Big Brother – it’s ecology for the hard of thinking
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The Ranger has a low opinion of Big Brother. The first series was novel, but frankly, everything since then has been downhill, until we arrive this week at ‘Celebrity Big Brother 2006’, featuring the bizarre combination of famous people Dennis Rodman, Rula Lenska, and George Galloway MP, for goodness sakes.
Discussing this phenomenon with the Ranger’s media advisor, an analogy suggested itself, intriguing enough to note down in this journal. The Ranger well recalls the pleasure of being a junior ecologist, capturing bugs and beasts in jars, and keeping them in the shed for a daity visit and examination. The similarity between this entertaining pursuit and Big Brother is striking. There are a few familar characters – Michael Barrymore, perhaps, is a woodlouse, familar, yet slightly creepy. Jodie Marsh is a wasp – buzzing about, painted in bright warning colours, and everyone wonders why she exists. There are some more obscure ones – Traci Bingham, that well known celebrity, could maybe represent a lacewing, or a mayfly or any other of those rather obscure flying insect orders with names that end in -optera. And as for Maggot, well, perhaps nothing need be said about him. And what do we do with our imprisoned invertebrate victims? We torment them with silly tasks, like woodlouse racing. And when you tire of peering through the glass at their sullen and unco-operative forms; why, you fling them together in adversity, to see if they will either (a) fight or (b) have sex. Either will do, and they look pretty much the same anyway. If they don’t, shake the jar a bit. they’ll soon get the idea. TV, huh? Nothing new under the sun.