So, unless you were abducted by aliens or perhaps jetted yourself away to escape the seemingly endless rain, you could not possibly have missed the shenanigans in the UK Channel 4 show, Big Brother. A group of “Z-Class” celebrities, all selected for generating maximum potential controversy, live together in the House and are videotaped 24/7 to see how they get on and what they get upto. The key players in the House leading upto recent events were Jade Goody and two of her loyal followers, Danielle Lloyd (a model) and Jo O’Meara (a singer), rather like a mother pig and her obedient, snorting little siblings. Jade Goody, a former dental nurse, leapt to the spotlight in 2002 through her innate capacity to make people laugh and cringe at the same time, as many commentators said “ by her sheer rudeness, lack of manners, poor education, her ignorance and stupidity”. However, she is now worth around £4M, owns three large houses, drives a £75,000 Range Rover, had up until recently, a best selling perfume called “Jade”, has her own show on Sky and has sold over 110,000 copies of her Autobiography.

Not so stupid after all then is she? Also not too bad for someone who thought that Rio de Janeiro was a footballer, didn’t know what an asparagus was, thought “East Angular” (East Anglia) was abroad and that “Pistachio” painted the Mona Lisa. The day that Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty entered the House, a clash of cultures was bound to happen. She is everything Jade Goody isn’t; cultured, attractive, calm and well educated, but probably matching each other in their level of financial success and public awareness, for totally different reasons. Shetty is like a goddess to the millions of Indians who follow her movies. Due to the poor quality of life over there, adoration of movie stars becomes one of their few pleasures, which is why the film industry in India is the most successful in the World today. Goody on the other hand has the following largely of like minded, low achieving, poorly educated young women who identify with her attributes. They sustain her popularity by buying her book, albeit at the risk of not being able to read it unless written in sub-English dialect, wearing her perfume and watching her show.

It is said that the reason Shilpa Shetty agreed to Big Brother was to raise her profile in the UK and receive a fee of around £300,000 for the privilege. Well that certainly worked, because from the moment she arrived, Goody and her girls started their backlash and let rip against Shetty with comments from Goody including “you F***awallah”, “Shilpa Poppadom” and “you’re a liar a f****** fake..” followed by Lloyd’s gracious comment “she’s a dog.. she wants to be white” and then topped only by O’Meara’s inspirational comment “she can’t even speak English proply” [properly] and Goody blasting out with her contorted face “she makes me feel sick. She makes my skin crawl”.. These comments and more led to a fully blown international incident, with condemnation of racism on the part of Goody and her co-horts, Newspapers going hysterical, Indians burning effigies of Channel 4 producers, Gordon Brown apologising to his hosts, a Question to the House of Commons, Carphone Warehouse cancelling their sponsorship of Big Brother, Jade’s contracts going pear shaped and now the Police being called in under the Race Relations Act. The World has gone mad - I tell you it has. Now, in the cold light of day, let’s look at reality. Whether you believe this or not, the reaction to Shilpa Shetty was based on a combination of jealousy and ignorance. The girls were confronted with a far superior creature on all fronts and didn’t know how to behave. Their bluster was based on a lack of understanding of her culture and those comments were designed for maximum impact and they achieved their intention but they were not meant as racist abuse. Proof of that can be found in many instances where ignorant buffoons use someone’s culture to taunt and bully, something I have experienced at School wearing the Sikh Turban and something Jade Goody and her piglets are very good at.

The comment about Shetty eating with hands is a classic example; that is a cultural issue and lack of understanding that it is in fact quite hygienic because Indians are fastidious about hygiene when eating food to the point of obsession. Jade Goody is in fact half-caste. He grandfather was black. The truth, if you want to hear it, is that Indians are the biggest racists on the Planet. For hundreds of years, they have excluded their dark skinned brethren as outcasts, calling them “Untouchables” simply based on the colour of their skin. That’s real racism. I know because I am an Indian, although happy to say not a racist bone in my body! In Kenya, 99% of Indians treated the indigenous black population as inferior beings and as slaves. Most people don’t realise these facts and what is worrying is how quick the “Thought Police” steps in and even common sense suggestions are construed as “racist”. The lesson to be learned from this whole episode is that it shows how endemic ignorance of different cultures really is and that there is a large sub-culture of ill spoken, rude, arrogant, dysfunctional people out there that the Government and educational system would do well to address.

Jas Kalsi, BSc(Eng)Hons, MBA is a Management Consultant and Past President of the Ennis Chamber of Commerce