“WHO IS the bigger fool? — the fool, or the fool who follows him?” is a line from a jumped-up sci-fi film that my husband and I are fond of quoting pompously at each other when the other implies that one of us has acted in a silly way.
Guaranteed to break the ice and heal any rifts, it also — as I watched the most recent Celebrity Big Brother — struck me as the only question I’d be interested in asking early-bathing escapee Germaine Greer when I next see her. Especially when, a few hours after I’d watched her being sick on a roundabout after voluntarily wading through manure wearing a colander on her head, she had the brass-faced nerve to whine: “Every day crazy people write to me — every day I get a dose of insanity!” Pot, kettle!
Yes, that would definitely be the question. Not “Are you yet in any way sorry that you so gratuitously insulted my home-girl Suzanne Moore that time when you said that her hair resembled a bird’s nest, she wore f***-me shoes and that hair dye had rotted her brain, thus furnishing the saddest, most seat-sniffing sort of man with the very thing he has his wettest, most sexist dreams about — a catfight?” (Except it wasn’t, as it turned out, because it takes two to make a fight and my Suze was too much of a lady to respond — not that she needed to, with a rottweiler like me for a mate, but anyway.)
It wouldn’t be “Is it true that you don’t think it important for women to have orgasms during sex, and isn’t this because you yourself are as sexlessly sterile as a mule, posing-naked-or-not? In fact, wasn’t all that frantic shagging around you did in the Sixties and Seventies just a rather tragic decoy?”
And it wouldn’t even be “Don’t you agree that hypocrisy is the rankest of the minor vices, combining as it does the sanctity of the pulpit with the stench of the public toilet?” No, it would definitely be “Who is the fool, etc?” For having read the pronouncement of Miss Greer on my beloved reality television — “Watching Big Brother is about as dignified as looking through the keyhole into your teenage child’s bedroom door. To do so occasionally would be shameful; to get hooked on it is downright depraved” — and then witnessing her wretched performance on the latest Celebrity Big Brother, I can only conclude that not only is she seven sorts of ocean-going, grade-A, top-flight fool, but that she is far more foolish than the apparent “fools” on the show.
Even I was surprised at the wisdom of Lisa, the dignity of Caprice (with her strange albino-Nefertiti beauty, which I “got” for the first time. And she’s Jewish!), the stoicism of Jeremy, the patience of Bez, the eccentricity of Brigitte — and the sheer ooo-those-eyes gorgeousness of Kenzie, a real star in the making whose cuteness quotient makes Gareth Gates look like Rik Waller. I could easily imagine what fun it would be to hang out with them in anything approaching normal circumstances. But Germaine? When I was a wide-eyed 12-year-old teenybopper, I shoplifted The Female Eunuch and thought that this must be the cleverest, wittiest, most compassionate woman in the world — and that an hour in her company would be akin to gorging from an intellectual version of the Horn of Cornucopia. Now she appears to be the sort of rancid bore who one would actually leave even a quite lively party to avoid being cornered by.
That she is a woman, and that this is generally a male speciality sport, says it all about where she has gone wrong in shunning the company of other women in order to seek the approval of men. Basically, she has turned into one — a club bore; tellingly, though she and John McCririck started off as opponents, they began to resemble each other more and more as the senile delinquents of the house, both of them apparently in that place where old age and infancy blur grotesquely. He sulked, went silent, cried “I want my milk,” and fretted for “Bitty” — sorry, “Booby” — while she, for all her lifelong blabber about sisterhood and socialism, finally freaked out at having to share a borrowed, toy kitchen with the helpful Brigitte!
Perhaps, like a lot of academic snobs, GG thought that “TV is for appearing on, not watching.” (When this sort of ponce DOES appear on TV, they invariably make a right pig’s ear of it, and end up being laughed at rather than laughed with, bless!) If she HAD watched the last Big Brother, she might have seen the truly amazing Kitten — someone who appeared to have grasped the meaning of being a “ revolutionary” from compulsively studying Rik Mayall’s performance in The Young Ones — and she might have grasped what NOT to do when voluntarily playing a game for a good deal of money.
Lesson One is that is rather offensive to those who have spent time in fascist prisons — or even people who have two brain cells to rub together — to compare a game show to a fascist prison or, as Greer did, a gas chamber; Lesson Two is that if you talk about “overthrowing Big Brother”, as they both did, you are liable to make both your housemates and the public fear for your mental health, and your ability to distinguish between fact and fantasy, and to get yourself voted out PDQ.
It is a source of some amusement to me that the likes of Kitten and Greer would be exactly the sort of snoot who’d accuse hoi polloi of mistaking soap actors for the characters they play — yet seemed totally incapable of working out the risibly obvious fact that this Big Brother was not the original oppressive brute, as created by George Orwell, but rather a piss-taking pantomime villain toying with a few pampered volunteers. Only the name’s the same . . .
