Big Brother goes out with a whimper

ANOTHER series of Big Brother has come to an end, not with a bang but a whimper. The series, so novel and fresh when it first hit our screens, has become a turgid peepshow, filled with dysfunctional nobodies thrown together in an upmarket prison and encouraged to fight for the cameras.

No opportunity to foment bad feeling is missed, and the few rules which do exist are bent and broken at will by the programme-makers at the first sign of dwindling viewing figures. Big Brother, once a fascinating study of human behaviour, is now an irrelevance, and Channel 4 should do us all a favour and scrap it.