Fatal attraction!

Touch pitch, and you will be defiled.
and
The finger that touches rouge will be red.
and
Evil communications corrupt good manners.
and
A rotten apple injures its companions.

These little aphorisms all add up to something like the same thing; the lesson is unmistakable and, let’s face it, I think that it is true, you cannot watch ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in a comfortably ironic way without getting drawn into the morass of public enthusiasm for this self referential pap.

Now I am prepared to admit that this series of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ does seem to justify its first word because it does have people who even I recognise as well known. What the hell the eighty year old Ken Russell is doing there, God alone knows, but famous he certainly is. That bloke from the A Team, well I remember him from the series that used the greatest number of bullets to the least possible human destructive effect; the series that showed just how resilient the human being was! Leo Sayer: that tousled haired singer who always looked like some sort of trainee clown and bounced around as though he was just about to introduce a jolly educational programme for kids. From the Jackson Five I’ve only really heard of Janet and the white One, this hair conscious peacock is unknown to me.

The others? To be fair I have heard of the bands that two of the others are from, but celebrities? I think not. Well, not for me anyway.

The fact that the ‘twist’ in this Big Brother is that a monumentally stupid loser from a previous series is continuing her ‘fame’ by yet another foray into reality TV is almost too cynically manipulative for belief. Perhaps, for the general (or ‘Great’) British public this manufactured non entity actually represents the triumph of the ‘little’ person finding fame and fortune (which she certainly has) against the odds. Perhaps. But for me JG represents the ultimate triumph of uninspired, undemanding, degrading, mindless television.

Sometimes compulsive though, ain’t it? Pitch and defiled and all that.

This Friday has been a partial reminder of the good old days (or sad old days, depending on your definitions) when every Saturday I used to read a couple of books and listen to a slew of superb Radio 4 programmes.

At least this morning (and parts of the afternoon and evening) I did manage to read a book. Lauren Weisberger’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. A deeply unsatisfying novel which would have made a really good short story. It has moments of real humour, but is essentially repetitive and one dimensional. The writing effects are mechanical: lists of designer names used for their almost magical effects in the manner of Dickens or Dylan Thomas; contrasts in terms of characters and situations; the use of brand names; mechanical plot devices; lack of character development in the main interesting character.

That, I think is the main problem for me in the novel. The ‘Devil’ or Miranda is the single most interesting character and for the first few chapters we begin to understand her true monster status – and that’s it. All we get in succeeding chapters is repetition of her unfeeling traits. At the end of the novel she is unchanged: a mythic person, insulted in public once, but continuing as a hate figure and diminished as a literary creation.

I can see that the role of Miranda would appeal to someone like Meryl Streep and I shudder to think what sort of professional performance she turns in, especially as the character in the novel is an English Jewess who has obliterated all traces of her low origin and has become a doyen of the fashion world. How Streep will rejoice in this portrayal!

I can hardly wait not to see it.