Shilpa Shetty

LONDON: After, predictably, surviving the second round of eviction on Friday night, Shilpa Shetty is heavily tipped to win the celebrity `Big Brother' show on Sunday when viewers will vote to pick the winner from among the six remaining housemates.

Among the two evicted on Friday night was pop singer Jo O'Meara, who had joined Jade Goody in bullying Ms. Shetty telling her to "go home'' and mimicking her accent.

"I'm not racist"

Questioned about her behaviour by the show host Davina McCall, she admitted that she did not like Ms. Shetty but denied that she was racist, saying her own cousin was "half-Indian."

"I'm not a racist person at all. I know that I'm not,'' Ms. O'Meara said, but acknowledged that she was at odds with the Bollywood star.

``I'm not going to deny that she did aggravate me. I didn't trust her for a long time. You can't expect for everybody to be in that house and to click straight away. That's life.''

On being shown the clips of her behaviour and asked whether she thought it looked ``awful'', the 27-year-old former pop star said: ``It looks absolutely terrible but inside it didn't feel terrible. I am not a racist person. My cousin is married to an Indian man for one, and my cousins are half-Indian and their family is with me all the time."

Asked about her covertly racist remarks, she said she ``didn't ever mean it in that way'' and denied that she meant to make any personal attack on Ms. Shetty. ``I didn't even know I was doing it. It wasn't a personal attack at all.'' Ms. O'Meara, who received nearly 48 per cent votes for eviction, said she was ``glad'' it was all over.

Peacemaker also goes

Also evicted, by 28 per cent votes, was Cleo Rocos, a former TV star, who received praise for playing ``peacemaker'' between Ms. Shetty and her tormentors. She said ``tiny things'' led to tension.

``It was something small which became big,'' she said about the bullying of Ms. Shetty. Sunday's vote will see Ms. Shetty compete with five co-housemates: Danielle Lloyd, a former Ms. Great Britain and cheerleader for Ms. Goody; Jermaine Jackson, singer and brother of Michael Jackson; actor Dirk Benedict; singer Ian Watkins; and Ms. Goody's boyfriend Jack Tweedy.

On Saturday, the channel's chief executive Andy Duncan indicated that the `Big Brother' format was likely to be toned down following widespread criticism that it was designed to create controversy.

"Important challenges"

"There are important creative and tonal challenges about where `Big Brother' goes next." The channel could not but take into account what happened, he told The Times, London, but defended its handling of the Shetty-Goody race row, which sparked nearly 40,000 complaints to the media regulator Ofcom.

The police said they had contacted Ms. Goody and her mother Jackiey Budden in connection with their investigations into allegations of racism in the way they behaved with Ms. Shetty. Ms. Goody's mother was also on the show and evicted in the very first elimination round.

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