CBB: Always on Point.

This time last year I was revelling in an awesome season of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) broadcast on the Channel 5 network. In the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi that season focused very heavily on human sexuality and disability within a house inspired by Tsarist-era Russian opulence. Sadly this year a relentless six months of war both in Gaza and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) has taken more out of me then Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour ever could. As a result I was doubting whether I'd have the energy to fully commit to another month of mind games and inter-personal politics.

To make matters worse this season was launched on Wednesday January 7th (7/1/14) - the day of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, France. Obviously this meant that no-one was really in the mood for such frivolity. It also meant that many of the issues around the limits of freedom of speech and the right to offend that this season of CBB had hoped to examine at a gentle pace were called into sharp and aggressive focus.

The main theme of this season is fairytales such as Snow White, Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk which often form the basis for pantomime shows. A long standing Christmas tradition in the UK pantomimes are comedic stage plays. However they are intended to be very raucous affairs with everything exaggerated for comic effect and the audience being actively encouraged to heckle and generally join in. Although they are primarily aimed at children it is also common for them to include some often very rude, satirical jokes about current affairs to amuse the parents. For example I think any US production of Sleeping Beauty this year would include lots of jokes about Bill Cosby.

At the heart of this CBB there is Katie Hopkins who with her big nose and facial warts could have been born to play the wicked queen in Snow White. However in real-life Ms Hopkins is simply a professional troll. That is to say that she is a newspaper columnist, TV talking head and Twitter personality who specialises in expressing controversial and often offensive opinions. So for example if a daytime TV talk show is doing a piece on obesity they will get Hopkins on to say that all fat people are lazy and greedy and only have themselves to blame.

Obviously this type of expression leads to a lot of controversy with frequent calls for Hopkins to be sacked from her newspaper column and banned from TV etc. Recently when Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferky was diagnosed with Ebola Hopkins Tweeted a comment about sweaty Scots suddenly not being so keen on independence now they had to transport Ms Cafferky to England for treatment. This led to a number of people actually calling the police demanding Hopkins to be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred. Given the almost constant threats of physical violence these Scottish Nationalists (known as "Cybernats") employed during the referendum campaign this was highly ironic.

One area where the freedom of expression and the right to offend have been severely tested within the UK media recently has been on the issue of gender equality and I suppose sexuality. At the one extreme the Operation Yew Tree prosecutions of people like Rolf Harris, Dave Lee Travis and Stuart Hall have revealed that within the UK media industry during the 1970's and 1980's it was not only acceptable to objectify women in the workplace but also harass, grope and even rape them.

However 40 years on we seem to have swung towards to opposite extreme where it seems to have become impossible to say or do anything without being accused of being a sexist/racist/homophobic* (*delete as appropriate) bigot.

So for example you have the UK Independence Party (UKIP) member Godfrey Bloom  who at a UKIP conference gave a speech calling all the assembled women "sluts who don't clean behind the fridge." Originally the English slang term "slut" meant a woman who did no housework and therefore kept an unclean house. Over time that association with dirtiness has led to the term meaning a woman who is sexually promiscuous. Therefore while it didn't make me laugh it was quite clear that Bloom was making a reasonably intelligent joke that his invited audience found amusing. However this sparked a national media campaign calling a Bloom a sexist and a misogynist and demanding that he was immediately dismissed from the party.

On a more serious level there was the recent case of Eleanor De Freitas who made an entirely false allegation of rape. However before she could stand trial to determine whether this false allegation was malicious and therefore criminal Ms De Freitas committed suicide. This prompted a wave of outrage and allegations of "victim blaming" by feminists who just could not accept that it had been well established that Ms De Freitas had not at any point been raped and was therefore not the victim.

In the background to all this there's been the Dapper Laughs fiasco. Daniel O'Reilly who created the Dapper Laughs character is essentially just a loud mouth with a YouTube account but for some reason the ITV network decided that he was a comedian and gave him his own TV show. After about the 700th 'joke' about women enjoying being raped an Internet campaign forced the network to cancel the show. For a show like CBB that is heavily dependent on audience participation this is obviously a huge issue.

This season of CBB set out to explore the issue of freedom of expression and the right to offend and how it relates to gender equality/sexual politics through two contestants in particular - Ken Morley and Nadia Sawalha. Ken is a well known soap opera actor from the operation Yew Tree period while Nadia is most often seen as a panelist on the ITV show "Loose Women." Rather like "The View" in the US Loose Women is essentially a group of menopausal women banging on about how strong and empowered they are. It is obviously broadcast at lunchtime so the strong and empowered women who watch it can do so right after they've finished the housework and before they have to pick the kids up from school.

The idea being that Ken had been instructed to go into the house and act like a pantomime villain version of a Yew Tree era TV personality full of racist and sexist comments. As a women  who clearly enjoys her indignation this would prompt Nadia to be outraged and the other contestants would gravitate between those two poles while giving their own thoughts on the issue. For example on last night's show being a somewhat older man Alexander O'Neal suggested to Chloe Goodman who's essentially a nude model that maybe it wasn't the best idea for her to get drunk and strip off all her clothes in a bedroom full of men she'd only just met.

The problem arose in the form of Jeremy Jackson. Although I haven't researched it I gather that Jeremy was a child star on the US show "Baywatch" who went very badly off the rails in terms of drink and drug addiction and has since made a career out of his efforts to overcome his demons. The first thing that both Perez Hilton and Michelle Visage who are Americans familiar with Jeremy's history said when they saw him is that they didn't think he was mentally stable enough to be on the show.

Although I didn't see it due to the usual confusion about when something happens and when it will be broadcast Jeremy rapidly proved both Perez and Michelle correct. Apparently whilst very drunk Jeremy ushered Chloe into a quiet area off camera, ripped open the bathrobe she was wearing and proceeded to grope her exposed breasts. That is an example of a criminal sexual assault so the police had to be called in and Jeremy had to be immediately kicked off the show. I understand that Jeremy has now accepted a police caution for assault contrary to common law as opposed to sexual assault. While I'm not familiar with the details this sounds about right to me because although it's a criminal offence it's too minor to warrant a prison sentence so I think it's one of those situations that's better resolved by a father's fists then a Magistrates Court.

Obviously suddenly going from "contestant on a TV game show" to "witness at a crime scene" was a huge shock for all the other housemates. Unfortunately either because he mis-read the situation or because his agent hadn't been in touch to give him new instructions Ken didn't pick up on the change in mood and continued in pantomime mode. As she lacks the self-awareness to understand her role Nadia obviously also continued with her indignant outrage. This led to an extremely poisonous atmosphere in the house with Nadia at one point demanding the police were called to arrest Ken and Perez making possibly the worst attempt to threaten Ken with physical violence I have ever seen. For that Perez received a formal warning.

By Monday (12/1/115) it was clear that either Ken or Nadia had to go. So when Ken told a joke about how he used to wind up a black colleague who liked to play loud music by phoning him up, putting on a posh voice and telling him to "Turn down his pounding Negro rhythms" the producers decided that in that context "Negro" was a racially offensive term and Ken was also kicked off the show.

So in just 5 days two of the contestants have been kicked out and tomorrow's eviction has been cancelled. I'm now going to sit back and watch my Twitter timeline fill up with accusations of victim blaming.


16:55 on 13/1/15 (UK date).