Germaine Greer, British academic, writer and broadcaster in Guardian: "Everything about her is infuriating: her haughty way of stalking about, her indomitable self-confidence, her chandelier earrings, her leaping eyebrows, her mirthless smile, her putty nose and her eternal bray.. There are no good reasons for watching Celebrity Big Brother and very good reasons for not. Not watching will spare you the nerve-fraying annoyingness that is ShilpaShetty... Not to mention the crying jags. What no one seems to have quite understood is that Shilpa is a very good actress. Everyone hates her because she wants them to. She also knows that if she infuriates people enough, their innate racism will spew forth... Her only motive for parading in front of the other women in the house with whitener on her face was to show what utter hicks they are, how little they understand of her complex reality or of a billion people in the subcontinent who all want to havewheat-coloured skin. I bet thousands of brown-skinned girls in Southall fell off the sofa laughing when she didthat.......I can switch Shilpa off. The people in the house with her haven't got that option. The problem is that most of the housemates are too dim to convey what a pain in the ass Shilpa is without appearing to persecute her. So Danielle, beside herself with rage because Shilpa cooks with onions, calls her a dog. Jack Tweed calls her a cunt. The word was bleeped out, leading many viewers to speculate that she had been racially abused. That is not surprising. This is a racist country; to the vast majority of couch potatoes out there, Shilpa is a "Paki bird"....But it's a funny old world, to be sure. You can call her a "dog". Sexism is fine. What you mustn't do is call her a "Paki". As if to be Pakistani was to be worse than being a dog. Our very tenderness on this issue is the flip side of racism, and still part of the same coin. If you call me an Aussie you don't insult me because Aussieness is OK. Pakiness is evidently not OK."
Advertisement
Hari Kunzru, novelist: "As soon as Shilpa Shetty arrived, announcing that she hadn't really seen the show, I knew there would be trouble. She is a huge star, a much bigger deal than any of the other contestants. It is as if Cameron Diaz or Scarlett Johansson were in there. The others, for the most part, showed their almost total ignorance of and lack of curiosity about India, which she has dealt with more politely than I would have. She is recognisably middle-class Indian in her good manners and her forthrightness, as well as her occasional nerdiness and her unconscious pomposity.... In India, the audience would have been wiping away a tear; Jackiey Goody abused her, thinking Shilpa was sucking up. That's the cultural difference in a nutshell. Jackiey's refusal to learn her name was straightforwardly racist - every British Asian will have had that conversation at least once, complete with self-righteous complaints about the "difficulty" of the task. It was a very ugly piece of TV and I'm glad people have felt uncomfortable enough to complain...This is what Big Brother is for. It holds a mirror up to national attitudes. If we don't like what we see, we ought to change."
Advertisement
Sylvester Stallone, Hollywood actor: " The abuse was wrong, obviously, but you can't expect people to act normally in that situation. Shilpa is a beautiful woman. Everybody should stand corrected and just move on."
Meera Syal, UK based television actress: "There is a very thin line between what is entertainment and a vile spectacle and I think we are in that area now... What this treatment of Shilpa has done is remind a lot of Asian people in Britain of the type of uncomfortable treatment they've received themselves over the years... This is bullying and we mustn't forget the impressionable people who watch thisshow...I have great admiration for the way Shilpa has handled herself. But Channel 4 has been obviously rubbing their hands at the audience figures because everybody is talking about itnow."
Mahesh Bhatt, filmmaker: "The mask has finally come off from what otherwise is seen to be an evolved society. Those who dismiss this as aberrant behaviour are wrong. It reflects a deeper malaise in society and should be addressed. She(Shilpa Shetty ) should treat this as a game and move on. Anybody who has made it on her own in Bollywood is made of much sterner stuff. She is a tough girl and will get through it."
