Background
The fifth series of Celebrity Big Brother began on 3rd January 2007. On Day 1, eleven celebrity housemates entered the Big Brother house, including model Danielle Lloyd, singer Jo O’Meara and Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. Then, on Day 3, former Big Brother housemate Jade Goody entered the house, accompanied by her boyfriend Jack Tweed and her mother Jackiey Budden.
During Budden’s relatively short stay in the house, she and Shetty clashed on numerous occasions. Budden claimed that she was unable to pronounce “Shilpa”, and referred to Shetty as “Princess” and "the Indian". During her eviction interview, after Budden used the term “the Indian”, presenter Davina McCall coerced Budden into saying "Shilpa" and Jackiey pronounced it properly.
After Budden’s eviction, Goody's boyfriend Jack Tweed called Shetty an expletive, with the bleeped-out expletive variously reported as "cunt" and "Paki" who should remove objects from the toilet with her teeth. The night that Carole Malone was evicted, Lloyd was heard to refer to Shetty as a “dog”.
However, the first large upsurge in complaints occurred after a conversation between Lloyd and O’Meara was shown, during which O'Meara generalised that all Indians were thin because they were "sick all the time" as a result of undercooking their food, following their belief that Shetty had undercooked a chicken. Lloyd also mentioned that she didn't like Shetty touching her food because she didn’t “know where her hands have been". Lloyd, O’Meara and Goody repeatedly maintained a belief that Shetty was “fake”, and “a mole”.
The tensions in the house came to a peak on Day 15, when an explosive argument between Shetty and Goody erupted, seemingly over stock cubes. During this argument, Goody told Shetty that she was “not no fucking princess here”, “normal” and needed “a day in the slums”, while Shetty told Goody that her “claim to fame was ”. Witnessed by a giggling O'Meara and Lloyd, Lloyd said afterwards she thought Shetty should "fuck off home". She also said Shilpa "can't even speak English properly anyway".
The next morning, Goody referred to Shetty as, 'Shilpa Fuckawallah', 'Shilpa Daroopa' and 'Shilpa Poppadom'. She later insisted that she had done this with no intention of racism. She later apologised if her actions had offended anybody. After Goody apologised to Shetty for her behaviour, Tweed stated that he was very disappointed with Goody for apologising, and called Shetty a "dick" after previously describing her as a "wanker".
Read more about this topic: Celebrity Big Brother Racism Controversy
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