Dialogue: Dross dressed up in robes of gold

By DAVID AARONOVITCH

It is a terrible thing for a man to find himself an anthropologist in his own country. How strange the natives are these days. And how childlike.

Last week one of them - an intelligent and lively person, who is well respected among her peers - lent me a video tape of a particularly dramatic edition of Big Brother. She was convinced that I would enjoy it. "There's a great fight! Lots of crying and shouting and emotion," she told me. "And one of them gets his trunks pulled down, and you can see him from behind and you can see everything!"

You couldn't see everything. Not unless fingernails count. And the fight was a hissy fit thrown by a mild brat. As she stomped off in her bra and knickers (a state of demi-nudism is obligatory), fighting tears, I was taken back to a night, 30 years ago, when a group of us 15-year-olds played with a Ouija board and spent a couple of pleasant hours on the phone to the Samaritans tremulously threatening suicide.

So, as the drama-queen was comforted by her insincere housemates in the shag-room (as yet unused for its unstated purpose), my main emotion was one of intense embarrassment. The whole thing was so hopelessly adolescent and so dull.

Two days later, honourable daughter number one (aged 11) had a friend over. This friend (whom I shall call Gemma) had, the day before, had tea at another girl's house. Say, Emma's. Sue was there too, as was Pru. And Miriam, Ruth and Shelby.

Weeeeeell, you know how Sue doesn't get on with Miriam? So, she says to Shelby, "I wish Miriam wasn't here," and Miriam hears, and then she starts to cry, and so ...

So what? So nothing. So something that could interest those just starting off an independent life as social beings, those contemplating the onset of adulthood. But how could it conceivably fascinate people who have been adults for a decade or more? When you've seen a parent die or a child born, how could you be "hooked" on something less inherently vital than watching people go shopping, having a pooh, or talking in pubs?

I just have to be missing the point. In a Sunday newspaper, Germaine Greer said of Big Brother addiction that, "to get hooked on it is downright depraved." This is because (she rightly argues) it is like sneaking a peek at the diary of your youngest daughter. But the Brother-lovers I meet aren't depraved. The doings of Dean, Stu, Loo, Gay 1, Gay 2, Lanky and Bashful (or whoever) have simply become the currency of easy conversational exchange, a bit like gossip about Polly Garter and Nogood Boyo in Under Milk Wood. It is gossip for the gossipless, community life for the community-less. It's harmless.

What it is not is a "social experiment," or a "valuable insight," and neither is "a new community" being created. It is wonderful how broadcasters can pontificate about politicians, insincerity and spin, while dressing up their own dross in robes of gold.

The best of the reality shows, Castaway, was subverted from the beginning by its own "cast" not being quite away enough. Its relative, Survivor, is an example of nothing but how far some people are prepared to go for a million pounds. Or how far some broadcasters will go for ratings. Both of which we knew already. I look forward to Donal MacIntyre infiltrating the world of television commissioning, mike strapped to his rippling pecs, as he captures the cynicism that accompanies some decisions.

Had he been on the job a few months ago, would he have caught a discussion in which BBC executives talked about their dream show. Up speaks Alan Partridge. How about a series in which a group of volunteers are put in a re-creation of a First World War trench for a winter?

Incredibly, they said yes. Announcing the series, the head of the BBC's Factual Programmes Department, David Mortimer, made this claim: "We want to make the programme for a generation that knows nothing about the First World War and the sacrifice made by their forebears, and we had to find an imaginative way of engaging a new audience with that terrible story."

The ubiquitous "BBC spokesman" added: "This is a serious documentary series - a lot of people have phoned in already wanting to take part."

A trench is to be dug in France and by November it should be sufficiently waterlogged and cold for filming. Then the volunteers will arrive. Unlike the men on the Somme, they will get "psychological training" beforehand and counselling afterwards.

Because, says executive producer David Colthurst: "It's going to be tough ... We will be recreating every detail of the whole miserable experience. It will seem pretty damn real and people will find it awful."

Authenticity is guaranteed. "We will work from diaries and records," Colthurst said, "to piece together exactly how it was."

Every detail? There is, of course, one tiny problem. No war. No artillery bombardment. No enemy attacks. No over the top. No snipers. No daily expectation of being killed or hideously wounded.

Indeed, no reason to be physically concerned at all, since, as Colthurst responsibly allows, the BBC has to work within health and safety guidelines, which preclude exploding and dismembering members of the public who take part in programmes. So tear gas will be used instead of chlorine gas, the stench of rotting bodies will be chemically reproduced, and death will be simulated by the arbitrary removal of a participant.

"We will be recreating every detail of the whole miserable experience" of a war in which millions died in the trenches, and yet no one dies? What next? How about "The Bataan Death March," except that anyone who is tired will, instead of being bayoneted or beheaded by Japanese soldiers, be removed by helicopter. Or "Genocide," where volunteers get to fall backwards naked into a pit with their family. "What was it like?" they will be asked, as they exit the ghetto to cheering. "Well," they may grumble, "we do think the Feinsteins should have been shot first."

- INDEPENDENT