Back, back, back: Shanice and S Club

Obviously, we can all agree that I Love Your Smile was a lovely piece of pop music. Unless you're young and never heard it. Or have ashes where your heart once was.

But it was a slim career for Shanice, and a somewhat slim base for her to build a comeback attempt on.

You were hardly here in the first place, Shanice. You were hardly here.

This is a worrying sign that the passion for bringing back half-remembered acts from the 90s has reached a point where the supply of unreturned acts is running out.

(As an aside, how awkward was last night's S Club reunion on Children In Need? All the pep of when they were children's TV stars, but the imploring eyes of adults who thought that, by now, they'd have moved beyond this. And making Rochelle from The Saturdays introduce it was just cruel - 'hey, give it ten years, and you'll be back here, too...')

The Shanice comeback is being driven by the Oprah Winfrey Network - a network which knows a thing or two about how 90s powerhouses can slide into obsolescence - and it's going to include awkward moments like this:

In the booth, Shanice begins belting out notes like it was yesterday, showcasing a fiery new sound in the five-octave range she's known for. When the track ends, her producer's reaction says it all.

"Um, could you not be fabulous for like two minutes?" he asks Shanice. "This is too much!"

Could Shanice not be fabulous for two minutes? That's not much of an ask from someone who released one song in 1991 and, since then, has suffered financial hardship and has had to sell her house just to get to the point where the OWN will stick a half-interested camera in her face. I think Shanice's ability to not be fabulous, for periods measured in decades rather than minutes, has pretty much been established by science.

Tina Barrett: Oh no, she isn't

Are Easter pantomimes even a thing? Apparently in Blackpool, where former S Club 7er Tina is about to play the Wicked Witch in the Wizard Of Oz.

Is The Wizard Of Oz a pantomime, come to that?

Anyway, the Blackpool Gazette sees this as quite a coup:

Barrett is a well known figure to millions, after becoming one of the biggest names in pop music during the late 90s.

A well known figure to millions, and yet...

Pop star prepares to turn all wicked

... not so well known that the Gazette is going to take the risk of using her name in the headline.

Embed and breakfast man: Tina Barrett

How long is it since S Club 7 split?

A rhetorical question, it's nine years since the band rolled up, with Tina Barrett expressing a wish that she'd like to continue with music. (Or, given that she'd been in S Club, perhaps start with music.)

Now, just nine short years later, Tina's released her first solo single:

You might wonder if the moment has passed a little, although given the amount of post-production slopped over the her vocals, you could perhaps ask if it counts as a song by her at all.

It's not Tina's first musical adventure since S Club, of course. Who could forget her 2004 work as one of the Girls Of FHM on the ill-advised Rod Stewart cover? Admittedly, they didn't give her lead vocals but she did get nearly as much time in the video as Maria off Corrie and some women who had won some sort of demeaning competition.

Perhaps she should see if Maria off Corrie wants to join in for the (admittedly unlikely) follow-up single?

[via Clickmusic]

Gordon in the morning: Following in Steps' steps

This was always going to happen: After the Steps reunion, here comes the S Club 7 reunion. It's not quite out of the blue, as there's already a rump of a band:

J O'Meara, Bradley McIntosh and Paul Cattermole still play gigs at universities and clubs, as S Club 3.

In other words, nearly half of them haven't even got any dignity to lose.

The plan is to copy Steps' every movemake a reality TV show the heart of the reunion.

Reality TV? Yeah, that worked out well for Jo O'Meara before, didn't it?

S Club 7 comeback starts, ends in disaster

Did you know S Club 7 are back? Well, not quite back: it's only three of them and they're just hobbling round doing "a medley of their hits" for drunken students.

Amongst the line-up is Jo O'Meara who either came across as a bully during her spell on Celebrity Big Brother, or else was the victim of cruel editing, depending on if you have a sense of judgement or not.

Drunken students. Faded stars desperately dancing for coins. A person who somehow thought she was the victim when she was outed as being happy to sit around yukking while a person got battered by racist bullying. It's a set-up for disaster, isn't it?

