We’re a stroppy little island, full of mixed-up people,” said Damon Albarn this week. Just how stroppy, just how mixed-up has been vividly illustrated by the
Big Brother battle of Shilpa Shetty versus the Goody Gang. Not since the imprisonment of Archers busybody Susan Carter has a light entertainment broadcast whipped up such a furore. An early day motion in the House. Questions asked of the Prime Minister. The Chancellor warned by the Indian foreign minister of damage to relations between our two countries. And more than 27,000 complaints to Ofcom from viewers dismayed by the “racist” bullying that continues unchecked in the house.
To all this, Channel 4 and Ofcom have turned a resolutely dead bat. Ofcom claims to be unable to act, while Channel 4 executives refuse to comment, releasing instead a statement claiming that “Shetty herself has not voiced any concerns of racial bullying” . Even after Shetty did complain that the bullying was racially motived, Channel 4’s chairman, Luke Johnson, declined to comment, and simply parroted his company’s statement with the insolent indifference of a call centre customer services operative.
Amid the hysteria a moment of sanity came with David Cameron’s remark that there is “a great regulator called the off button”. But things have become too complicated for that to be an adequate riposte. The treatment of Shilpa Shetty has exposed a very curious set of mixed-up British attitudes to bullying, perfectly exemplified by the reaction of a Channel 4 spokesman in the initial stages of the skirmish. An allegation that Jade Goody’s boyfriend, Jack Tweedy, had called Shetty a “Paki” (the word was bleeped on transmission) turned out to be false. In fact, said Channel 4, he had called her a “c***”. There had, added the spokesman, been a “cultural and class clash” between Shetty and the Goodies.
This is curious, for it suggests that it is fine to apostrophise a woman in the vilest terms, and acceptable to bully her so long as the grounds are those of class and culture. The abuse of one human being by another (it follows from the Channel 4 postition on Shetty’s treatment) is legitimate entertainment, as long as they avoid the lone taboo of racism. I say “lone”, but that is not quite accurate. If Shetty had been an animal, or a kiddy, the cruelty with which she is being treated would have been halted in a heartbeat. But since she is an adult, who entered the Big Brother house voluntarily, she has no right to complain of anything that might befall her in there. Except racism.
In fact, although it is this particular series of Big Brother that has crystallised what we might as well call the Channel 4 doctrine on bullying, it showed signs of evolving in earlier series — specifically the series in which Jade Goody was first a contestant. In that case the bullying of her — on grounds of ugliness and stupidity, rather than race (she is of mixed race) — far from being deprecated by the public was enthusiastically endorsed by them, and encouraged by the press. She left the house to shouts of “Kill the Pig”. And what do you know? Like the survivor of a particularly hellish public school regime, Goody has found that a thorough bullying was the making of her. So much so that she is now a millionairess, and has graduated from her victim status to becoming an accomplished bully herself. Perhaps it is pure altruism that is leading her and her chums to give Shetty such a hard time.
If pressed to find an excuse for what its makers claim is the social experiment of Big Brother, you might note how faithfully the atmosphere within the house mirrors the social temperature outside. For, slightly overshadowed by Shetty’s travails, there have been two recent news stories along similiar lines. On Tuesday, Judge Paul Darlow advised a man who admitted a charge of racially aggravated harassment, after calling a police doctor a “f****ing Paki” that “next time” he should stick to “fat bastard and don’t say anything about his colour”. A day later the broadcaster Janet Street-Porter was arrested over claims of racist abuse. A neighbour commented: “She can be quite aggressive, but I have not heard her being racist.”
Both cases clearly support the Channel 4 doctrine: that abuse becomes a problem only if racism is involved. Perhaps, as my colleague Caitlin Moran argued yesterday, racism is indeed a horror more horrible than other forms of bullying. My point is not that this view is wrong, but that it is hard to enforce. By disinhibiting people to the point at which they know that any extremity of behaviour is tolerated, with racism the sole taboo, you effectively disable their conscience altogether. It follows that it is no more reasonable to blame Jade Goody for being a racist than to blame her for being ugly and stupid. She behaves as she does because she inhabits a culture in which clever, powerful people in the media have taught her that it is fine to call a person a c*** , but not to call them a Paki. She, less Jesuitical than her manipulators, can’t tell the difference between one line of foul abuse and another, and in her hapless stupidity exposes the glaring flaw in their casuistry.
Nearing boiling point because of a cooker
If I recognised the authentic tone of call-centre indifference in Luke Johnson’s intonations, it is because I have spent a horrible week trapped in just such a telephone system. It happened like this. I have an oven. It is a very bad oven. A larky young salesman at John Lewis added a single, expressive letter to the manufacturer’s name (Indesit) to express his opinion of its products. Six months ago I bought a year’s breakdown insurance. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Until I tried to make a claim.
When it became clear that Domestic & General, while keen to relieve me of 15 quid a month, was much less keen to do anything in return. A series of bored customer care people were unable to say when an engineer might call. Eventually, I produced a fearsome tantrum and an engineer appeared. Did he have a replacement element? He did not. So it was back to phone conversations with people who couldn’t care less that we can’t cook a hot meal in midwinter. I mention this only because while I was trapped in D&G phone hell, it occurred to me that I was not alone. Masses of other people must have been stuck in there with me — only, of course, D&G relies on the fact that we don’t know about one another to continue treating us all with contempt. So, if you’d care to share, get in touch. Meanwhile, I’ve given up and bought a new oven. Not an Indesit. And not insured with D&G.
Poetic licence
Asked at the end of his life if he had any regrets, John Betjeman said: “Not enough sex.” For decades, he contrived to juggle a wife and a mistress, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish. Now his son reveals that he had a third girlfriend, Margie Geddes. Which raises the fascinating question, how much is not enough?
