On the subject of ordinary people

I HAVE been looking back through some of the Big Brother coverage and a comment on Big Brother’s Bit On The Side – a mindless, noisy, innuendo-riven show – caused me to laugh so loudly they must have heard me on the other side of Dartmoor.

Trisha Goddard, pictured, was as usual pontificating away about me. According to her I arrived on the show “unable to hug another human being” but was won over by a touch from Malika, found my inner child and was “for the first time” included by my fellow beings. Apparently she gets paid for spouting that arrant rot.

What made me laugh so uproariously, however, was her deluded comment that I would find it hard to return to my single lifestyle because for the first time in my life I had been “among ordinary people”.

Ordinary people? Is that really how Trisha sees a bunch of highly paid, famous-while-still-young celebrities spending a month in front of the cameras?

Let me tell you about ordinary people, Trisha. They are like the 72,000 constituents whom it was my privilege to serve throughout 23 years. They get up each morning and take the bus to work, returning tired each evening. Their pay is fixed with occasional increments or promotions, their days are predictable and often dull. In bad times they fear job losses and mortgage rises. They queue for the NHS and fret over their children’s schools and, above all, they too often have no voice.

That’s ordinary, Trisha dear, not what goes on in the Big Brother house. Get real.