UK votes for Shilpa but shedding more tears may not wash now

But given the threats Goody received, police have had to ensure Goody’s safety and so there was no public audience when she emerged from the Big Brother house — the first time that the public and press have been kept away from the location. An indicator that things might have got out of hand as in normal circumstances, a crowd would greet the celebrity with boos or cheers.

Big Brother presenter Davina McCall said live on air: “Due to the extraordinary circumstances of the past week, we cannot have members of the public here, so I will now be taking Jade to a studio location to discuss her eviction.”

It was in the studio in Elstree, Hertfordshire, that Goody — who was on the show five years ago — was shown video footage of her behaviour in the house, including the scene where she refers to Shetty as “Shilpa f***walla or Shilpa Poppadom” and clips from Wednesday’s overly aggressive argument which resulted in Shetty later breaking down in tears.

Faced with this footage, Goody conceded: “I’m not a racist but I can see why it had this impact.” She added: “Sincerely, with my hand on my heart, I apologise to everyone I’ve offended. I can’t dignify myself…(the) footage is nasty.”

But that Goody, who is not renowned for being articulate, should have been so composed further indicated that she could have been briefed beforehand. In a further media twist, pundits claim that Channel 4 will do all it can to salvage Goody’s career as she shares the same media agent as Davina McCall.

Shetty, who remains within the house, has no inkling of the events that have been sparked from her treatment nor of the popular newspapers’ campaign to boot out Goody. Even The Sun newspaper, a British tabloid whose readership covers a demographic that is traditionally more mass-market than liberal, has championed Shetty and on its front page urged readers to vote against Goody to make a statement against racism and to show that Britain was a tolerant, inclusive nation.

Such was the public outcry over the persistent bullying and the attacks which took a racial turn — media watchdog Ofcom is yet to deliver a verdict on whether there was sufficient racist content — that the subject was the lead item across the media.

In a week when young British soldiers have continued to lose their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and which saw one of the worst storms in the UK resulting in 17 deaths, it was nevertheless the tears of a foreign actress which led the bulletins. So far Ofcom has received over 40,000 registered complaints.

After sparking an international spat — the Big Brother row figured during the visit to India of Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, who is aiming to be Tony Blair’s successor — Friday’s eviction night vote was seen to represent a wider issue.

Brown, who also waded into the issue along with the Indian PM Manmohan Singh, urged the British public to use this as an opportunity to take a stand for “tolerance and fairness”.

Even without political intervention, the swing of public opinion had already indicated that Channel 4, in its bid to push up ratings and, therefore, benefit financially from the furore, had gone too far. Said Channel 4’s chief executive Andy Duncan: “It is unquestionably a good thing that the programme has raised these issues.” He then urged people to watch it and make up their own minds.

But the tide of viewer protest forced Channel 4 to bow to public pressure. After originally claiming that they would donate 10 pence from every 50 pence charged for the eviction vote to charity, they were compelled to backtrack and announce that the entire revenue from the Shilpa v Jade vote would be donated.

Now, however, as pictures of Indian demonstrators in faraway Patna burning effigies of Big Brother’s executives have been shown in Britain and threats have emerged against Goody, questions are being raised about whether Indians are showing the same tolerance that they demanded be shown to Shetty. Controversial writer and author Julie Burchill, writing in the London Evening Standard: “I love the sight of Indians, in a country with a huge class of Untouchables, prancing around burning effigies and telling us not to discriminate!”

Unless Indian protest within the subcontinent is restrained and the British Indian threat to Goody is retracted, the outpouring of support for Shetty — both personally and symbolically as a race-relations exercise — could dwindle from the mainstream British public.