Yes, so it turns out: Jo got hit by a bottle and wound up with a two-inch gash in her head, the set at Tokyo in Bradford was cut short. Even shorter, actually:

Bradley, 27, yelled at the 900-strong crowd: “It takes just one idiot to ruin everybody’s night.

“If you are going to throw a glass, throw it at me...you had to spoil it.”

Police are, according to The Sun, "investigating" to see if the attack was connected to O'Meara's Celebrity Big Brother appearance, although it's not clear why: after all, it's as unacceptable to throw stuff at people as Jo's behaviour on the TV show was. Even if the person who lobbed the bottle did it because they were angry about her part in the goading of Shilpa Shetty it doesn't excuse it, does it?

It's far more likely that the problem is down to a disjunction between what the band think they were doing - playing old hits to fans - and what they actually were doing, which was playing a set at a boozy student night with free entry. It's hard to understand why the club would have booked a turn who have been hovering between target and joke-butt for years, let all-comers in, and then give them drinks in glass containers.

Jo O'Meara: horse whisperer

It's probably unsurprising to see the first signs of a rehabilitation of Jo O'Meara starting, a year on from Celebrity Big Brother; and where better to start than in the pages of the Daily Mail?

O'Meara - who has spent the last year hanging out with rescue animals and has stepped in to offer support for the horses and donkeys which were discovered at Spindles Farm in Amersham - is now pregnant and keeping out of the spotlight. Sort-of:

Jo is not planning to rush back into showbusiness. She says: "I love singing and that will always be part of my life but I'm taking it slowly and I have the baby to think about."

She is considering an invitation to take part in a charity show next month, organised by celebrity voice coach Zoe Tyler.

The prospect of performing on stage after such a torrid year's absence is daunting, but she is considering an offer to work with housemate Jermaine Jackson.

The Mail, meanwhile, does it bit to help along with the recasting of O'Meara, suggesting the whole nasty, racist screeching match was a lot of fuss about nothing:

The baying crowd had already decided she was a racist and a bully, primarily on the strength of one particularly banal and savage argument over a stock cube.

Jo, meanwhile, insists that she's not racist at all:

The thing that hurts most is that anybody could think I was racist. I honestly don't have a racist bone in my body. I may be a bit daft sometimes but I'm not malicious.

Curiously, O'Meara doesn't bother to mention the bullying problem - that she sat hawking away while Goody verbally battered Shetty and, when Shetty appealed for help, she just laughed; that when the row finally abated, O'Meara said "I needed that" and looked like she'd had an enjoyable time.

Even more curiously, O'Meara doesn't explain how "not having a racist bone in my body" squares with the supressed segement of her sitting around having a laugh about limericks with the word 'paki' in them; the Daily Mail doesn't think to ask.

Instead, O'Meara trots out the line again that it was all created in the editing. Since her worst behaviour was quietly dropped onto the cutting room floor, it seems odd that she should object to people being selective when telling a story.

Reach for the Wikipedia

Ronnie Hazlehurst did not write S Club 7's Reach. Why would you think he did?

It might be because BBC News, The Guardian, The Times, The Stage and Reuters all said he did, in their obituaries of the TV theme king.

But why would they think he did?

Because Wikipedia told them so, and so when the - hurried, harried - journalists came to write their obits for him, they just took the information at face value.

It's easy to be too hard on the writers - loads of people rely on Wikipedia for information every day, and hardly anyone bothers to cross-reference it anywhere else; and it's not only Wikipedia which plays host to bum information tucked into its usually-quite-reliable content. But did nobody stop to think just how unlikely it sounded that Hazlehurst would have contributed a song to S Club 7 - and just the one, mind? Even if it had been true, surely that strange combination of writer and act would have piqued the curiosity enough for a writer to want to dig just a little bit deeper as to the circumstances that brought such a thing into being?

Mind, as Karl T observed when he brought this to our attention:

The great thing about this sorry saga is that, by Wikipedia's rules, Ronnie Hazlehurst really *did* write 'Reach', since it can be cited from numerous sources.

Ronnie Hazlehurst wrote Reach for S Club 7. And Bob Holness played the saxophone on it.

Rachel Stevens begs "save the popstar"

For some reason, Rachel Stevens is worried by the rock resurgence:

"It's changed, um, just a bit more rock 'n' roll now.

