Dialogue: If this is reality, then we're all in real trouble

Big Brother, a television phenomenon, is keeping British viewers enthralled, breaking ratings records and creating logjams on the internet. Its popularity has rung the death knell for docusoaps and, in their place, reality TV has taken hold.

Nine weeks ago Big Brother locked 10 contestants into a house and proceeded to film their every move. They may not contact the outside world during their stay, although the outside world is very much in tune with them.

Week by week, the residents, then the public, vote on whom to evict and, with £70,000 ($241,000) riding on the outcome, things have got vicious, underhand and, sometimes, downright scary.

The residents, picked from thousands of applicants, prove there is no shortage of people willing to do anything to get on the box, even being prepared to become famous for putting their private lives into public hands.

The show, both cruel and banal, relies on humankind's innate desire to perve. The residents lie about, analysing themselves and each other. Gazing at their navels is easy since they're often scantily clad. The introduction of a hot tub - a reward, the producers say, for being good sports - will see even more flesh bared and no doubt provide more potential for interresidential fooling around.

The furore that ensued when one inmate turned out to be unhinged was huge. In the early stages of the game, Nasty Nick told of losing his wife in a car accident, a story that turned out to be untrue and now, evicted from the house, he is a star in his own right - masses of press coverage and his own column in the Sun. He attends all the big parties and even has bodyguards to protect him from the public.

Another ex-resident has a publishing contract, while two recently ejected slappers were last seen at the TV Quick Awards snogging and dirty dancing before falling down drunk. "Nouveau celebs, they're pathetic," opined Hollyoakes star Gary Lucy.

Apparently the show's editors had promised not to broadcast scenes of participants in the shower without just cause, although recently they did just that. Ruth Wrigley, the show's executive producer, said that there were editorial reasons - she wanted to demonstrate that someone had just got up. Yeah, right.

And why has Britain become so addicted to the Channel 4 show? All the people I've asked have been unanimous - it's the voyeurism. They love watching those poor schmucks humiliate themselves night after night.

It has brought people together, too - folks who would never even make eye contact on the tube are now engaging in animated discussions: "Ooh, I don't like that Craig, that Clare, that Darren. Ooh, Anna (the ex-nun-turned-lesbian), she's a bit of all right."

A BBC executive and a prominent child psychologist have criticised the series, calling it a "freak show" that could have potentially disastrous effects.

Phil Harding, head of editorial policy at the BBC, said the race to replicate the successful format would mess up participants' lives as rival shows tried to out-perform each other.

And Raj Persoud, a psychologist and media commentator, said Big Brother's premise - filming a group for 24 hours and ejecting a member each week - was based on exploiting ordinary people's lives.

No longer content with messing with people's homes and gardens, viewers now want TV to mess with Joe Normal's mind.

In Sweden recently, a contestant from the survival show Expedition Robinson committed suicide. Despite the tragedy, that show is in its third season and still going strong. And if Big Brother isn't enough, there are plenty more fly-on-the-wall TV shows in the pipeline; television has long loved to flatter through imitation.

The Diet Show will put plump people in a house together and give them a gram of gold for each gram of fat they lose. Jailbreak will allow contestants 10 weeks to escape from a specially constructed prison, while The Bus takes 11 strangers touring in a double-decker bus for 16 weeks.

Please someone, pass the smelling salts, I'm not sure I can stand the excitement.

But it will be interesting to see what the long-term effects on the participants of Big Brother will be. Certainly, their lives will be irrevocably changed, some of them probably ruined.

When an actor plays an unsympathetic role at least he or she can say they were playing a character. But these guys, playing themselves - admittedly in a very unnatural situation - can blame no one but themselves, and no amount of prizemoney could make up for what they stand to lose.