Josie wins Big Brother.

I find it strange that the biggest show on TV works because there is no TV in the BB house. And as each and every one of the five finalists said how much they’d gained and grown from their experience it’s also a great advert for not having TVs in your house. So there’s Josie as fresh as Somerset silage welcoming past winners into an eighteen day ‘winner of winners’ last gasp reprise, the majority entrance-ing as a caricature of their winning persona. There’s something uni-directional about TV. Millions of us know them but they don’t know us. We watch them and make judgements and they can’t watch or make judgements about us. In the house they interact and learn from their housemates and afterwards interact with a million ill formed opinions of them. Imagine every stranger you meet from now on knowing you and holding their version of who you are, expecting you to be funny or stupid, shallow or belligerent or use the catch phrases you were known for. It must be like being typecast as yourself, or some aging super group having to repeat their old tunes every night for the rest of their lives because that’s what the public want. Each stranger would expect you to still be 24 and aghast you’ve aged ten years in the ten years since they last saw you on TV. I find the prospect frightening. In the house your persona was challenged and grew where as afterwards it is reflected and reinforced by everyone you meet. It’s no wonder the old winners with their experience of ‘afterwards’ seem like caricatures. Right now Josie is truly beautiful, not because of her bleach blond hair but because she is fresh and real, joyful and giddy. I only hope she can go back to her mates, take the money and run. A hundred K is peanuts compared with the price she might otherwise pay. No, TV is a one-way street. It sucks the life out of its watchers and imposes the detritus of that liposuction on its participants.