Anyone who may have read a previous article that I recently wrote, outlining my opinions on everything that is wrong with reality television programmes such as Big Brother, may be surprised to hear that I have actually been fascinated with this year's Celebrity Big Brother, to the extent of being glued to my seat on eviction night.

There is no denying this has been the most controversial celebrity reality TV in a while. But don't call me a hypocrite just yet. I actually think that this series of Big Brother has been brilliant. It has been brilliant for one reason only. And that is the fact that it has opened the eyes of the British public to issues such as bullying and racism to such a great extent.

It all started off with the usual tripe. Decrepit has-beens or virtual unknowns were shoved into the house and made to get along with each other. Inevitably this was going to get boring pretty quickly. And the people at Big Brother obviously knew this, for they then decided to throw in a few other non-entities to spice things up a bit. Namely, Big Brother's biggest 'celebrity' Jade Goody and her fame-famished family; arriving in style and ready to be waited on hand and foot by the rest of the housemates.

It wasn't long before things started getting interesting. Still, they weren't interesting enough to make me actually want to watch the show. No, I - and probably a hell of a lot of other people- only decided to tune in after the programme made the national news, newspapers and radio due to it's alleged 'racist bullying' of Indian housemate Shilpa Shetty. When the issue was even being spoken about by the Chancellor Gordon Brown, it was time to start watching all the hype for myself.

As clips of foul-mouthed Goody launching a tirade of abuse at Shetty were being replayed over and over, it was becoming delightfully apparent that the career of Jade Goody was sliding further and further into the gutter. And the enthusiastic hopes of resurrecting a lost career, or indeed actually making one, for her pathetic side-kicks Jo O'Meara and Danielle Lloyd seemed well and truly in the gutter.

But the best bit isn't even that these common, vile cowards will now become society's pariahs and that the refined and warm hearted Shilpa Shetty will be its princess.

The best bit to me, is how we viewers have recognised and identified the unpleasant issue of bullying, and responded with sheer abhorrence to the nasty perpetrators themselves. In the past week, the media has catapulted itself into frenzy, branding Goody and her allies 'racist bullies,' and the case reaching new heights when it made BBC's Question Time and what seemed like every day's news bulletins.

As crass and vulgar as they appeared on our television screens, I do not believe that Jade Goody, or either of her sneering partners in crime, are racists.

Obviously, it goes without saying that they are all nothing more than nasty spiteful bullies, and that their iniquitous behaviour in the Big Brother house has done the three of them absolutely no favours whatsoever - but racists? I find it hard to believe. After all, Jade Goody is apparently of mixed race herself.

Even her remarks that Shetty should 'go back to the slums' was probably not said with racist intent; Goody may have simply referring to how the less than privileged half live. No - this whole issue is not about race at all; what it all comes down to is a clash of classes. Shilpa, a highly educated woman of great refinement and grace, (and incidentally, a foreigner who speaks better English than Goody and co) struggled to fit in with the other females in the house- quite simply because she is about as similar to them as night is to day.

Whilst Jade liked to get her point across by screaming foul and nasty obscenities, and Jo and Danielle favoured simply to laugh themselves silly at someone else's obvious discomfort, (pathetically claiming later that this was down to 'nervousness'. Of course it was. And I eat socks.) I truly admired Shilpa's dignity throughout this whole saga. The only time she even lost her temper was to so rightly inform Jade that her claim to fame in the first place was Big Brother. How very very true. And also, how ironic that the show that catapulted the girl to fame has now become her downfall.

But we can all learn so much from someone like Shilpa Shetty. The disgusting things that were said to her, the blatant laughing in her face and the general bitchiness she had to endure in the Big Brother House, and the first thing she did when she came out was offer support and sympathy to the three bullies who had mocked and taunted her.

So now, weeks later, it's about time we stopped talking about it all, and let Jade and co pick up the shards of her once promising career. She is apparently being treated for depression. But in her new role as tortured victim, I can't help but feel sorry for her two small children, who must be extremely confused by all the sudden media interest in their mother after her two week absence from them.

Therefore, though this year's Celebrity Big Brother has opened our eyes to bullying, and the worshipping of a non-entity like Jade Goody, I still hope against hope that this is the beginning of the end for mindless TV shows like Big Brother. Now, let's talk about something else.