Celebrity obsession never ends

Did Gordon Brown read the zeitgeist right last year when he declared that Britain had fallen out of love with cheap celebrity? The latest series of Big Brother, which comes to its firework-exploding finale tonight, has not scaled the giddy heights of publicity and viewer figures it once had. Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, has slashed its odds on the show being pulled before 2010 when Channel 4’s contract with Endemol, the production company behind the programme, ends. The axing of the series in Australia prompted media commentators to predict its death here, too. Sales of the celebrity magazines, Heat, Closer and Reveal, have fallen. So perhaps our love affair is, as he said, over."