[Kizzy]

fifteen years ago, I stepped inside a light blue prefab building on the outskirts of east London. I had said goodbye to some family and friends and entered a building that had more than 20 cameras. I would be filmed nonstop for 63 nights and 64 days. I was part of the first Big Brother and genuinely hadn’t a clue what was ahead of me. Little did I know that would be the start of a reality television boom that has now left an Olympic medallist with fractured vertebrae.

I remember walking into the house and being overwhelmed. Everyone seemed to be talking really loudly. The energy was intense, and I felt awkward. I said my hellos, went into the bedroom and chose my bed. One does strange things in a reality show. Coming from a family of seven children helped me quickly adapt into this strange, brand-new environment. This, I knew on the first day, was going to be a rollercoaster.

Originating in the Netherlands, Big Brother was something new with one magnificent twist. Every week the public could vote whoever they disliked off the show before finally voting for their winner. That was the origin of reality TV. Ten housemates, one winner. You decide.

Fast forward 15 years, and reality TV has gone through a myriad of changes to evolve into a genre that sees celebrities eating kangaroo balls and Z-listers throwing themselves off an Olympic ski jump.

Channel 4’s The Jump is in its third season. This series see celebs compete in winter sports including ski jumping. So far this year, seven of the 12 “athletes” have injured themselves. Four have had to leave the competition. It’s carnage. Channel 4 has had to ask the producers to assess the safety procedures to reduce the risk.

At the back of every reality TV producer’s mind is the question: “How far can we push them?”. In the faux jungle of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, the celebrities can be buried in a coffin filled with rats. Or they can be hanging 100 feet off the ground, attempting to win some food for their camp mates. And year after year, that production team has to come up with more and more frightening challenges, so that at the very least Ant and Dec can say, “This is our worst one yet”.

But has The Jump gone too far? Certainly for Mark Francis Vandelli, Rebecca Adlington, Tina Hobley and Linford Christie it has. And for me, too.

There seems to be the notion that because people sign up for reality television, they are game for anything. They’re not. It is one thing to cut off treats from the Big Brother house. Or only allow Gemma to have straighteners rather than hot rollers. I remember back in 2000 we all lost it because we had to survive on toast for the day. That’s all OK.

But to have an Olympic athlete injured and to put the participants’ safety at risk is unacceptable.

In 1975, the film Rollerball portrayed a sport that sees two teams going around a roller rink trying to score points by placing a metal ball in a hole. The game becomes increasingly violent, until the gruesome, deadly finale.

Reality TV will not allow people to hack one another to death in search of victory. But fractured limbs and injured necks is a pretty grim outcome for a TV series that is simply there to entertain us.


http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...jump?CMP=fb_gu

[Samm]

I thought she was going to be on The Jump at first read </3