Unless you ve been based in outer Mongolia for the past four weeks, you ll already be familiar with Big Brother, the game show if that s the appropriate term on Channel 4, in which 10 adult men and women, share a house under constant scrutiny.

The ultimate goal for all concerned is survival, with an attractive bounty of #70,000 going to the last remaining resident. To whittle down the numbers, each Tuesday Big Brother invites each of the tenants into the sound-proof Diary Room, where they are asked to nominate the two co-habitees they would like to see turfed out. Two nominations emerge from this process and it is then left up to the viewers to decide which of the residents is a goner. At the time of writing, five have been voted out, while one, Nicholas Bateman (or Nasty Nick to his tabloid mates) has been evicted by the producers of the show for orchestrating conspiracies to get other contestants eliminated.
But then, you already knew that. Everybody knows, as Big Brother quickly established itself as the greatest peep show on earth; and probably the most gripping multi-ringed media circus in living memory. Utterly impossible to ignore, one can only surmise that the last time a television series attracted such blanket media coverage worldwide was when one JR Ewing felt the searing pain of hot lead in his belly.
Interestingly, perhaps the only thing that people of sound mind seem happy to agree on is that Big Brother makes for agonisingly awful but grimly compelling TV. Apart from the weekly injection of tension and excitement that coincides with the nominations and subsequent departure, day to day life in the Big Brother bungalow is tedious in the extreme. It s hardly surprising: daily life in most homes is dull as dishwater. What hope can there be, then, for a residence that is bereft of everything the average household relies on for stimulation: visitors, television, radio, telephone, newspapers and idle gossip.
Consider this: the dwellers in the Big Brother house know nothing of Loyalist feuding, flooded U-boats or crashed Concordes. They are oblivious to the fact that Chelsea lost at Bradford and have no idea that Robbie Williams may or may not be giving Ginger Spice regular seeings to. No surprise then, that they have been roundly accused of being self-obsessed, intellectually challenged and narcissistic. On reflection, though, this is hardly fair, as they have little else to talk about other than themselves, their pasts and their prospects for the future.
It is inconceivable that anybody with even a passing interest in modern culture remains unaware of the Big Brother phenomenon. However, there are many who have glanced into the goldfish bowl and decided the activities within hold no interest for them. Ironically, those of us with our noses pressed firmly to the glass are of the exact same opinion, and yet we allow ourselves to succumb daily. Oliver James, a psychologist writing in the London Evening Standard suggested that Big Brother fans, among which he is numbered, are folk with a fragile grasp on reality and an unhealthy interest in the doings of others who probably need to get a life of our own. In The Sunday Times, television critic AA Gill comments on the show were rather more glib: We should have known, he said. After all, they did tell us that Big Brother was the biggest thing on Dutch TV.
Unsurprisingly, Channel 4 have billed Big Brother as a social experiment of monumental importance, and have clearly schooled Davina McCall, who acts as Channel 4 s link with the contestants, in the art of bestowing a gravity upon proceedings which they don t deserve. At no time was this more apparent than during her post-eviction interview with Nicholas. Quite rightly, he dismissed her persistent questioning of his moral probity out of hand, remaining adamant that he had only been disqualified from a game show. But, but, but Davina contested. But nothing, he insisted, it s only a game show.
And like everyone else who s thrown in their two cents, it s hard to disagree with Nasty Nick Bateman. When push comes to shove, Big Brother is car crash television that offers no more or no less insight into the human condition than Bruce s Price Is Right.
Now, who do you think is gonna win?

LIFE IMITATING, EM, LIFE
Southern Comfort, the drinks company who sponsor Big Brother have pledged #50,000 to the first two contestants to have sex on the show. In response, British Culture Secretary Chris Smith joined the fray, saying that if Big Brother overstepped the mark on the grounds of taste and decency then he would pull the plug on the show. Ironic, don tcha think?