"Yeah, we need more pop acts in the mix, bring pop back.

"I feel excited about it, and I'm looking forward to getting back to doing music.

"And I will at some point, but right now I wanted to kind of do different things and challenge myself and try and then I'll be back, definitely."

Doing those contact lens ads must be taking more time than you'd expect, then.

Ever the consummate pro, Stevens even pretends that the prospect of an S Club reunion could be a positive thing, rather than a chance to hang out with Jo "it's not racist if it's a limerick" O'Meara and the others while contemplating how so much promise ended back at square one.

Rachel Stevens plans to park cars and pump gas

Rachel Stevens looks set to mess with a good thing as she's decided that, rather than being a pop singer (something she's rather good at), she wants to be an actor. In Hollywood. Like that Kate Beckinsale.

Don't do anything rash, Rachel, like sell up and move to LA on this whim...

Too late:

"Everyone knows me as a singer but my heart is in acting. "I am taking lessons because it is the best way to improve. I'm really serious about having a career in America and I am hoping to be signed to an agency soon."

Stevens, of course, is not well-known as an actor because, erm, she isn't very good at it. Two years ago, admittedly, she was in Deuce Bigalow II. A non-speaking part as "the dirty girl". And, let's not forget... erm, 2004's M&S advert and the bit part in a Comic Relief Spiderman spoof. At least it's not going to take casting directors too long to watch her show reel.

Celebrity Big Brother: Ofcom verdict

Some of the comments on the story we did back during Celebrity Big Brother insisted that Jo O'Meara couldn't possibly have been taking part in racist bullying, because, for example, she sang songs which meant she was "shy" (sorry, sensitively creative), she didn't appear to be doing any racist bullying in the backstage bits of S Club 7 live videos, and because she said she wasn't.

Now, Ofcom have published their findings following complaints about the series. What did they think?

Of course, their remit was not to decide on what was said, but how it was broadcast, but it did fall to Ofcom to investigate the nature of what was said in the first place. Their starting point is some of the transcripts:

Danielle
I just don’t like that. I don’t fucking trust her.
Jo
No, I don’t trust her. I don’t trust her – at all.
(SHOTS IN BEDROOM OF SHILPA AND CAROLE)
Danielle
No buts ay - she’s a dog.
Ian
What did she say? Danielle? What did she say?
Danielle
I need a wee. I need a poo. I need a wee but I’ve got to wipe
her arse.
(Background conversation)
Jo (to Danielle)
Behave yourself, Mrs.
Danielle (in toilet)
Fuck.
Jo
She’s a dog.
Danielle
No, but like me, you and Jade get on.
Jo
Yeah.

Friday 12 January 2007, transmitted on the main show on 13 January 2007

Channel 4 suggests that, while this is nasty, it's not racially nasty, and that Jo might have called Shilpa a dog, she didn't mean it:

There is no evidence, however, to suggest that the insult was motivated by racism or indeed had anything at all to do with Shilpa’s race.

Certainly the editorial team did not then and do not now view it as racist. That is not to say the remark was viewed as pleasant. In any event, at the time it is also clear that Jo, although she laughs at the comment, has some reservations about it - making the comment ‘behave yourself Mrs’ to Danielle.

It is also Jo later on that night and the following morning who makes it clear that she thinks the comments were terrible and urges Danielle not to drink again and to apologise to Shilpa. Accordingly, although not pleasant, the context of the show and the ongoing series made the inclusion of it totally justified by context and within the Code rules.

In addition, Channel 4 points to Jo's role in helping engineer a rapprochment between Jade and Shilpa the next day.

Ofcom suggests that "while offensive to some", this is pretty much par for the Big Brother course:

We therefore do not believe that in light of this backdrop, the term
“dog” would have gone beyond the Big Brother audience’s expectations. In the
context of the day’s events, the comment was clearly made by Danielle Lloyd in the
belief that Shilpa Shetty had somehow had a role in Carole Malone’s eviction. It was,
therefore, used by Danielle Lloyd as a generic term of abuse as opposed to a racial
insult, and would have given viewers an insight into the housemate’s character.