In fact, when Germaine cried: “Brigitte, you don’t have to warm the toilet seat any more — this is revolution!’ it was the wretched Kitten who seemed to pose the greater threat to the patriarchal system. The phrase “First as tragedy, then as farce” came horribly to mind; then GG bolted. But unrepentant and lesson unlearnt, she was last heard declaiming: “I will find another way to save the rainforest!” Personally, I think she left because she couldn’t live with the fact that Jackie Stallone’s better looking.
On a final note, lest this be mistaken for sour grapes, can I just say that I was approached by this edition of CBB back in September with promises of “a substantial sum”. Even though, as I’ve said, I adore reality TV, I turned it down as I instinctively knew that it was no place for a writer, though for a showbiz kid participation would be a fine and even wise decision. Why Germaine did not have the wit to understand such a basic fact I have no idea — well, actually I have several, but it pains me slightly, even after our “history”, to have to name them.
But, as I say, she picked on my girl first, so hell, here goes. The first is that she genuinely has lost some of her marvellous marbles and, like an old lady lifting up her dress and revealing her genitalia to a weeping world, simply does not understand how loony she looks.
The other, which is even sadder, is that this woman, who once seemed blessed with the world’s biggest BS detector, has spent so long among the arrogant autistics of academia that she has lost much of the common sense that the Australian people are as a rule so rich in. She is indeed educated beyond all instinct and honesty — she makes me even more pleased than I usually am with myself that I left school at 16 — and the only sour grapes involved was the nice Meursault I sipped at while snickering at Miss Greer’s antics nightly.
“You’ve had a good innings — time to hang up your bat,” was the way the famously terse Clement Attlee used to put it; come, Miss Greer, you have delighted us long enough! Now give some other old bat a chance.
And don’t look at me, for as I said, I know better than to take my high intelligence downmarket, and be made a fool (or even a fool-who-follows) of.
WHO’S IN CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER
CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER is now in its third series. The first was won by the comedian Jack Dee, the second by Mark Owen of Take That fame. Nominations are being made today for tomorrow’s first eviction and John McCririck, the Channel 4 racing tipster, is odds-on favourite to leave. The series’ finale is on Sunday, January 23.
GERMAINE GREER, 65: Possibly the world’s most famous feminist couldn’t hack sharing the kitchen facilities and has left the house. Begging the question, what was she doing in there in the first place? GG had said she wanted to strike a blow for older ladies. She walked out saying she realised she had more to lose than to gain by remaining: “I knew the business of the Big Brother house was to bring about a state of abjection among the inhabitants.” She was shocked when other inmates teased John McCririck: “That incident was demonstrating the role of taunting in the playground. So many lives have been destroyed by bullying.”
JOHN McCRIRICK: Channel 4’s racing pundit and, by his own admission, a deeply unpleasant person, refused to reveal his age to producers. Obsessive about Diet Coke, John has sulkily refused to speak to housemates after Big Brother withheld his weekly order of 6 litres. John says he has no friends apart from his wife Booby and dog Double D. Claims that Harrow prepared him for anything: is this the worst advert for boarding school ever seen?
BRIGITTE NIELSEN, 41: Danish actress and singer and ex-wife of Sylvester Stallone, 6ft 1in Brigitte has taken up chain-smoking and nail-biting since the arrival in the house of Sly’s mother: psychic butt reader (telling people's fortunes based on an appraisal of their naked bottom) Jackie Stallone.
JACKIE STALLONE, 71: Late entry septuagenarian (although if she is 71, she would have been 13 when she gave birth to 58-year-old Sylvester), psychic astrologer and Brigitte’s former mother-in-law, Jackie said she was expecting the house to be a castle with chandeliers and servants.
BEZ, 40: Former “freaky dancer” with Happy Mondays and best friend of the band’s frontman, Shaun Ryder, Bez says he prepared for BB by going out a lot. As columnist Suzanne Moore said, “Remember: Bez is not ON drugs, Bez IS drugs.” Despite having apparently been robbed of his brain/speech receptors, Bez saw a funny side to Germaine Greer getting naked and told Brigitte he didn’t doubt she’d be good in bed. People’s favourite.
CAPRICE BOURRET, 33: The Californian blonde beauty Caprice claims she has never been in a confined space with people she doesn’t know and hates people who “flagellate” (flatulate), but has been surprisingly kind to John. Fans are disappointed that she has thus far kept her clothes on.
KENZIE, 19: The youngest ever housemate, Blazin’ Squad rapper Kenzie's chief ambition is to pull either a Hollyoaks actress or a glamour model. Or possibly both together. Blew his top with John after McCririck told him he was a “weak little twerp”.
JEREMY EDWARDS, 33: Hollyoaks and Holby City actor and former squeeze of pop-star Rachel Stevens, the very occasionally funny Jeremy's best moment was calling Germaine Greer a silly bitch.
LISA I’ANSON, 39: Former Radio 1 DJ who lost her job after partying too hard in Ibiza and missing a show. Spectacularly annoying but does have the amusing knack of saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment.
SARA LAWRENCE
DEBATE
Should Germaine Greer have appeared in CBB? E-mail debate@thetimes.co.uk
