As the Stanford Prison Experiment and -- more recently -- events at Abu Ghraib proved, if you lock people up in a confined space for long enough then sooner or later they're going to lose it.

So it has proved to be in the world of Reality TV, where the latest series of Big Brother has exploded into a booze-fuelled free-for-all.

The London Evening Standard is already describing the punch-up as a "new low" for reality TV -- and more self-righteous garbage is sure to follow in tomorrow's papers.

It's all tosh, of course.

The entire reality genre is built around the voyeuristic promise of sex and/or violence. The producers of Big Brother (and the advertisers) have got exactly what they wanted -- a fact that's sure to be reflected in the ratings.