Then, there was the "Indians are thin because of their poor hygiene":

Jo
I said, maybe they cook them differently in India, might do mightn’t they?
Danielle
They probably fucking cook it for, like…
Jo
That’s why they’re all thin, because they’re sick all the time, because they’re ill.
Danielle
They’re ill off Shilpa’s cooking.
Jo
The thing that aggravates me with Shilpa is she fingers your food off your plate. You could see when she was picking the onions, just with her fingers, she’s just done it to Ian as well, she went ‘oh this chicken is fine’ [mimics Shilpa’s accent] and on his plate, started eating his chicken off-of his plate. That grates me.
Danielle
Do they do that in India, eat with their hands or is that in China?
It’s in India isn’t it?
Jo
Not sure, I don’t like all that though.
Danielle
I don’t know where her fingers have been.

Channel 4 suggested that this is merely ignorance, rather than racism:

Channel Four said that Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd were clearly within their rights
to be concerned about potential food safety and hygiene issues if they perceived
there was a risk. By making a crude generalisation that all Indian people are thin and suffer from food poisoning because of the way they cook chicken – particularly in a way that suggests this is humorous – Jo O’Meara’s ignorance of Indian culture is made clear to viewers. Similarly Danielle Lloyd’s comment asking whether it is India or China where people eat with their hands highlights her clear ignorance of other cultures. Nonetheless, Channel Four considered that the comments “…stop short of being clearly motivated by actual racial prejudice”.

So, suggesting that a nation of people are unhygenic, and sick, and thin as a result is "humorous" and "short of being motivated by actual racial prejudice" - you have to wonder why the channel believes something as nasty as this can be excuse because it's humourous. NF literature used to include cartoons, which didn't make it any less repugnant.

Certainly, Ofcom didn't buy it for a minute:

This [the motivation[ may or may not be the case (and of course, it is not possible to know with any certainty what the motivation behind these comments was), but we considered whether the content of the words were such that they could reasonably be viewed as potentially offensive on the grounds of race, or any other grounds.

There appeared to be two elements to this material which viewers found offensive. The first was the exchange in which Jo O’Meara linked Shilpa Shetty’s cooking to people in India being thin and the second was in Danielle Lloyd linking this personally back to Shilpa Shetty’s cooking, which viewers perceived to be racist bullying. We agree that on the surface, the target of the women’s exchange appeared to be Shilpa Shetty’s cooking. However, their comments extended to generalisations about Indians as a race and therefore had the potential to be viewed as stereotyping Indians as a race and offensive by many.

In considering the exchange, we bore in mind the broadcaster’s response that the above comments needed to be viewed in the context of the day and the growing antagonism over the course of the preparation and eventual consumption of the lunch. However, Ofcom believed that there were other, more pertinent comments (about race and imitations of accents) being made in the House which should have alerted Channel Four to the potential for this exchange to cause offence and the need to apply generally accepted standards.

We agree with Channel Four that expressing a dislike for another person handling the food you are about to eat with their fingers or taking food from your plate with their fingers would not necessarily lead to offence being caused in the broadcast of this material. However, in the context of the remarks which surrounded it (“That’s why they’re all thin, because they’re sick all the time…”; “Do they do that in India?”) and bearing in mind the pejorative way in which such comments could be viewed, Ofcom is of the view that the conversation had the potential to cause serious offence.

Jo O’Meara’s quiet mimicking of Shilpa Shetty’s accent when saying “oh this chicken is fine” also added to the concerns about the offensive nature of this material. This focused the discussion further on race as the issue (and not simply their frustration over the un-cooked chicken), adding to the offence.

We agree with Channel Four that, in the context of a programme like Big Brother, “it was…important that this scene was presented to viewers as a further insight into these girls’ characters”. Notwithstanding that such comments may demonstrate cultural ignorance, the audience’s reaction to this broadcast was bound to be influenced more at this time by concerns that the two women’s comments had the potential to be offensive on grounds of race.

In other words: It might not have been that Jo and Danielle were having a spot of racist Indian-bashing, but it certainly looked like it.

