Tourist at home

Like most footbal fans in England it took a while for the crushing disappointment of the national team’s dismal performance at the World Cup to sink in.

However, in the haze of a drunken hour and following David Beckham’s self important resignation – like we cared? – and the mock auto da fe of Sven Goran Ericsson's exit interview, the thought struck that a tipping point was reached, not only for England football but also in English culture.

Since last summer there seems to be a genuine gravitation back to substance rather than style. Those that govern and entertain us by virtue of a triumph of their charisma over what hey could do seems d to be slipping into dependency.

In football terms the whole WAG circus seemed to sharpen minds that it was what happened on the pitch and not the shops that was more important; Tony Blair hit the buffers when what the country actually wants are concrete policies about sorting things out rather than charm (this could be Gordon Brown's big advantage as he slugs it out with oily Blair-lite David Cameron); in music a lot of gritty, street-level bands like Arctic Monkeys thumped boy bands – even Take That came back with real songs – and the new X-factor darling seemed to have an even more ephemeral shelf life; Jade Goody and cohort dreadful Danielle Lloyd have rather wonderfully brought down the concept of being famous for being famous and BB’s future (and thus its housemates’ fame and inevitable fortune) is in doubt.

In fact David Beckham slipping out into the sunset way out west is further evidence for this. Goodbye, good riddance and take your fame hungry, bad culture influencing other half (Victoria Beckham or Posh spice for the two people who don't know) with you. For good. Be a movie star; be a scientologist; be anything; just don’t be here…unless you want o do something real.

Of course this may be dreadful wishful thinking and dreaming. But as one of my home town’s most famous son’s said. You can say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one…I hope.

Email me to tell me if I am the King of wishful thinking

It's over a week now since the UK slipped into one of those horrible periods of moral panic and mass angst over the celebrity Big Brother Jade Goody ‘race’ row.

Those who are much more articulate than I am – and better paid because of it I would hope – have covered this issue elsewhere. I can only recommend the wonderful Grace Dent and Barbara Ellen for their perspective and also that of Anushka Asthana to get a rounded view.

What was noticeable though was just how poorly C4 came out of this. When it was obvious to all who watched that we were not witnessing some common or garden BB bullying but something that belonged in a much darker place , it was striking that the whole issue was allowed to continue by the broadcaster.

Yes the whole essence of BB is to witness first hand how people in a confined space do or don’t get on but, as when B5 nearly descended into a brawl, there are limits. These were undoubtedly breached in the Jade/Shilpa row.

Programme makers Endemeol and C4 were shown to be either opportunistically cynical in rating chasing or just rubbish. I believe the former applies to Endemol and the latter to C4 who did themselves no favours when tackled by the media on the incident.

Call me old fashioned but putting up someone in a scruffy t-shirt, despite his position, to give the corporate view was not sensible at all. It appeared, and appearances are vital at these times, that they cared just as much as the programme’s appearance as their personal appearance.

As for Endemol, and I speak as a BB fan, they deliberately provoked the row; why else was the manifestly mad Goody clan put there in the first place. Endemol’s Victorian ancestors probably promoted bear baiting.

Following Jade’s defenestration and inevitable media excommunication, what’s left for BB now? Can the same dynamics simply be allowed to develop or will conflict only be permitted when the protagonists are of the same ethnic grouping? How racist is that?

Well actually sadly more than one. And apologies to the dear departed soul of the wonderful Ian Dury for connecting his wonderful song with the UK's latest hate figure, Jade Goody.

In the maelstrom of opinions - see Kathryn Flett's wonderful analysis of what happened in the house and that of Mark Lawson- connected to how racist or not were Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara to Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity (sic) Big Brother, the one phrase that comes through is that the actions of the three are 'holding up a mirror to contemporary British society'.

To an extent yes it is. We see in the three undereducated oafs something about British society that most of us choose to think that we are above and whose actions are far beyond the experience of most people. Well no. Overt racism is alive and kicking in the UK. The only people who think not would be TV executives and middle class liberal who've bought themselves out of the from line of racism.

MY 12 year old daughter was shocked to see her classmate from an Indian background racially abused by older children at her no-way-in the-ghetto religious secondary school in one of the south of England's most prosperous town. Call centre workers from India go to work safe inn the knowledge that some ignoramus will call then a Paki. Make s you proud.

Yet what makes the Big Brother incident worse for me is that it was constructed deliberated by smug TV executives who once the inevitable genie was uncorked by the arrival of the Goody family were absolutely gutless and powerless to stop it.

It's ironic that those whose voices are loudest in the condemnation of the actions of Jade Goody in particular have been complicit, if not fundamental, in her fame and thus her gladly now truncated stay in the BB house right now.

So why was she there? The programme maker s wanted an agent provocateur and they got one knowing full well what were taking on. The media didn't create a monster; the monster has always been there. Is there any difference between Jade's behaviour in BB 2002 when fellow housemate Adele was about to 'deck her' and now when only Shilpa's Olympian self restraint and dignity has prevented a similar and totally warranted scenario.

The ( let's not forget) mixed race Jade Goody has been described as a bully, racist, ugly and ignorant and yet she?s reportedly amassed around £6 million from her existential stupidity that her soi disant class superiors who run media have funded. They have spent the last five years contributing to Jade?s bank account by breathing the oxygen of publicity into her life. Without such constant exposure, as Shilpa rightly but needlessly pointed out, Jade's life has no meaning.

One great thing about the show prior to eviction was the clanging noise of thus penny dropping into Jade Goody's skull. Einstein she ain't but she wasn?t that dumb to know that she'd done something that might jeopardise her future earning. Predictably and rather sadly, she was interviewed in the UK papers yesterday (So much for being media Polonium 210 as many have predicted. Watch out for the sure to come programmes of Jade goes to India).

Jade and her crew are typical members of the UK's lumpen proletariat who are denied most the 'nice' choices in life by the apartheid that exists in UK state education. Barely educated to work doesn?t come into it. The prospect for working class children undergoing state education in the UK since the late 1970s can be pithily summed up by Withnail's Uncle Monty pithy description of 'shat on by the Tories, shovelled up by [New] labour'.

We have Jades and Danielles because as a nation we don?t care about what happens at the bottom end of society, as long as 'nice' children can go somewhere away from these unworthy proles who are only fit to work in call centres - before they are ironically moved to India. Jades are ranting away everywhere; in every town centre, on every street, in every train.

The bullying an racist comments that 'we' have witnessed are more commonplace and it's delusion al to think otherwise. Anyone who says so is a liar or deluded. Such comments may not be the currency of the daily lives of those in the media or the 'nice' jobs but they are really only uncomfortable about having such feeling s presented live. The UK middle classes are almost pathologically racist; they don't express this racism by ignorant Jade Goody rants, they have more insidious ways such as white flight, emptying out city centre schools of their children, and the hidden glass ceiling that prevent promotions. Look at any media company in the UK: It will be, to quote a former director general of the BBC, almost hideously white.

To continue with Sweet Gene Vincent ends with the line: 'so farewell mademoiselle'. Yep adios Jade. I won't be able to mourn your decline with thunderbird wine', the media will make sure we're still seeing you. They need you just as much as you need them.