Given that a phone vote gave us Pete Bennett, time to introduce cannibalism to Big Brother? Photograph: Sarah Lee
If there's one thing more pointless than spending Saturday night in watching the woman from 2Point4 Children skating with a wooden chair (and really, how did the human race ever come to find itself in this position?), then it surely has to be spending Saturday night in watching the woman from 2Point4 Children skating with a wooden chair and NOT BEING ALLOWED TO VOTE HER OFF!
Surely the whole point of spurious celebrities existing is so we can use them as playthings - laughing at their clothes, crucifying them for their ill-thought out remarks and, best of all, deciding their TV fates. And so, with the phone vote now out of action, here are some ideas I'd like reality TV bosses to consider to ramp up those ratings.
1. Strike a deal with Nintendo Wii which enables viewers to hook their machines up to the TV set and use the controller as an impromptu sniper's rifle, casually picking off the celebrities whose ballroom dancing isn't up to scratch.
2. Hold Dancing on Ice on an actual ice shelf in the Arctic Peninsula. At first the skaters are keen to show off their well-rehearsed bracket turns. By the end they're scrabbling for territory like petrified polar bears as the effects of global warming leave just one victorious contestant, clinging pathetically to a clump of snow. Then we let that melt, too.
3. Past winners of reality shows have included Kerry Katona, Pete Bennett and Mark Ramprakash. Even when the phone votes were working, viewers seemed to vote on an entirely random basis, ignoring factors such as skill, effort and even likeability. Therefore why not just settle things with a game of Russian Roulette? In fact, why not abandon the boring skating/dancing/pig-pleasuring bits altogether and start a new show: Celebrity Death Roulette, in which fame-starved sleb cattle willingly put their own lives at risk in return for 15 minutes airtime of them visibly cacking their pants. Jodie Marsh is reportedly keen.
4. Keep the rules exactly as they are. Big Brother contestants can only leave when voted out via phone so they would therefore be kept locked inside for months until the victor emerged as the most cannibalistic madman, clumps of Lorraine Kelly's left arm still lodged in their teeth. TV gold, some say.
5. Abandon such shows altogether and encourage the 1,374,365,357,865 people who watch them every Saturday night to visit nightclubs and meet real people instead. OK, OK, so maybe this one is a bit far-fetched...