In other findings, Ofcom shares the views of Jo's supporters - for example, that sometimes she managed to do an Indian accent that was just spiteful and vindictive rather than racist:

In Ofcom’s review of all the incidents in which the housemates were broadcast mimicking accents, we noted that many housemates did in fact imitate each other and this was mostly done in good humour. Shilpa Shetty, herself, mimicked others, in particular Jade Goody (for example, she mocks Jade Goody at one point on her pronunciation of the word “whale”). On the whole, where the mimicking was not good humoured, there was no direct evidence to suggest that the motivation was racist. For instance, when Jo O’Meara imitates Shilpa Shetty’s apparent “whinging” to Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd (transmitted Saturday 13 January 2007 on the main show), it is the tone and pitch of her voice that is singled out and made the main focus of the imitation rather than the accent.

So, erm, that's alright then.

The regulator also observed that Jo's reaction during the great stock cube row showed support for Jade's bullying of Shilpa:

This argument was certainly extremely uncomfortable viewing and at certain times shocking. It was made more so, by the comments of Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd during and after the fight, which were regarded by some as supportive of Jade Goody’s behaviour:
Jo:
“I suddenly feel better”
“Jade you’re hilarious”
“Got to say, made my day”

However, the decision on this was that, while the behaviour was "unpleasant", showing it wasn't an error of judgement on the network's part.

Ofcom also considered - along with the Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jackiey Budden incidents, the Jermaine Jackson "white trash" moment. This bit, where Jermaine supposedly applied the term to the Jade clan, has been seized on by some as some sort of "balance" to the behaviour of O'Meara and friends, or to suggest that the media has only been interested in the white racism in the house, while turning a blind eye to racism coming from the black housemate.

Even had Jermaine been behaving like that, it's hard to see why a single moment of the use of a common phrase would somehow be comparable to sustained gaggle of racist bullying, but Ofcom hit the dictionaries and watched the tapes and concluded it wasn't racist, Jermaine was only using the term in reported speech, it wasn't said with any side, and he only used the term while explicitly not applying it to anyone in the house:

Ofcom has noted various definitions of the term “white trash” in ublished, as well as online dictionaries. “White trash” appears to be a slang term that is usually used to refer to what some describe as poor and uneducated white people. Whilst we understand that the term “white trash” literally refers to a particular group (i.e. certain white people), we consider it generally accepted that the expression refers to a socioeconomic group, rather than a racial one. We noted that Jermaine Jackson referred to The Jerry Springer Show immediately after his use of “white trash” to expand on what he meant by the term (“Have you heard about the show Jerry Springer, where they bring people and tell all their business and they go crazy? They get people like that because they have no self-respect sometimes…”). Again, this indicated that Jermaine Jackson’s use of the expression did not appear to be concerned with race, but with class and culture.

Nonetheless, Ofcom does consider that the term “white trash” may still have the potential to be offensive to some viewers. However, we believe that the term was appropriately justified by context in this specific instance and therefore not in reach of the Code. It is clear from the scene that Jermaine Jackson was merely reporting the use of the expression by others and he explicitly states that he would not himself apply it to Jackiey Budden (“They brought up the word white trash …and I wouldn’t call her that because she’s a human being…”). Neither did Jermaine Jackson use the term in aggressive or mocking terms.

In all, Ofcom found that some of the material shown was inappropriate for broadcast, and that Channel 4 will have to apologise multiple times on air.

It's noticeable that, despite her press interviews complaining about the way she was "edited" to "look bad", Jo O'Meara doesn't appear to have made a formal complaint to Ofcom on that point. Odd, that.

The long Blarwell

No wonder the audience at Blair's timetable-for-departure speech were pleased to see him; they'd been tortured waiting for him to turn up. Radio Five Live had listed the music played to the waiting delegates, and it isn't pretty. In no particular order:

Mambo #5 (Louie Vega)
Beautiful Day (U2 - close personal friends, of course)
Reach For The Stars (yes, S Club)
Lifted (Lighthouse Family)
Missing (Everything But The Girl - presumably in the hope that we'll miss him like the Deserts miss the rain.)

