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Delusions of grandeur

Ilona Amos

Andy Warhol said everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, and how right he was. But with reality TV fast becoming the most popular genre on our screens, an ever increasing number of nonentities are demanding more than their quarter-hour.

Five’s documentary The Curse of Reality TV carves ever more material out of the phenomenon by looking at the fallout experienced by participants in a range of fly-on-the-wall shows, from 1974’s The Family, the first reality TV programme to hit our screens, to Popstars and the latest Big Brother. Participants from the shows get a further few minutes to whine about how the producers tricked them into acting like themselves.

Vanessa Feltz says being in Celebrity Big Brother was like being stuck in a lift, while busty Becky couldn’t believe the press would "dig up whole stories" about her and print pictures she would never have approved. Come on, Becky - it was Big Brother number five. Haven’t you been watching?

The contestants without exception feel duped, exploited and misrepresented - as if they weren’t expecting any dirty tricks, and believed that they would be in control, not the producers. Tom, winner of There’s Something about Miriam, a show in which a bunch of hunky blokes competed to win the affections of a sultry Mexican model, sums it up perfectly. "We were having such a laugh, we weren’t thinking there could be a snag." But, boy, was there a snag. Long before Nadia puffed and screeched her way into our living-rooms, Miriam, who admits that she was born a man, is the girl who put the TV into reality TV.

When the lads heard the truth about their beautiful seductress, lawsuits followed and the show couldn’t be aired until huge out-of-court settlements were paid. And there’s always a price - a certain amount of cash, or fame, is enough for these people to swallow their pride and endure public humiliation.

Just what is the fascination - is it only the money, or our obsession with today’s cult of celebrity? Unemployed Geordie Peter Watt, star of a programme to be called Back to Work says, "I thought they were going to tell me stuff like how to do a CV and interviews, and things to help me get a job." But to give an idea of what it was really like being trained by Marines, he advises us to watch Full Metal Jacket. "You take part in a programme called Back to Work, you don’t expect boot camp," he moans. So he did a runner, and the producers threatened to rename it Born Idle.

And why do we love car-crash television? One interviewee, talking about Popstars, says, "The appeal for the viewer is that we see dreams coming true." But what about the nightmares? Well, that is when our collective schadenfreude comes in.

Lisa, the Welsh woman from Big Brother 4, who was booed and hissed when she was evicted from the house after only a fortnight, moans that she’s always going to be known as ‘Lisa from Big Brother’. At least she’s known as something, and isn’t that why she went on the show in the first place?

Booing is one thing, but let’s not forget that everyone is a critic. Members of manufactured Popstars band Hear’say had a gun pulled on them by a member of the public, who was heard to mutter, "Hear’say, you’re rubbish."

Perhaps all this cheap telly will result in a new psychiatric syndrome - post-reality-TV disorder - and support groups will start meeting in town halls around the country on Thursday evenings. Hey, now that’s a reality show we could watch.

The Curse of Reality TV, Friday, Five, 10pm

This is from Scotland on Sunday