Big Brother: Injured Soldiers And Doulgas Bader To Star
WHILE we wonder who is going to appear on Celebrity Big Brother, we get to wonder about who is going on the Big Brother show proper, which starts next summer for the final time. The Daily Mail delivers the front-page screamer:
Reality TV ghouls target injured soldiers: C4 bosses spark fury by asking wounded troops to appear on Big Brother
Yeah Big Brother. Douglas Bader got his own film! Big Brother is a pathetic effort. We demand more for our brave few. The Mail tells us:
Soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan are being targeted to take part in Big Brother. The Channel 4 show’s producers were accused of sinking to ‘a new low for reality TV’ in a desperate bid to make the last series the most sensational ever.
And now for some bitter irony –
One of those approached was Trooper Stephen Shine, a tank driver with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, who lost a leg in an explosion in Iraq on April 6, 2007. His story features on the website of the Army Benevolent Fund, one of the organisations contacted by Big Brother.
So here’s the Mail with its big front-page story on disabled soldiers and a picture of an unsmiling Stephen Shine:
Annabelle Fuller, spokesman for the Army Benevolent Fund, said: ‘We’re a charity, not a selection box for bad TV programmes. The people we help are often vulnerable.’
After receiving the email asking for potential candidates, she was so offended that she wrote in a blog: ‘Men and women who have bravely served their country and fallen on hard times or dealt badly with the transition from the Armed Forces to civvy street are now ideal people to be under continual observation and media scrutiny, are they?
So here are the injured soldiers on the Mail’s front page illustrating a story about how soldiers could of their own free will star on the telly.
No word from any of these soldiers, who are, of course, unable to speak for themselves. (Don’t worry yourselves, lads and lasses, there are people prepared to speak up for you. Just sit and take your meds and watch the cartoons. There. There. The Mail is here to help. Shhhh!)
Commander John Muxworthy, of the UK National Defence Association, said:
‘How anyone could even attempt to try to take advantage of these people and their suffering is staggering. It is not just unacceptable but completely unethical.
‘I imagine they will try to justify it by saying they are drawing attention to the plight of these soldiers but I would seriously question whether that is their real motive.’
The Mail has a true heart. It’s real motive is not to bash Channel 4 and use the soldiers to do its work but to highlight just how, well, just how, well, just how…. Oh, sod it. Here are the Mail’s readers to explain:
This is positive proof that reality TV has reached rock bottom and is continuing to dig hard for the centre of the earth not that it was ever far away from that anyway.
Yep:
I have always hated this program for what it is and what it represents, cheap and tacky television but channel 4 have hit an all time low…
Right on!
This is really the last straw…
It is. It really is. We demand more TV exposure for our fallen heoes, at least a presenting job on a cable TV channel or BBC3.
Posted: 26th, December 2009 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
