Leading article: An unflattering mirror to our society

Put a group of self-centred, egotistical, ignorant people in a confined space such as Channel 4's Big Brother household and it is not altogether surprising that something unpleasant emerges. Indeed unpleasantness and bullying are what the programme's makers Endemol - whose very name sounds like an unpleasant medication - set out to provoke. Conflict, however petty, is the essence of "good television", or so contemporary wisdom has it.

But the racist taunting of the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty by a bunch of neanderthal C-list celebrities in the latest series has descended to new depths, which even Endemol must be beginning to regret. And so it should. Yesterday even the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, currently on a visit to India, was drawn into the row by local people outraged at Britain's treatment of their mega-star. The issue was raised with him so repeatedly that he issued a statement saying that the world should see Britain as "a country of fairness and tolerance".

So, by and large, it is. More than 21,000 British viewers have complained to Ofcom and Channel 4. This is an extraordinarily large number, especially since it is not the result of a hyped-up campaign by a lobby group, but spontaneous revulsion by members of the general public at what they are seeing on their screens. The scale of the protest is a measure of how far Britain has progressed in recent decades in reshaping attitudes to racial prejudice.

Such progress is, however, far from universal. The ugly behaviour being seen on Big Brother is, sadly, still all too common in our society. It is to this pitbull tendency that unscrupulous politicians and populist newspapers play when they obsess about the alleged horrors of immigration - playing to the fear that foreign migrants are here to steal our jobs, homes and women. And yet this barely submerged xenophobia in Britain is a significant phenomenon in our society still.

It is why we should have no truck with those who complain routinely about "political correctness gone mad". Political correctness has proved an effective tool in countering such deep-rooted bigotry in racial and sexual matters. Changing the law, and altering what is acceptable behaviour, is the first step in shifting destructive and warped social attitudes.

The truth is that Big Brother holds up a mirror to contemporary society - albeit a fairground one designed to exaggerate. If we don't like what we see, then we all need to make that clear to those from whom we must expect change. And that means not just Jade Goody and her unattractive companions but the television channel which profits from broadcasting her excesses.