Gordon Brown was looking particularly downbeat today; Her Majesty the Queen looked close to tears, and police were patrolling bridges and high buildings in case of suicides.

Yes, Big Brother is no more.

Finally, after 10 years and with ratings lower than the average Big Brother contestant’s self-respect, Channel Four has pulled the plug.

Apparently the programme is no longer cool, and next year’s series, the 11th (Gawd help us), will be the last.

It was all so different once. I can still recall those heady days nine years ago when Shropshire’s Craig Phillips won the first series.

Back then the programme was genuinely different. It was supposed to be a social experiment – a look at what happens when a group of strangers are locked away from the world and forced to get on with each other.

The national newspapers went absolutely mental for it, and the programme – in which, let’s face it, nothing actually happened – was headline news.

Even the Shropshire Star got involved  – it had to: dear old down-to-earth Craig won the first series and became a star. He went a long way from humble origins.

But, as the years went by the programme became more irritating than entertaining.

You can probably remember the first contestants because they were so ordinary; the later ones you’ll remember because they weren’t. In fact Channel Four went out of its way to get even more freakish people on board. You’ll remember Bonehead, Numbskull, Druggie, Tarty and Po.

Actually, you probably won’t remember any of them. The cynicism behind the choice of some contestants quickly backfired on the producers. Some of those contestants, who thought the show a passport to superstardom, were pushing it to get even 15 minutes of fame.

And then we had the bullying. And the swearing. And the fighting. It was like watching a car crash five times a week as producers stoked up the antics in the hope of controversy attracting viewers.

And let’s not examine the career of the Blessed St Jade of Goody.

There were always dissenters. There have always been letters from those who cannot understand why such a programme makes the news (even though they always read the articles before complaining), and after a while it was hard to disagree.

So, now it’s all over, and Channel Four – which made millions off the show – is left with a large Davina-shaped hole in its schedules and revenue stream.

So, do you think the channel will be aiming higher in future and bringing us a programme that shows us something to aim for rather than something to sneer at? Do you think Channel Four will decide to give us something to inform and entertain?

Nah…They’ll probably just revive The Word.

By Andrew Owen