You know it is truly the summer season when this returns:

 BB9 

The mother of all reality shows, Big Brother has been back on our screens for nearly a week. Although in its ninth incarnation, the premise of the show is pretty much the same - a group of contestants compete to stay in the Big brother house for as long as possible. Each week, they battle against the whims of their fellow house mates and the general public to survive being voted off, and the last person left in gets a cash prize of about £50,000.

From what I have heard so far, the prognosis for this series is not good - if the papers and radio talk shows are to be believed, some of the competitors are reputed to be the most obnoxious and irritating to date. The mix this year includes a man with a severe visual disability. Whilst the shows producers will undoubtedly claim that they are raising public awareness of this condition, my uneasy feeling is that his disablement is being exploited for entertainment value.

The above situation highlights why the Big Brother brand is in decline. To survive a reality show this tough you have to be a pretty extreme personality - the contestants picked tend to be a rag bag of misfits and egomaniacs, who when pushed together for twenty four hours will produce some video footage that can be usefully cobbled together into an hours show. This approach has had its successes. In Big Brother 1, the moment when 'Nasty' Nick was exposed as a liar and a cheat by his fellow house mates was riveting telly. The tension and hostility in the house that resulted in the infamous 'fight night' in Big Brother 5 was equally compelling viewing. The problem now is that that the contestants on the show are just too savvy about how the show works, and their over riding ambition is just to be seen on telly to get fame. When you get a collection of such individuals in a room, the end result tends to be more vacuous than entertaining.

If anyone can think of a good reason to tune into Big Brother 9 just let me know...