James Delingpole James Delingpole

I watched it so that you didn’t have to: ITV2’s Big Brother reviewed

Plus: why has the BBC spent licence payers’ money disinterring the monstrous Jimmy Savile yet again?

The 16 contestants of Big Brother 2023: Paul, Tom, Jenkin, Matthew, Zak, Hallie, Noky, Farida, Dylan, Olivia, Trish, Jordan, Yinrun, Chanelle, Henry and Kerry. Image: ITV 
issue 14 October 2023

Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from being terrified and brainwashed into submission by Big Brother, the populace would embrace the all-seeing eye as their route to fame, prosperity and freedom.

Some of the populace, at any rate. We met 16 of them – there were 30,000 applicants, allegedly – on ITV on Sunday night, mugging and pratting around and enjoying their newfound semi-celebrity en route to entering the new-look Big Brother house, vying to win a £100,000 prize and, presumably, a career in minor-league showbiz by abasing and humiliating themselves in public.

Into monopede DJs with disco lights on their false leg? That’ll be Dylan from Coventry

I watched so that you didn’t have to and you should be grateful that I did because I suspect I may have saved one or two of you from a new and terrible addiction.

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