Save idiots like me from myself, begs Jo

In her continuing attempts to try and spin her racist bullying as somehow being something that happened to her, rather than something that she did, Jo O'Meara has called for Big Brother to be banished from the screens:

"I feel if this is what a TV show does to people, then it shouldn't be a TV show," she told Sky News.

"The whole thing has been so unfair and so cruel," she added. "I've not been portrayed as the person I really am."

But, Jo, the programme has a live feed. Your sitting around laughing like a hyena wasn't a creation of editing. Your suggestion of Indians being thin through poor hygiene wasn't created in the edit suite. Your conversation about Shilpa touching your food, that wasn't dreamed up by Endemol.

"I'm not a racist person, I never ever have been," she said.

"None of it makes sense. I don't know how this has all happened."

Whoever is coaching her is doing their best - engaging with the charges of racism, which require an element of second-guessing motivation, in the hope that everyone will forget the bullying she was part of.

"I don't think you can get much lower," she told Sky News in a recorded interview shown on Sunday.

"They say you have to hit rock bottom before you can build yourself up. I just hope I'm at the bottom now."

O'Meara said she had contemplated suicide but had been "too wimpish" to go any further.

If that's true, it is terrible. If it's not true, she might have just found a way to make herself even lower than her appearance on CBB managed.

Jo O'Meara: naked defiance and the victim mentality

In a way, you could almost be impressed with Jo O'Meara - rather than take Jade Goody's journey of attempted rehabilitation through stunts (trips to India, crying on TV), O'Meara has decided to adopt what my aunts would identify as a "hard-faced madam" approach. Today's Sunday Mirror bellows:

I'm Not Sorry And I'd Do It Again

It takes a special talent to make things worse than they were before, but Jo's going for it. The comment that "Indians are thin because they don't cook their food properly", for example? Jo thinks British Asians should be thanking her for the compliment:

But Jo yesterday refused to take back those words and said: "If anything, I look at that as a compliment. It's nice to be thin. It's what everybody wants to be."

O'Meara still tries to pretend that Goody honking "You're a liar and a fake" over and over for ten minutes while she and Danielle sat there giggling was "an argument" rather than an attack - and, despite having turned to her co-tormenters and saying "That's made me feel better, I must say that's made my day" as Shilpa withdrew, O'Meara claims she was "nervous":

I was aware Jade was being aggressive, but thought I would sit there and hide away. Afterwards when the bickering continued, I did think it had got to stop. I was bullied for years at school over my love of music.

"I had verbal and mental abuse - so I am dead against it. I now think BB created that tension and conflict on purpose to make the show interesting."

Leaving aside for a moment the "duh" of that last sentence, in what way is sitting there laughing your head off while someone is bullied being "dead against it". You might have been bullied at school, Jo - which, yes, is very sad, but was years ago. It doesn't give you a "get out of jail" card when, as an adult, you turn into a bully.

But is Jo racist? She falls back on that old fall back, "I can't be racist because I've got black friends":

Does it mean I hate Bradley from S Club because he's black? Him and me were incredibly close. We were like brother and sister, we still are and I know he will back me up 100 per cent. I was probably closer to him than anyone else in the band.

And, of course, she trots out her "Indian family", too:

"I have been accused of mocking Shilpa's accent, but that's not racist. My cousin married an Indian and I make fun of their kids's voices. Then they make funny Cockney noises back at me. It's just a big game."

Trouble is, Dilip Drayan, her cousin's husband, isn't impressed with Jo, either:

"Jo should never have said that Indians are skinny because they don't cook their food properly. That was a racist comment. It was wrong. She needs to take it back and apologise.

"The way she behaved was disappointing and sadly showed her true colours."

"I'm not going to stick up for Jo. She needs a ticking-off for some of the things she said.

"Jo has been bullied at school. It was so serious she took an overdose of pills and moved to a new school. So she knows what it is like. The situation in the house was bullying and Jo was a part of that. Jo is a vulnerable person. She was being influenced by powerful personalities like Jade Goody. But everyone is responsible for their own actions."

He added: "I'm disappointed in some of her characteristics including how much she was smoking and swearing."

Dilip crystallises the behaviour in a way many commentators have failed to - it's not that Jo, Danielle and Jade were necessarily attacking Shilpa because she was Indian; they were bullying her because they didn't like her, and using her race as a tool.

