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By Chris Tryhorn / Television 12:51pm

It's hard to believe that Big Brother is about to enter its seventh season. I don't know about you, but as a moderately enthusiastic BB fan in previous years, I'm getting a seven-year itch in 2006.

It's partly the deluge of tabloid coverage so far about the contestants ahead of their official unveiling on Thursday that has induced this ennui. A new order of celebrity seems to have been invented - the pre-celeb, that is to say a person of zero repute or fame who nevertheless commands acres of newsprint by virtue of the fact that they are about to appear on a reality show and will therefore become fodder for red-top newspapers and Heat magazine for a few months before being spewed back into the oblivion where they belong.

Maybe you are made of sterner stuff but I find myself wilting as I contemplate the sordid revelations about these pre-celebs in this weekend's News of the World, Sunday Mirror and the People.

More than this, though, is the increasing debasement and exhaustion of the reality TV genre. Think back to 2000, when Big Brother picked relatively straightforward contestants and the show seemed fresh and compelling. Broadsheets were awash with chin-stroking commentary. Some of the later series - those in 2002 and 2004 - have caught the imagination through characters such as Jade Goody, Victor Ebuwa and Nadia Almada - and they did accordingly well in the ratings. But the sixth series last year was the worst performing yet, which perhaps reflected public distaste for an increasingly dispiriting exercise whose only point seemed to be incubating the non-careers of a bunch of pea-brained, self-obsessed desperados.

I predict Big Brother 7 will have a tough time this year. For one thing, it will soon be up against the world's top football tournament. Although the last World Cup coincided with the most successful BB series ever, the games were all in the mornings. This time there will be serious competition in primetime entertainment. In addition, ITV is piling on the pressure with Celebrity X Factor and Love Island. These may prove to be pinpricks in the context of BB's 13-week run, but they will still offer a challenge.

The biggest danger is simple viewer boredom. There's more than a touch of desperation in scheduling Big Brother ever earlier in the year and for longer, with ever greater tabloid clamour beforehand and ever more ludicrous gimmicks lined up by producers Endemol. It seems high time that Britain had a reality check and turned Big Brother off.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgri...r_reality.html