Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > Celebrity Big Brother 2007

From Brand's column in The Guardian:

Whilst I've continued to follow Premiership football closely, my head has been swimming in controversy due to events in Big Brother. Of course racism is deplorable and bullying detestable. I wouldn't seek to query that, what I'm finding enormously difficult, as someone who has met Jade Goody on several occasions and can attest to the fact that she's a decent girl who's had a remarkably difficult life, is that she's not a bad person.

I don't know Danielle Lloyd or Jo from S Club 7, but I imagine they too in isolation are decent people. What irks me as much as the persecution of the elegant and beautiful Shilpa Shetty is the national wrath directed at these three women who are really expressing views and attitudes endemic in the culture from which they came. Of course football and racism went hand in hand for many years. There are many more black and Asian supporters at West Ham now than when I came as a child in the early 80s. But I suppose what is difficult about the Big Brother fiasco and surrounding hullabaloo is that it's an indication of unaddressed racism throughout our culture. And to tell you the truth it's a right pain in the ass.

I suppose it will be a slow and thorough process that brings about a huge social change required to address these issues. Currently it's not so prevalent in football but it was not that long ago that John Barnes and Tony Daley were pelted with bananas whenever they played away.

Now the problem seems to have been quelled but perhaps if we were to watch the actions and conversations of football fans for 24 hours a day or indeed football players we would uncover things that were unpalatable - my only hope is that we can find in ourselves the compassion that we demand of those three housemates when it comes judging them.

Perhaps we would Russell, perhaps we would. Are you suggesting that, if we did, then it in some way excuses racist behaviour because more than one person does it? Is the fact that Jade is a "decent girl" any kind of excuse either? No of course not. People who in every other aspect are "decent" are just as capable of saying things like this.

If this incident is an indicator of unaddressed racism in our culture then shouldn't we, ooh I don't know, actually address it when it is displayed? Y'know, like when it happens live on the telly in front of thousands of witnesses? Russell? Russie?

Clown shoes.