[Red Moon]

Big Brother in trouble over sex shock (again)

Channel 4 was last night facing renewed calls to take the reality television series Big Brother off the air after a housemate shocked viewers with her drunken behaviour. Around 80 complaints were lodged with Ofcom, the broadcasting regulators, who also came under criticism for failing to halt the trend for ever more shocking television.

During Tuesday night's Big Brother highlights show on Channel 4, broadcast at 10pm, one of the female contestants was shown simulating sex with a blow-up dog, appearing to perform sex acts with a bottle and kissing two male housemates while topless in the house jacuzzi.

Kinga Karolczak, 20, a former barmaid and market researcher from London has since apologised and said that she had only been joking.

The episode was edited so that her most shocking moments were relayed through the horror expressed on her housemates' faces, while she was heard on voice over, and a verbal warning went out as the programme began transmission.

Ratings for Tuesday's show peaked at 5.4 million, a 38% audience share, which is somewhere in the middle of Big Brother's long term fortunes, but a step up for the latest series which has seen audiences dwindle in recent weeks. Over the six series since 2000 ratings have varied from just over three million to almost 10 million in 2002.

Karolczak was first brought into the house with two others via a secret garden in late June, but after just three days she was evicted by a fellow housemate. On Sunday night she was brought back in to stir things up and boostratings.

She had already bared her chest during her brief time in the secret garden and four hours after her return this weekend prompted a game of truth or dare in the hot tub. The dares were invariably sexual and soon she had "snogged" two of her male housemates, taken off her top and was asking the only other women in the house if she fancied her.

Such scenes have become regular viewing for Big Brother fans, but on Monday night Karolczak took things a step further, putting a wine bottle up her skirt and giving the impression she was masturbating in front of the other contestants. She was then seen going off to the garden where she lay down by herself with the bottle between her legs.

She has now denied indulging in any sex act, saying no one could see what she was really doing but last night viewers saw her apologise for her behaviour. "I did something awful yesterday, absolutely terrible with a bottle of wine and I regret it... I'm so embarrassed, I can't stop thinking about it," she told producers in the programme's private Diary Room.

Broadcast campaigner John Beyer from Mediawatch-UK said: "It is absolutely appalling although it was thoroughly predictable. From the outset Channel 4 has calculated that this kind of thing was going to happen.

"Channel 4 is a public service broadcaster that has high aspirations for quality and innovation but this sort of indecent pornographic behaviour shows Big Brother for what it really is, which is just to be controversial. The time has come for the plug to be pulled on this."

Mr Beyer also criticised Ofcom for failing to sanction programmes in the past and consequently letting standards slowly slip. "The regulator is not fulfilling its role, it seems to me that in terms of after 9pm they won't do anything."

Ofcom said it investigates every complaint made about a transmission but is a post transmission regulator and cannot ban programmes before they are aired.

Boyd Hilton, television editor at Heat Magazine, which gives its readers extensive coverage the house said he thought the programme was astonishing. "It was shocking, it was incredible," he said. "I think Channel 4 had to show what Kinga did because that is what the programme is about, but the editing was very good and they did it as tastefully as they could."

The success of former housemates such as Jade Goody, known for losing at strip poker, has led to even the most outrageous of housemates believing they have a post Big Brother career ahead of them.

"To make a mark you have got to be outrageous," said public relations expert Max Clifford. "If [Karolczak] slimmed down a bit and someone taught her how to work the media, then she could have a year where she could make almost £1 million."

Channel 4 said it had received a number of phone calls, but that was normal for the series."Kinga's antics on Monday night went out post watershed and as always with Big Brother there was a voice over before before the programme alerting viewers to the nature of some scenes," said a spokeswoman.

Breaking taboos - television firsts?

1964: ITV's drama Emergency Ward 10 suffers a fierce backlash from fans when it shows UK TV's first inter-racial kiss. The character of the female black doctor is written out. Mary Whitehouse forms the National Viewers' And Listeners' Association

1965: Kenneth Tynan, appearing on the satirical show BBC3, is the first person to use the word '****' on television. The BBC apologises; 133 MPs sign four separate Commons motions of condemnation

1976: Bill Grundy, interviews the Sex Pistols and their acolytes on his teatime show Thames Today. As tension between the presenter and the band grows, he invites them to 'say something outrageous'. They duly oblige

1994: Brookside shows British TV's first pre-watershed lesbian kiss. The ratings success leads the soap to explore other taboo issues such as incest

1999: The word '****' gets a controversial airing thanks to the US import, Sex and the City, though an Irvine Welsh drama on Channel 4 had used it a few years before to little furore. By 2004, when the ex-Sex Pistols singer John Lydon calls viewers '****ing *****' on ITV's I'm a Celebrity ..., fewer than 100 people complain

2001: Channel 4's spoof news show, Brass Eye, satirises the reporting of paedophilia. After heated debate and outrage among commentators and politicians, some of whom have not seen the script, Brass Eye is pulled from schedules - only to be shown a month later

2004: Channel 4 airs My Foetus, which features graphic scenes of an abortion. The programme, made by the independent film-maker Julia Black, who had an abortion at the age of 21, prompts headlines

Source: Guardian Unlimited