Are you feeling Jade-d?

This week has been polarising for those on either side of the long running Big Brother debate. As someone who has written in recent months to support the series, it is intriguing to see how easy it is to deconstruct all of this latest controversy into further proof that Big Brother remains an important and vital element of Channel 4′s public service remit. Indeed, to me, the very fact that there is conflicting opinion on whether or not Jade and her coterie’s actions constitute actual racism or not, is indication that there is a complex issue being explored here, and that there is a healthy discussion to be had on what does and doesn’t constitute racial abuse.  Read more

“What’s a dimella?”

One of the most surprising aspects of what has, up until now, been a largely dull Celebrity Big Brother has been the reinvention of Jade Goody. Read more

Lawson the listener

There is a fashion currently to scorn Mark Lawson over the sporadic set of elongated interviews he is doing for BBC4, but frankly, I think each one I’ve seen has been brilliant. Read more

Celebrity Big Brother

Celebrity is a strangely-shaped biscuit whichever way you dunk it. I have found myself cringing at the screen twice lately, once in horror and once in delight, and both times guiltily. Read more

Celebrity Big Brother

In the end it wasn’t anything particularly remarkable or extraordinary that lifted Celebrity Big Brother out of the humdrum; it was a handful of unexpectedly human and subdued scenes that slipped through and caught you unawares. Read more

Celebrity Big Brother

It’s unfortunate that the return of Celebrity Big Brother has coincided with the peak of this year’s obsession with unmasking personalities as “real people”. Read more

Celebrity Big Brother

At the end of the summer last year, as we considered the preceding 10 weeks of Big Brother, suddenly the high times seemed all too distant and we began to wonder just what it was we’d been buying into. Read more