment for the viewers (although it would probably be a good idea to remove all sharp objects from the house and only allow them plastic cutlery). Still, I'll give Big Brother its due, at least it doesn't expect you to know who the participants are - their hope is that they'll become 'celebrities' as a result of appearing on it. However, ITV's Love Island, despite dropping its 'Celebrity' prefix this time around, clearly expects me to know who its participants are. - unfortunately, I don't. These are celebrities in only the loosest sense -apparently many of them are simply related to someone semi-famous. Frankly, based on the very little I've seen of it, the contestants look seem to me to be like a bunch of dickheads from the average housing estate: loud, drunk, stupid and talking about sex without ever actually doing it, whilst drifting from partner to partner. Quite why they had to fly this shower of faux-celebs to a tropical island to film this, I rally don't know - they could have saved themselves a lot of money by simply taking a feed from the CCTV cameras on one of my local estates.