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Of rage, ratings and reality shows

Perhaps it was no-contest from the beginning — in one corner, a dour sombre-faced middle-aged British politician; in the other, a middling 31-year-old Indian actress past her prime but "considered," according to Channel 4's hyperbolic promotion of Celebrity Big Brother, "to have the best body in Bollywood." Even so it was a measure of our preoccupations that the three-day visit of Prime-Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown, who came at the head of a large business delegation, was eclipsed by the uproar over Shilpa Shetty, who hogged column centimetres and dominated television clips at home, in Britain, and even internationally. Was she really the subject of racial slurs in a tacky British reality show? Of course, she was. Some of her reality show housemates, most notoriously an ill-tempered, foul-mouthed dental nurse named Jade Goody, referred to her as "the Paki", instructed her to take "elocution classes," and told her to "go back to the slums." Such boorish remarks resulted in a flood of viewer complaints to media regulator Ofcom; they led, mercifully, to the ouster of Ms Goody by 80 per cent of the viewers in a phone-in poll. The response revealed the decency of ordinary people but the real question was: did l'affaire Shetty deserve to become a diplomatic incident?

The Indian reaction has been, well, over the top. Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma warned that the Government would take "appropriate measures"; Commerce Minister Kamal Nath strongly conveyed India's sensitivities about the racist remarks; angry protesters in Patna burnt effigies of someone called Big Brother; and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, apparently called in to douse the flames, reassured all concerned that "the [Shetty] incident has not [strained] and will not strain ties between the two governments... " Surely this is too much fuss over tawdry, tabloid television. The whole idea is to star people desperate for instant fame and quick money and grab eyeballs by every means possible — rudeness, bad taste, shocking conduct. Should we allow a Jade Goody, who had already achieved notoriety for her colossal ignorance, to rattle us? A person who believes that Rio de Janeiro is a football player, that Sherlock Holmes invented the toilet, and that Mona Lisa was painted by Pistachio? With Ms Shetty chivalrously withdrawing her charge that she was a victim of racism, the producers of the show are laughing — all the way to the bank. At least one million more people are watching Celebrity Big Brother after the Shetty-Goody row. "Big Brother is watching you," went the ominous phrase in George Orwell's 1984. In 2006, it seems almost everyone in Britain is watching Big Brother.

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