The northlondonhippy

It seems I’m not the only one writ­ing about Celebrity Big Brother.

Since my last entry, it appears that the entire world, from here to Mum­bai and back again, is talk­ing about one thing: Celebrity Big Brother!

Who would have thought that a hum­ble lit­tle tele­vi­sion show could cause such inter­na­tional chaos?

Not me, that’s for sure, but in the last day even Tony Blair and Gor­don Brown have weighed in on the sub­ject. Yes, Big Brother is the big story!

All of this con­tro­versy has turned what I would describe as an oth­er­wise fairly sub-standard series into his­tory mak­ing tele­vi­sion. It is now offi­cially the most com­plained about pro­gramme ever!

It’s also improved the view­ing fig­ures with a mil­lion or more peo­ple tun­ing into the high­lights show on Chan­nel 4 over the last cou­ple of nights.

As always, Ende­mol win, but they’re not the only ones.

As hor­ri­bly as Shilpa Shetty is being treated, when she emerges from the house, she will be more pop­u­lar and more well known then ever before. As an entertainment-business com­mod­ity, she will be demand here in the UK as well as in India.

And if she wasn’t a Bol­ly­wood super­star before, she cer­tainly is now! Accord­ing to the media, her fel­low coun­try­men and women are very upset at how she is being treated by her CBB co-stars. There have been protests, gov­ern­ment state­ments; even her mother did the rounds on TV here in the UK to defend Shilpa.

But Shilpa requires no defence; for she has done noth­ing wrong, except to agree to come to the UK and appear on CBB. If she asked me, I would have told her to give it a miss.

Shipa’s sup­port is not just com­ing from India, as there are many peo­ple in the UK from var­ied back­grounds, who are behind her as well. We’re not all racist louts!

The biggest loser of this series has got to be Jade Goody and it will take a lot of work and skil­ful PR for her to regain her sta­tus in the indus­try. She’ll play the race card her­self and remind us that she is one-quarter black, but that’s no excuse. There is no excuse.

I don’t actu­ally believe racism is at the heart of all of this, though it cer­tainly has played a part. At the root of the col­lec­tive hatred of Shipa by the evil three in the house is even more basic. She’s different.

If Shilpa were a posh, rich, white chick from Chelsea, they would all still hate her; they would just choose dif­fer­ent ways of insult­ing her. If any­thing, dif­fer­ences in class and deco­rum are the more obvi­ous rea­sons; the fact that Shilpa is from India, just gives them an aspect of her being to ver­bally attack.

Jade, Jo and Danielle are not very bright; they do not know much about the wider world around them and are woe­fully igno­rant of other cul­tures. If Shilpa were some class­less, rude, skank, they would be friends with her, regard­less of her skin colour.

The rumour is that Shilpa will be up against Jade for evic­tion on Fri­day night. I sin­cerely hope this is true, as I think Jade deserves the most shock­ingly bad recep­tion ever as she comes out of the house and Shilpa deserves to stay. Dialling fin­gers to the ready, my beloved hippyfans!

Actu­ally, Shilpa deserves to win! Let’s make it happen!

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