Celebrity Big Brother: Back For More.

On Thursday (27/8/15) the autumn season of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) launched on Channel 5. I'm really not sure if I'll have the time to get into this as I have done in previous seasons.

However I should probably start by saying that I actually thought the previous winter season had all the ingredients to be a great show. It had a very strong theme that looked at the limits of free speech and the right to cause offence. This is a big topic within UK workplaces with ethnic and sexual minorities often making up claims of racism or homophobia in order to give themselves an advantage. This is certainly something that is common to colleagues of Vester Flanagan - the recent Virginia, US shooter.

Beyond that main theme though they also had an interesting mix of personalities. For example in Chloe Goodman, Jeremy Jackson, Callum Best and Cami Li there was plenty of potential for love triangles and rivalries. In Perez Hilton you had a very confident gay man whilst in Kavana you had a much less confident, recently out gay man. Added to that you had Michelle Visage who is a veteran of the gay cabaret circuit which tends to specialise in helping gay men like Kavana grow in confidence until they become more like Perez.

The series did suffer from the worst luck though launching on the day of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, France. This obviously massively increased the tension with the show's main theme of the limits of free speech and the right to offend being played out on the news channels with assault rifles and explosives.

This added tension seemed to send Jeremy Jackson a bit crazy and on the second night he ended up sexually assaulting Chloe Goodman. It was only a very mild sexual assault but it was a criminal offence committed live on TV which meant the police had to be involved and Jeremy had to be kicked off the show. After that no-one was in the mood for Ken Morely's cartoonish misogyny and he had to be kicked out on like the fourth night.

Producers tried rescuing the show by bringing in glamour model Katie Price who became famous under the stage name "Jordan." Shortly afterwards ISIL executed Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh. With British/Jordanian dual national actress Nadia Sawalha also featuring heavily by the time we got to the end of the season it was less about who'd won and more about who'd managed to stay alive.

Within CBB there is a long history of America sending over a faded celebrity as a sort of envoy to keep an eye on what they're British cousins are up too. In this season that has been the main theme with there being equal numbers of British and American contestants and it being billed as a battle between the US and the UK.

I have to say that I don't think this is a particularly strong theme because not even I encounter the cultural differences between the UK and the US on a regular basis. I suppose though in the UK we do consume a lot of American celebrity culture.

To hype up this clash between two nations the show borrows heavily from boxing with ring walks, over the top announcers etc. This invokes memories of the Rocky films particularly Rocky IV where the heroic US boxer did battle with the evil Soviet boxer.

Also the US contestants seem a bit thin. The big name is Daniel Baldwin who is one of the famous Baldwin brothers. He also featured in "Homicide: Life on Street" which is part of that group of US crime shows including "Oz" and "The Wire."

Then there is Austin Armacost who's probably best known for being in a US structured reality show about gay and bisexual men called "The A-List: New York." Although he has a camp on-screen persona you get the impression that off-screen you might struggle to realise that Austin is gay. Also he is married to a British man and lives in Yorkshire, UK so is obviously very familiar with the cultural differences between the US and the UK.

Beyond that though there's the likes of Jenna James who about 15 years ago was considered the world's most famous porn star. Since then though she's had two children and put on rather a lot of weight meaning that she can no longer really perform the role she's famous for. Then there's Farrah Abraham who I have never heard of before although I get the impression that I were to Google her name Google would immediately suggest "Sex Tape."

Less then 24 hours after launch this season of CBB was already causing controversy with US contestant Tila Tequila being kicked out after it emerged that she held very strong neo-Nazi views, praising Hitler and even posing for a photograph outside the Auschwitz death camp wearing a "sexy SS uniform." This point of view is a little surprising because the ex-porn star whose real name is Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen is not exactly Aryan. In fact being born in Singapore to Vietnamese parents she is distinctly Asian.

Support for Hitler and the Nazis amongst Asians is actually quite an interesting niche. In the first instance the Swastika symbol that has become synonymous with the Nazi actually comes from Hinduism where it is used as a symbol of well-being and good fortune. Being a bit obsessed with the occult and mysticism the Nazis simply stole it for their own purposes.

As a result amongst Hindus who aren't well informed about Hitler and the Nazis there is a tendency to look at pictures of people who use the Swastika on their flag and assume they're just great friends of Hindus. There is also a suspicion that better educated Muslims may also exploit that confusion to display their rampant anti-Semitism.

Then there is the Cold War. This was actually a war fought by proxy with the US backing Fascist movements across South America, Africa, Europe and Asia whilst the Soviets backed Communist movements. So for example in Turkey the US backed the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) through the Gladio movemenr while the Soviets backed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The main flashpoint of this was the Vietnam war with the Soviets backing the Communist north while the US supported Fascist forces in Vietnam and it's neighbours such as Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

Probably the most current examples of this is in Burma/Myanmar because they're moving towards 'elections' before the end of the year. The difference between President Thein of Myanmar and Thien from CBB is little more then a typo.

As such I can't help but wonder if Tila Tequila's obsession with Nazism is simply the tax she's had to pay to make the transition from porn-star to mainstream reality-star.

I have to say though I that I am a bit worried that this US v UK theme is already starting to affect the fight against ISIL.

Through things like the Shoreham Air Crash it's pretty clear that the UK along with most of Europe are at the point where they want to smash Obama's face in. However through things like the Virginia shooting it seems that the US is still treating it all as a bit of a lark in support of a gameshow rather then the very serious business that war is.

17:35 on 29/8/15 (UK date).