Reality TV: Celebrity Big Brother, Pop Art, and how we can all be Famous for Fifteen Minutes
Celebrity Big Brother recently announced its last series. It's fair to say, like The X-Factor, it is way past its peak. I haven't watched either for years now(and currently don't have a TV), YouTube is my key to catching up on the visual treats everybody is talking about these days. However, I remember when the first Big Brother -a reference to George Orwell's novel '1984' one of the cleverest books I have ever enjoyed by the way-launched back in the summer of 2000. Me and my friends had finished Sixth Form and were working summer jobs, saving the pennies for starting Uni that autumn, and partying like there was no tomorrow. None of us had real responsibilities, just a long hot summer in front of us, punctuated by this new TV show everybody was talking about, reality TV not at that point even a genre or phrase used in popular culture. Me and my friends had got our A-level results the day the Nasty Nick episode was aired, some thrilled, some disappo...