Monthly column on the arts

The fourth series of Channel 4's 'Big Brother' was, by all accounts, a disappointment: a number of gimmicks introduced to spice up the fading annual spectacle failed to prevent a substantial drop in the expected viewing figures, despite the fact that the main tabloid interest seemed to be in whether anybody would actually have sex on screen this time.

At least, so they tell me. I saw very little of the show

It's odd how 'Big Brother' manages to put the dampers on what can be moderately entertaining TV: put a group of people in a locked house, turn the cameras on them non-stop and see how they get on with each other. Each week, have the contestants and viewers vote for the candidate they most want to be thrown out of the show, and give the survivor £70,000 and instant fame.

It worked quite well, I thought, for 'Survivor'; 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' was intermittently entertaining too. Shows like this appeal to the eavesdropper in us, and it can be interesting to watch the images people try to project of themselves and the roles they assume.

It's a well that soon runs dry, however. The last 'reality TV' show that I watched had a group of celebs taken up in a plane for an aerial quiz, with an unlucky celeb being thrown out of the plane at the end of each round. Fortunately they were all given parachutes, but you do start to wonder how long that will be the case. Big Brother, however, with its interminable painful conversations and lengthy silences (imposed for legal reasons, apparently) was criticised by viewers and critics alike for being plain boring; one million fewer people watched, and several million fewer voted, than last year

Interesting

Into this TV wasteland strode the interesting figure of Cameron Stout, a 32- year-old seafood executive from the Orkneys. He became a hot favourite to win the prize, and before long the media were descending in a feeding frenzy upon the Orkneys looking for titbits about Cameron. His brother Julyan, a BAFTA-winning TV presenter, volunteered the information that Cameron tends to 'snort a lot' and is a fidgeter. Offered several thousand pounds to spill the real dirt on his brother, Julyan was forced to decline. 'He genuinely does not have a skeleton in the closet.'

Cameron is a Christian. A regular attender at his local Baptist church, he was baptised last year. Allowed to take one book into the Big Brother house, he chose his Bible. Viewers saw him openly talking about his faith - he described himself to one housemate as, 'I wouldn't say I'm religious. I am a Christian, though.' One of the crises he lived out before the omnipresent cameras was a worry that an outburst of bad temper may have set a bad example: 'I'm involved with a couple of youth clubs and some of them are bound to be watching.' He won the competition despite making forthright comments on homosexuality and on smacking children, and did not hide the fact that at 32 he was still a virgin.

Effective

Stout is not the first Christian to appear on reality TV, but he does seem to have been a very effective one. Almost two million people respected him enough to vote for him; a fellow-contestant, Steph, called him 'one of the nicest fellows I've met'. Analysing these things is difficult, of course. Romantically linked in the Press with Steph, accused of playing to the cameras by housemate Jon Tickle, and criticised for daring to ask a fee for post-Big-Brother interviews, Cameron is somebody whom most of us can see only through a media haze of exaggeration, misunderstanding and partial quotation. Who knows what Cameron really thinks or did?

Well, the comments now being made about him in the media indicate that Cameron's time in the house has been a strong witness to his faith. Media personalities like Gyles Brandreth speak well of him, on the Internet people talk about his 'genuine personality and honesty' and 'old fashioned values', and his Christianity intrigued rather than repelled most viewers. The Damaris Trust web site used his Bible quotations as the basis for a teaching module.

Those who saw more of the programme than I did might question aspects of Cameron's time in the house, for example his reported interest in a romantic relationship with a fellow housemate who is presumably not a fellow Christian. But all anyone ever saw was what the producers and editors chose for us to see, and what they selected out of the words that he spoke. Maybe a more reliable indication of Cameron's witness is in the comments of others. Reading a mass of responses from a wide range of secular observers does suggest that in an exposed, vulnerable and ultimately hostile experience, our boy stood his ground and played a blinder. A big brother indeed.

Big Brother and the fish salesman

Interesting

Effective

David Porter

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