Celebrity Big Brother is back, offering the chance for another group of desperates, attention seekers and career plummeters to put their name in the frame for a supporting role in this year’s Hackney Empire panto.

And once again, producers have reached into their bag of tricks, (ie. listened to the pleadings from hungry management agents offering up their ‘star’), and created the composite seemingly required to tick-box the telly demographic.

Thus, we have the likeable one-hit wonder, the actor/boxer who’s taken too many hits to the head, the soap stars of yesteryear, the “sassy” drag queen, a bloke from Love Island whom his own nan may not have heard of and an American dancer famous for having Dumbo-sized hair bows.

Oh, and there’s the compulsory former Tory politician (this time with a hair construction louder than his oratory) who suggests what many of us suspect; politics is showbiz for the solipsistic.

Read more Brian Beacom

But don’t take any of that description to be code for criticism. Celebrity Big Brother, which first appeared in 2000 only to be dumped by two channels and rescued, Fagin-like, by ITV, plays a hugely important role in our cultural life.

Yes, the stunts are cheap and tawdry. The psychological manipulations immoral. And it’s yet another example of how television is playing to our basic survival instincts, encouraging the........

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