After months of intense deliberation, I decided to walk away from a place in this year’s 25th anniversary series of Big Brother when it begins to ITV later this month. Not because I’m shy of a debate – as a political adviser, I’ve made a career out of arguing – but because, in the end, the risks outweighed the test I wanted to run.
The brutish nature of reality TV is nothing new. We know the stories – editing that renders conversation unrecognisable, pressure-cooker environments that push contestants to the edge (and into years of therapy), careers completely destroyed, utterly relentless tabloid media coverage and in extreme cases, lives lost.
