Feasting on celebrity fare
Kathy O'Meara on the fascination with reality TV and the media's appetite for salacious gossip

Another taboo is broken, its corpse broken and unmourned. As it lies in smithereens, many onlookers suck their teeth, shake their collective heads and pronounce the death of civilised society. The interesting thing is that there are many, far too many, onlookers for this phenomenon to be dismissed as a drop in the ocean. For this is the runaway success Come Dine with Me on Channel 4 and a man's home is no longer his castle.

Come Dine with Me has made it acceptable for us to go into a stranger's home, catalogue with knowing authority its many defects, lampoon the host's social and culinary ineptitude and decry their choice of soft furnishings. And boy, don't we lap it up.

This is a reality TV sensation, using the simple premise of four or five relatively sane strangers (with the occasional dysfunctional sleb thrown in) competing to throw the best dinner party for the paltry (considering what they go through) prize of