This piece from The Economist arguing this might be more an issue of class than race . After all, Shilpa Shethy is a well bred upper class Indian in a house with 3 working class whites. Reality TV Oh brother Jan 19th 2007 From Economist.com A row over reality TV says more about class than race MORE magazines documenting the ups and, better, the downs of celebrities are sold in Britain than anywhere else, relative to the size of its population. The reasons given for the country’s vast appetite for celebrity vary from the historical (Brits like having a class system and have created a new one on the embers of the old) to the sociological (people no longer know their neighbours well enough and so gossip about famous lives instead). The result is benign, most of the time. British celebrity culture is tolerant: ethnic minorities and homosexuals feature prominently. And it is democratic: no discernible talent is needed to enter the aristocracy of celebrity. Not this week, though, when the unpleasant, even racist, treatment of Shilpa Shetty, an Indian actress, on Celebrity Big Brother, a reality-television show, has been at the top of news bulletins. The format of the programme resembles a performance at the Circus Maximus, though with the lions given the week off. The contestants live together in a house fitted out with cameras. The winner is the last one left in, after some have walked out in dismay and others have been voted off by viewers. So far more than 30,000 people have complained to Britain’s television regulator about the bullying of Ms Shetty, after she was called a dog and endured jibes about Indians and skin-lightening creams. That is the largest number of viewers to complain about anything, ever. Parliamentarians have raised the matter in the House of Commons, while making earnest points about the purpose of publicly funded television. Ms Shetty was even mentioned at prime minister’s question time. David Cameron, the Conservative leader has been asked what he thinks too. If this all seems like a ghastly trivialisation of politics, then consider the effect Ms Shetty's treatment has had in India, where Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequor (its finance minister), is visiting this week. Indian newspapers have shown rather more interest in Ms Shetty than in the man likely to become Britain’s prime minister later this year. In Bihar, a poor state in the north-east of the country where more than half of all children under five years old are malnourished, banners were burned in defence of the glamorous film star. A junior Indian foreign minister, Anand Sharma, denounced Ms Shetty’s treatment. Poor Mr Brown has been forced to assure his hosts that Britain really is a tolerant place. He is right. Ms Shetty herself has said that her bullying was not racist in the fully fledged sense of the word. Instead, it showed something of how British society is changing thanks to globalisation. The television programme put a wealthy, well-spoken Indian together with some white working-class Brits, who decided that she was not just different from them, but more upper class. One called her a princess, and meant it as an insult. All of which should, if the sociologists are right, inject new life into Britain’s fascination with celebrity.