- Thu Jul 18, 2002 6:27 pm
#17104
This is the article Channel 4's Big Brother website refused to publish. Nobody from the website was available to explain why but it seems Mark Borkowski's views are just a little too strong.
Warning (for Channel 4): this piece contains strong language that some may find offensive
Tuesday July 16, 2002
Big Brother
There's nothing like a bit of gossip and there's nothing better than having a big and nasty target to bitch about. That fat slag Jade, eh? What a thick slapper! Jesus Christ! Did you hear what she said last night? My God! And her arse, it's so big! Are they sure she didn't smuggle two watermelons into the house, one in each buttock? I hear she modelled once. What for? The Titanic? Yeah, but the Titanic only went down once. Ha ha. Blah blah.
All good clean fun. The only thing is, office gossip about the pervy dickhead in accounts, who got off with the cleaner in the lift shaft, tends to stay around the watercooler. The dickhead may be dimly aware of it but it doesn't go much further.
In Big Brother, the whole world's the watercooler, the office workforce is 6 million strong and word travels via a succession of caustic mass-media stories that ridicule and endlessly debate the personality, intellect, psychology, demeanour and physical attributes of the occupants.
Meanwhile, the objects of all this derision (although, of course, there are some good fairies to balance out the baddies) are utterly unaware of the way in which their respective characters are being slandered by the public and libelled in the media.
Sorry, they're not unaware. After all, they saw it all before on BB one and two. But I suppose, like long-term smokers, they think cancer is something that only other people get.
When they step outside, they're in for a nasty surprise. This is when they walk up to the watercooler and discover exactly what the world thinks of them.
It's not in overheard fragments of conversation. It's in page after page of speculation, report and commentary. Whether it's in the "Transexual fishmonger brother of BB housemate reveals sordid lovechild secret" style or just the grinding, relentless assassination of character.
Adele didn't have to wait until she got to the cuttings file. She walked out of the house into a public corridor of hostility and abuse of a kind more normally reserved for convicted paedophiles speeding away from court in a prison van.
What she quite shockingly and suddenly experienced was a wave of (in many cases) pure hatred, as she had been jettisoned from the goldfish bowl into a curious hybrid of WWF (baying, placard-carrying crowds supporting their chosen heroes in a pantomime of combat) and a Roman gladiatorial contest (a genuine battle to the death).
She may have been a double-dealing, two-faced, nasty piece of work - I don't care, to be honest - but she doesn't deserve this kind of vilification and I'm not altogether certain she'll be able to handle it.
Certainly, I don't see BB stepping in to give her a helping hand on how to cope with the return from reality TV to reality, despite the parade of onscreen psychologists brought in to comment on the housemates' behaviour and to warp the voting public's perceptions. Davina seemed as disturbed as the evictee.
Perhaps Adele is a superbly resilient individual and will ride it out no problem. But when you discover half the nation has branded you a bitch and you've been slagged off 24/7 in the media then it's tough to keep a sense of proportion.
Celebrities flip out for less and they've got money and agents and solicitors and publicists to hide behind.
They've also got talent as a consolation. Adele has no talent in the conventional TV star sense, so she's in a lose-lose situation. All the abuse, none of the acclaim. Don't tell me that doesn't leave some scar, some personal uncertainty, even if it's only to question why in God's name you ever decided to throw yourself into such a freak show.
At least in the old-time freak shows, the physically deformed (sorry, "differently abled"), who scraped a living on the boardwalk in sideshows run for the amazement of the great unwashed (you and me), had next to no choice in the matter.
As the PR line then ran "but for an accident of birth, you might be even as they are".
This was the world of Robert Earl Hughes (1,069 lbs and counting), Babe Ruth Printice (815 lbs), Rubber Man Arthur Luce, and Prince Randin (just a head and torso, no limbs). More recently, we had Lobster Boy Grady Stiles Junior (gunned down outside Tampa, Florida, in 1992).
Endemol - you're the sideshow owner. Adele - you're the freak. Five million of us - we're the prying punters. And what happens when the show's over? Well, at least Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey had the decency to set up a nursing home in Saratoga so the freaks could see out their last days in comfort and dignity.
A final note: if there's going to be a fourth freak show, then just remember the ante is upped.
Next year, the man with no legs is not enough. So roll up and see the Serial Killer, the Nonce, the Vicar, the Nymphomaniac, the Bulimic and the Bricklayer living it up together.
Oh and, of course, the minger with the fat arse. There's always room for a minger with a fat arse.
dave benson phillips
chrismoyles.net
] and stand, arms crossed, staring at the ginger ghet it'd be a genius piece of television.