I wish Reality TV would eat itself!

By Matt Rogers
First created 11 December 2008 | Last updated 06 February 2010

So we’ve just finished the latest round of ‘celebrities’ drowning themselves in rats and insects in a jungle and acting like a bunch of ridiculous, lecherous fainéants; talentless fools clamouring pathetically for the warm and enveloping glare of a Media spotlight that so easily dismissed them at a previous time in their career.

We’ve also got The X Factor which, taking into account repeats, seems to take up at least 12 hours over 2 channels during the course of the weekend. I sit dumbfounded at some of the tragically awful performances that elicit high praise from the panel of judges, then when someone who can actually carry a tune comes on, they get savaged. Am I really that tone deaf? After going to so many gigs and watching loads of live performances, am I really that bad at recognising a poor performance when I see one?!?!

No article on Reality TV would be complete without mentioning the show that started it all (at least on a mass consumption scale), Big Brother. I tried to think who won it this year and I’ve got to say I haven’t got a Scooby. How many of them have we had now? 10? 12? 20? Every summer we’re subjected to hours and hours of morons and tits and dross, but we love it!!!

I came into work the other day, and I wanted to tell people I’d just watched The Wind That Shakes the Barley with Cillian Murphy, a film about the emergence of the IRA to combat the British after the First World War. It’s beautiful, haunting and filled with tragedy and violence, yet all people wanted to talk about was some joker who used to be on Eastenders nearly Ralphing when he ate a bug. Well whoopee shit!

It annoys me that as a nation we’re sucked into constantly watching these desperate people lampoon and make idiots out of themselves just so they can be on the TV. It’s cheap, easy to produce, monopolises the TV schedules and dominates viewing figures. Of course this indicates there is huge nationwide support for these programmes, but all I find myself getting when I watch them is really wound up.

Anything that falsely manipulates drama and engineers conflict gets a thumbs down in my book, but the fact that people think its all real and not entirely scripted is baffling. Who would genuinely be taken aback if Jordan and Peter Andre’s relationship turned out to be completely false and designed solely to keep them both in the headlines and make them more money following their stint on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’? Who would feign utter surprise if Cheryl Tweedy only married Ashley Cole to prove to critics she wasn’t a cheeky Geordie racist following her verbal attack on a Guildford waitress? Who would be shocked if Simon Cowell was actually the Devil?

I wonder what the people responsible for these programmes will think of next. After all, we’ve had talent shows, singing, ice-skating, dancing, cooking and even horse-riding competitions. Game shooting with TV quiz show hosts perhaps? Or ‘I’m A Celebrity, Help Me Organise This Floral Arrangement Before A Puppy Is Drowned In A Bath’.

I’ll tell you what they should definitely do and I would watch it with relish – take 20 of the worst criminals, paedophiles, murderers and rapists in the UK and dump them on an Island that has cameras everywhere. Install weapons at various points around the Island and offer an incentive for the last one standing. Early release, transfer to a minimum security prison, something. Then we the happy audience get to watch as they brutally slay each other, but because they’re evil bastards, its guilt-free viewing! Seriously, it’s win-win, we’re ridding the world of some truly horrible people and it could help with prison overcrowding. Fun for all the family.

Either criminals or anyone who has ever been on Celebrity Love Island. I’m not fussy.