Back to Jo, though - who is, of course, the victim in all this: She's even complaining that Davina McCall was "harder" on her than Jade. Maybe - although it's hardly like the interview was a Paxmanesque grilling. Indeed, by focusing purely on race and ignoring the bullying altogether, McCall handed O'Meara an opportunity to dance through an "I'm not racist" defence. Jo was allowed to focus on the room for argument (just how racist she is) rather than having to engage with inarguable (that she's a bully who sat by watching her mate attack someone.)

music celebrity big brother jo o meara racism

Jo: I'm not racist, honest

Unsurprisingly, during her eviction from Big Brother last night, Jo O'Meara insisted that, you know, she's not racist at all:

After being shown TV headlines about the furore and clips of her behaviour, O'Meara admitted: "It does look very bad, it does."

But she told host Davina McCall the edited version of events distorted what really went on.

"Looking at it like that, it looks absolutely terrible and it didn't feel terrible in there," she said.

"I'm not a racist person at all. My cousin is married to an Indian man for one, and my cousins are half-Indian and their family is with me all the time."

We're not entirely sure why your cousin having chosen to marry an Indian bloke would somehow "prove" you're not racist, any more than if you had a cousin who was a Neo-Nazi would mean that you would be a flag-waving fascist. Being able to demonstrate that you spend time with one person of a different background isn't proof of anything. Paul Dacre's Daily Mail managed to run a decent campaign calling for justice for Steven Lawrence, but even Dacre wouldn't try and suggest that this somehow cancels out the newspaper's usual xenophobic stance.

Pushed - as much as Davina McCall can push - over the way she treated Shilpa Shetty, Jo tried to demonstrate how much she loves Indians:

"I'm not going to deny that Shilpa did aggravate me a lot - I don't know why. You can't click with everybody you meet.

"It's not because I'm racist at all. I think she's a very beautiful, very elegant woman."

Davina asked Jo why she sat there cackling during what Channel 4 seem now intent on describing as an "argument" between Shilpa and Jade Goody (Goody's diatribe, more honestly) rather than trying to calm the situation down - O'Meara suggested, somewhat lamely, that she giggles when bad things happen.

Oddly, she wasn't giggling when she was shown the newsreel of global reaction to her behaviour.

Technorati tags: music celebrity big brother jo o'meara s club 7

Jo O'Meara digging deeper

The discomfort at Celebrity Big Brother's racism and bullying has continued to grow: there's now been nearly 5000 complaints to Ofcom, and - following Jo Sclub's suggestion last night that "Indians are thin because they're always ill as they undercook their food" - Keith Vaz has brought up the issue in Parliament.

Interestingly, Shilpa's manager tells the BBC it's unacceptable:

Shilpa's UK manager, Jaz Barton, told BBC Radio Five Live: "She didn't come into the house to have that sort of harassment.

"She came in there with the full intention to actually embrace the public at large and to be proud of her culture and her heritage and who she is, and now she's faced with all this sort of harassment."

Earlier, though, her publicist has taken a more laid-back approach for the MediaGuardian Organ Grinder blog:

Interestingly, Shlipa's publicist, Dale Bhagwagar, took a relaxed view of complaints of racism. "Shilpa is God's child. Jack is God's child. All human beings are ultimately connected by a single abounding energy. So, how does it matter who belongs to what race, religion, country, colour or creed?"

But, in case you're wondering, it's okay to call a woman a cunt:

Channel 4 has also confirmed that Jack Tweed called fellow housemate Shilpa Shetty a "cunt", not a "Paki".

The broadcaster was responding after bloggers and the Indian media picked up on comments made by Tweed about the Bollywood star.

On the Celebrity Big Brother highlights show in which the incident featured, what Tweed said was bleeped out, fuelling the controversy about alleged racism on the programme.

But a Channel 4 spokeswoman has confirmed that the word in question was "cunt", not "Paki".

It is understood that if Tweed had used a racist term of abuse, it would probably not have been censored for editorial reasons, in order to highlight an aspect of his character.

So, erm, that's alright, then.