Big Brother still isn’t news, but most of the tabloids continue to act like it is. In particular The Star has had a Big Brother story on its front page just about every day for the last two weeks. Here’s how it works. The Star hacks watch out for news the from the show and blow it up out of all proportion. Today’s headline is a great example. They claim that Jade is pregnant.

Their evidence for this seems to boils down to the fact that she’s a bit porky and she eats a lot. Now I know that Jade isn’t the brightest kid on the block, but I strongly suspect she would have picked up on some other clues if she was really pregnant.

This shows one big change in the last ten years. No-one cares about Big Brother at all any more. Channel 4 realised that and they very sensibly killed it off a couple of years ago. Channel 5 have been broadcasting it since then. It’s running currently but I couldn’t name one of the housemates. I haven’t seen a single front-page headline about it this year. Of course, there are other reality TV shows that grab the headlines instead. As far as I can see, that’s mainly the talent shows.

More spectacularly dishonest journalism on the front page of today’s Sport. There’s a photo of one of the women from Big Brother that looks like she’s topless.

The headline is spread across her breasts so you can’t see them. Inside the story says somwthing like “we still haven’t got any topless photos of the Big Brother women, but there are some great fakes on the internet already”. Why does anyone buy that paper?

Well, nobody does buy that paper now. One of the few improvements in the tabloid industry over the last ten years is the death of the Sport in 2011. No-one misses it one bit.

The third series of Big Brother started over the weekend. This is a godsend for lazy tabloid journalists. All they have to do is sit watching E4 all day and they can print stories about a group of complete nobodies who the public have suddenly become completely interested in. It’s interesting to compare the different approaches that different tabloids take – the Star and the Sport will just be printing as many nude pictures of the women in the house as they can

find, and on the other hand, the Mirror has declared itself the “anti-Big Brother” paper and fills it’s pages with stories of how dire the contestants are. Here at “Wasted Inches” we love Big Brother, but we really can’t see how it should be front page news. Every day. For the next nine weeks.

This seems dated now. It’s hard to believe that Big Brother was ever that popular. It’s been five years since anyone really took any notice of it. Channel Four attempted to put the show out of its misery a couple of years ago, but Channel Five picked it up and has been running it into the ground ever since. As this story says, ten years ago there would be Big Brother stories on the front page of just about every tabloid for the duration of the show. Last summer I don’t remember seeing a single front page story. And I’m embarrassed that I admitted to loving Big Brother. The interest soon wore off. I don’t think I’ve watched an episode since Big Brother 7 in 2006.

Beppe is a character in Eastenders which is an extremely tedious soap opera so presumably they aren’t talking about “Beppe” but the actor who plays him. The opinions of an actor about a program he acts in should, of course, be a matter of supreme disinterest to the newspapers, but in

this case it’s obviously important enough to knock even Beckham’s foot off the front page.

I have no memory at all of who “Beppe” was or who played him. But he was obviously very important to the tabloids ten years ago.