Rachel W wants me to solemnly promise to avoid Big Brother completely this summer, for the sake of my general mental health. It became one of those addictions that one just keeps up without knowing why, like junk food that leaves you hungry and no less unhappy. We’ll see. If there’s someone I find attractive on it this year I will probably find it hard to resist.
What started out as a sober, social experiment where people were allowed to read books became a book-banning showcase for breast-enhanced blonde flibbertigibbets and shrieking TV wannabes. As the unusually sane former housemate Jon Tickle said on the brilliant “Big Brother – Where Are They Now” documentary, pleasant people who get on with each other make for bad TV.
Interesting to find out about Anna N, the sensible Irish lady from the first series who sang songs on her guitar about hating being on TV. She seems to have been barely off Irish TV ever since, as a presenter.
Upset and appalled to see the video footage of the Moscow gay rights attacks, on the BBC News site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6698173.stm
Peter Tatchell, Richard Fairbrass amongst others, punched full in the face by Russian fascist thugs while they’re just standing around talking to journalists about, well, how wrong it is to be punched in the face for being gay.
What’s worse is that the police have arrested the peaceful demonstrators, and not the thugs – even though the latter were caught on camera. And though it’s hardly on the same scale, I think of the times at school I was put in detention for being attacked by idiot bullies:
(A Suffolk classroom, sometime in the 80s. A lesson is in progress. Two boys, who do not wish Young Mr Edwards well, are sitting behind him. Within kicking distance. So they kick him.)
Me, aged 14: OW!
Teacher: Be quiet! One more word from you, Dickon, and you’ll be in detention.
Me: But –
Teacher: Don’t FUSS! I’m warning you.
(the boys kick him again)
Me: OW!
Teacher: Right, you’re disrupting the lesson. Go and stand outside the Head’s office. I’ll deal with you later.
Me: But it wasn’t me! Those two kicked me!
Teacher: Don’t tell tales. Get out. And stop whining.
I’m sadly aware that this isn’t a unique experience, and never understand the motivations of such teachers – do they genuinely believe a pupil is shouting in pain on purpose, or trying to stitch up some obvious bullies?
Perhaps they just don’t like the victims in question, dismissing them as milksops and whiners, and are pleased to find a reason to eject them. Just as Mayor Luzhkov of Moscow is a self-confessed homophobe, regarding homosexuality as ‘the work of Satan.’ He turns a blind eye to the local fascists, and instead arrests the likes of Mr Tatchell. Because to be punched in the face makes you a ‘troublemaker’.
It’s easy to make jokes about the singer from Right Said Fred, the “I’m Too Sexy” band, but I admire Mr Fairbrass far more than any more cool and with-it popstar of the day who plays anti-Nazi benefit concerts or Pride in the UK. Ask them to go on the annual gay march in Moscow and risk genuine fascist persecution, face to fist, and it’s a different matter entirely. I take my hat off to Mr Tatchell and Mr Fairbrass – gay men who make most straights look like, dare I say it, a bunch of poofs.
