You Have Been Evicted...

It started life almost a decade ago as potentially the most significant psychological experiment in the scientific history of the world. It could've given spectacular insights as to each and every idiosyncratic pore of human interaction and behaviour; a fabulously high-brow addition to Channel 4's drab educational line-up. Instead, it became a Victorian freak-show for the new millennium, drawing in millions with each increasingly bizarre incarnation. That's right. It's Big Brother.

With the recent news that next year's series will be Big Brother's swan song, it seems for better or worse, the love affair is over. But in the programme's wake, an entire generation is left divided and scarred by the show's enormous and disfiguring impact. The year 1999 was a much simpler time; when 'celebrity' was a term applied only to those who had sufficient fame, talent or cultural importance to deserve it. Since the dawn of the BB era, however, it's a word that's been devalued and destroyed to an extent no one could've predicted.

Real people selected to portray a cross-section of society. Fucking frightening.

Just as Warhol conjectured, it seems that nowadays anyone can be a 'celebrity' for at least fifteen minutes. Is it really fair lump in the likes of Robert De Niro and Denzel Washington with talentless, bright orange Hollyoaks actresses, slutty heiresses and pathetic, whining wannabes with their dignity and a summer to spare? I don't think so. But the celebrity debate is one that could take hours, so let's focus more on the rise and fall of the reality TV behemoth.

When it all started, this was something exciting; something original. Since then the format's been stretched and contorted beyond all recognition, with each series showcasing progressively weirder and more desperate housemates. While the show began its life providing cross-sectional windows into everything that's 'real' about Britain and its people, it soon became an unsettling sideshow attraction packed with cretinous gobshites.

Gay, blind, nymphomaniac, clumsy and stupid. If you weren't at least two of the above, there was nothing Big Brother could do for you by the end; there was always a quota to fill. This quest for freakish "equality" quickly robbed the show of the one thing that ever made it half decent; people couldn't relate to it anymore. Personally, I've never met a person with Tourette's - or a post-op transsexual, for that matter.

Simultaneously, the show's phenomenal pulling-power was giving people ideas. All of a sudden, anyone could hop onto the faux-celebrity bandwagon with an entire summer's TV exposure. Spend that summer making porridge in nothing but a thong, and the potential rewards were surely magnified. Now Big Brother contestants had one uniform desire; to land magazine deals and media jobs upon their unceremonious exit from the house.

If you saw them in the street, you'd double-take. Is that the entry criteria?

Channel 4's flagship show - one of very few that it actually produces itself - has been surviving on borrowed time now for some years. As open-ended entertainment was gradually replaced with predictable chaos, cringeworthy smut and banal wackiness, Big Brother was swelling with bland unwatchability. Add the rise in popularity of TV talent shows - another great way to make 'normal' people famous - and things began to look like they might boil over.

Now, as Big Brother enters the bitter winter of its life, can it be saved from the brink of destruction by a rival channel? Probably not. That certainly won't stop them trying though, and my bet's on Sky One. But hasn't enough damage been done? Do we really need more nine-year-old girls aspiring to be glamour models? Good riddance, I say.