What has become of us?

So I've been in England for 4 days now - and have noticed an obsession with a show that a scant decade ago would have appeared only fleetingly one of Chris Tarrant's "Let's Laugh At The Japanese" 'specials' (Clive James would not have stooped so low)

"I'm a celebrity get me out of here" is a show designed to humiliate ex-celebrities in need of airtime whilst extracting maximum coinage from the 'voting public'. So the producers decide that somebody has to bathe in cockroaches / eat a Kangaroo's tongue, penis, eye, balls and anus (both genuine challenges) and the 'great British public' phone in at 50p a minute to nominate the posh bird or the poof.

This means that this week Jan Leeming (the second most famous female newsreader of the late 70s) and Scott something or other (a poofy designer of no reputation) get to participate in every nasty little 'challenge' for our amusement.

The only real high to date has been David Gest - husband to Liza - and a man of whom little was known. He's had the good sense to date to tell the most outrageous and bare faced lies, to leap into challenges without flinching (deny the public this and they tire of bullying you) and to refuse to eat the swill provided even when the alternative was hunger. Well done David.

But really when did we become so petty? So pathetic? When did torture (for the challenges are torture) become entertainment? And when did our class and sexuality divide become so self evident? It would be easy to dismiss "I'm a Celebrity..." as a nasty minded piece of filth - it's less easy to ignore the glee with which the British public embrace that filth.

What next? Celebrity torturers in Iraqi prisons? Faith Brown blacked up and forced into a 'stress position' in a black hoel prison somewhere in the far east? Jason Donovan forced to listen to his back catalogue?

It may seem far fetched - but then so did the idea of that camp man from the children's BBC broom cupboard being forced to bathe in frog's intestines being served up as entertainment... didn't it?