This book is breathtaking. Partly, it is the casual way huge sums of money are flung about: "Airey offered us a nightly prime-time slot and £3.5m. Gardam pitched an 11pm slot and £4.5m." Or the numbers of addicts glued to reality programmes worldwide: "Viewers have switched Big Brother on 18 billion times. More than a billion votes have been cast via telephones and interactive TV." For those on the left especially, such sentences are likely to read as a horror story. This was money intended not for an HIV clinic or world poverty, but for the most reviled shows on television. Fortunately, the readies do not come from the taxpayer, but from the idiots who watch such rubbish.
Peter Bazalgette, chief creative officer of Endemol International, was dubbed one of the Daily Mail's ten "Worst Britons" for bringing Big Brother to the UK. He has set out to write the history of that show and others, including Survivor, which was devised by the TV company belonging to Charlie Parsons, Waheed Alli and Bob Geldof, and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, which was the brainchild of Paul Smith. Parsons and Smith are two of the three men of his title; the third is the chilling Dutchman John de Mol.
The trio succeeded beyond anybody's wildest imagination. In March 2000, at the height of the dotcom boom, the Dutch TV company Endemol and Spanish Tele- fonica announced a merger. De Mol, the chain-smoking anti-hero of this book, made a billion sterling overnight; his partner, Joop van den Ende, made a billion euros. The negotiations, which read better than any cloak-and-dagger thriller, climaxed at de Mol's house near Hilversum, on the site of the home of an important Dutch Nazi. Somehow, I'm not surprised.
Like many others of my age and class, I have watched Big Brother and been baffled. Why should anyone watch the boring antics of a clutch of boring people who have nothing to do all day except bitch about each other? My daughter put me right: "It's repulsive, and it's compelling." While older viewers (and regulators) are appalled by the nudity, casual flirting, bad language, aggression and cruelty, younger viewers are engrossed by the personal stories and discuss the contestants' attributes in minute detail.
It is not voyeurism, argues Bazalgette, as everyone knows the participants are willing volunteers. So viewers have "permission" to watch, and to judge. In a world in which authority and rules are routinely despised, the programmes appeal to something brutal and instinctive. According to psychologists, these kids are doing what kids always do: setting up hierarchies and pecking orders. And their preference, time and again, is for the individual judged to be the most honest and helpful.
Bazalgette applauds the advent of "trash heroes", such as Jade Goody, who delight in their ignorance. The question of why we enjoy watching vulnerable individuals make fools of themselves, and what this does to the participants, is never properly addressed. But Bazalgette makes the fair point that television, a powerful medium that has been so heavily regulated by the elderly, the educated and the established, can take off once the barriers come down, leaving the public free to watch what it wants. Some, for sure, will choose high art and culture. But if the majority make other decisions, those of us who believe in choice have to let them get on with it. The term "dumbing down", unsurprisingly, does not appear on these pages.
Bazalgette claims that Big Brother Africa (2003) has probably done more for the continent than any speech by Blair. "Here was a group of peoples constantly fed negative stories [of] HIV/Aids, government corruption . . . starvation, genocide. And here was a television programme full of educated, confident Africans presenting a totally different picture," he writes. Not everyone approved. The Malawian authorities objected to pictures showing people smoking, drinking and kissing, even as satellite subscribers tuned in to the daily "shower hour" when the uninhibited housemates washed communally. Parliament banned the programme. The high court reinstated it. In last year's general election, prominent opponents lost their seats. Michael Howard, please note.
