Chicken Curry Rules!

Hey yaars,

So I've been watching Celebrity Big Brother. As you all may well know, Big Brother is somewhat huge in the UK (akin to Survivor in North America), and annually they have a celeb edition. As always, it's chalk full of D-Listers. This year, Channel 4 decided to spice things up a bit, by adding Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty into the mix. And though she wasn't cheap (rumoured to have been paid a 300,000 pound appearance fee), she got into controversy and ultimately won!

The controversy? Three housemates - model Danielle Lloyd, singer Jo O'Meara (of S Club 7 fame), and Jade Goody (a former regular BB housemate) - were purported to have indulged in a bits of racism, bullying, and prejudice. And being the champion of human rights and card-carrying desi, I decided to watch a few episodes through the magic of torrent downloads. Boy oh boy was their some vitriol!

From calling her "Shilpa Fuckawalla" to saying she should "Fuck off home", it was hard to watch to say the least. Understandably people are under the microscope in the house, and every little flaw is revealed, but by god how do you manage to be so ill-sensed? The row created headlines internationally, with British PM Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown being asked to pipe in on the issue.

Of course all's well ends well, as our Bollywood Starlet won the final by a commanding 64% of the vote amongst the final 4. Though I think we all took more pleasure in seeing the squirmed look on the three "witches with a capital b" at seeing what they had said and done.

This may have been reality TV at its most fascinating. Of course this does beg the question of why us brown people are celebrating as if we won a war! There are 1.3 million "Asians" in the UK and it doesn't take a genius to realize that many of them were going to vote for one of their own to win. This just catalyzed the reaction. She still deserved to win though :P

Hopefully YouTube comes back online so you can watch a bit of the highlights.