Losing grip of reality

I mention these everyday things because for me they provide a vital connection with normality at a time when the world is quite clear crumbling into mouth-foaming insanity.

Am I the only person desperately clinging to reality with the head-swimming uncertainty of a drunk hugging a lamppost as the rest of the country convinces itself what happens on Big Brother is of genuine significance?

Did I dream it or where there mobs of protesters burning effigies of Endemol producers on the streets of India?

Has the mass media really devoted every waking hour to reporting and analysing a spat between three chavs and a Bollywood actress on a TV show which sits somewhere alongside bear-baiting on the cultural food chain?

If racism has been at play in the Big Brother House then that is quite obviously deplorable - just as it would be at any time, in any environment.

But the really disturbing thing about this whole saga is that anyone should even care what vacuous non-entities like Jade Goody, a former member of S Club 7 and Teddy Sheringham's girlfriend do or say.

Their behaviour, racist or not, has all the wider-world relevance of a playground fight.

Yet for some reason, every time I have turned on a radio or tuned in to a TV news bulletin this has been the dominant story.

Perspective and reality were lost days ago as the public and media have whipped themselves into an increasingly ludicrous frenzy over a meaningless, cynically manipulated TV show devoid of any moral, social or cultural substance.

The fact that it has monopolised headlines this week isn't really a comment on events in the house.

Instead it is a damning indictment of the world we now live in.

When was the same kind of public outcry heard about things that really matter - global warming, the state of our health service, the incessantly pointless slaughter of troops and civilians in Iraq?

Big Brother has always tugged and teased the unpleasant strands of human nature, connecting with our innate desire to watch conflict between others.

But by drawing such mass attention this week this reality TV show has exposed something truly, truly worrying - that 21st society as a whole is losing its grip on reality itself.

Andy Toft is the Express & Star's video journalist. Read other entries in his blog by clicking here

To comment on Andy's blog, click here

Your comments: "Good comment. You could wipe all these losers off the face of the planet and it would not make a bit of difference. Yet they get looked upon as role models. Far more superior and get paid far more than doctors, nurses, engineers, etc, that without, life would not be sustainable. It angers me that dumb low life, such as Jade Goody, or what ever her name is can sustain a far better lifestyle, than someone who has trained for five years and upwards, to gain qualifications in a trade that matters. These dumb idiots would not be able to go about their everyday lives without the skilled people of the world, who actually took time to train in something that matters." Adam

"Anyone who goes on such a show (at, I hear, a highly inflated rate of pay) where bad behaviour and crude remarks are what it is all about and then complains that she was insulted must be as stupid as the vacuous Jade. I am ashamed to belong to a society where I know her name because of constant 'news' reports. Thank the Lord for a reporter who still has a sense of balance." John