A dose of Reality

I've been very intrigued by the furore over racism on Bog Brother this week. I can't imagine anyone in the UK has missed it but in case my overseas readers are wondering what the story is, Jade Goody, someone famous for being stupid has been very rude to Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood starlet, while the two of them are boarded up in the BB house. And now everybody is outraged by the show, saying it should be taken off the air, etc. Seems to me that the whole point of Big Brother is to provide an expose of the way people really behave. And this is the way people really behave, this is what Indian people in the UK often have to put up with. It's not a fiction show - its true, it's a documentary really of real people and how horrid they are.

What is frustrating though is the high profile and concern given to race issues (also this week Simone Clarke at the English National Ballet was exposed as a member of the BNP, and then Janet Street-Porter was arrested for racially abusing a neighbour) while gender issues are ignored and glossed over. I keep putting the TV on and seeing panel shows with possibly one out of five or six guests being female, sometimes none and I wonder whether I'm the only person who notices and is bugged by it.