In Da House

Only time will tell whether George Galloway’s entry into the Celebrtiy Big Brother house was a mistake or a masterstroke. Although it’s easy to look forward to The Gorgeous One getting a drubbing at the hands of the masses it should also give cause for concern. Over the past couple of years George has proven himself adept at courting public attention in the most unlikely of places and at appealing directly to people who are at best ignorant.

Big Brother is the biggest soapbox yet from which George can spout his idiocy. We can heckle all we like from the sidelines. We can point out how ludicrous it is that a sitting MP is sitting on a TV show. But George has already made clear that he has no respect for Parliament. George’s argument is simple: more people watch Big Brother than Parliamentary debates so he’ll be doing what he does best—appealing over the heads of fellow MPs and the news media to the masses. As he says in the press release explaining his decision Big Brother is:

The biggest audience I will ever have. Every night on prime-time television millions of viewers will tune in. Almost everyone in the country will see at least a part of at least one episode. In the slow January news month the newspapers will be chock-full of Big Brother.

And of course, chock-full of George.

Furthermore, Galloway is already parrying the arguments about the waste of taxpayers’ money with a bigger achievement—the raising of funds for charity. However much Galloway’s TV appearance costs the British public (and you can track that here) you can be sure he will more than make up for it in funds raised for Palestinian causes.

It’s win-win for George in his press release. The longer he stays in the house the more he spreads his message. If he’s ejected then at least he raises money for charity.

We need to use new and innovative methods to put across our arguments. I’m determined that there are no no-go areas for us and I believe Celebrity Big Brother will be hugely successful for our ideals. If I’m wrong at least many will eat in the Gaza Strip because I tried.

And who is there to parry George’s arguments? If George can perform well against Christopher Hitchens he’s not going to have much trouble jousting with the likes of Michael Barrymore and Jodie Marsh.

How hard would it be for a manipulative being like Galloway to calculate the actions it would take to win viewers’ sympathy? Unless he makes a huge mistake, Big Brother could be just the booster George and Respect need at the beginning of 2006. On the other hand, the show may help to unmask him for the angry, arrogant, despicable self-publicist that he is. Thankfully, the bookies have him way down the list already. Let’s hope he stays there.

PS Thanks to everyone who emailed to tell me George was in the house!

Links for today:
Watch this drag race through NYC (via Gothamist).
I watched Dinner for One in Denmark on New Year’s Eve and thought, “what a great story–an English comedy that’s huge in Denmark but unknown in England”. It’s a pity Jude Stewart had the same idea first!