Made in Chelsea’s chokehold over British media is a depressing peek into our broken class system

When I was an impressionable youth, I desperately wanted to go on Big Brother. I thought I could ace it. That I could reach the finals. Become rich and famous. But then, in 2005, a series six housemate had sex with a wine bottle in the garden, and my aspirations were never quite the same. It was a drunken act that would define their time on the show, and immortalise the unexpected dangers of reality TV. On paper, you assume it’ll make you a star. In truth, you become the person who did the unholy with a bottle of plonk.

I have come to find, however, that this life lesson – think an Aesop’s fable for the age of hyper-sexual fame-mongering – was incorrect. For it turns out that you can be mortifying on a reality show – and also irritating, or banal, or charmless – and still become a major force in popular entertainment. You just have to appear on Made in Chelsea.

The long-running E4 show – a “constructed reality” series in which the truth lies somewhere between fact and soapy fiction – trails the love lives of some of London’s most affluent twentysomething heirs and heiresses. The stars of its earliest seasons have all moved on from the series by this point, but they continue to dominate every corner of British celebrity. This week, the former Made in Chelsea star Sam Thompson – who last year won I’m a Celebrity and is now a legitimate radio and TV presenter – was roundly criticised for an interview he conducted with Dune’s Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler. In the clip for Hits Radio – on which he presents a weekday show – Thompson is seen incomprehensibly asking Chalamet what it’s like to work with Zendaya.

“You’re an actor, right?” Thompson began. “I would find it so hard to, like – you’ve obviously got a relationship with somebody, who’s also your friend… it’s not even like you don’t know them, they’re actually your friend! Is it easier or harder to, like, have a relationship on-screen with someone who you’re actually pals with? Would you rather have someone you didn’t know?” A glazed Chalamet responded with what can only be described as the gentleman’s “what the hell are you talking about”, replying: “There’s no good answer to that.”

There were a few different frustrations to all of this. Thompson’s line of questioning was base-level guff – he may as well have asked Chalamet his favourite colour. That Thompson has spent the days since brushing off complaints about the interview has only boosted the feeling that we’re all being collectively laughed at. “You should have seen the bit where I asked Timothy [sic] if he wanted to play Call of Duty with me,” he replied to one viral critique. “You’d have loved it.” Few actual journalists were granted access to the Dune: Part Two UK press junket, either, exposing an increasingly insular media ecosystem in which influencers and the vaguely famous are being prioritised over people who actually know what they’re doing – it’s something plaguing everything from journalism and podcasts to television and books.

Me, though, I just kept thinking about Made in Chelsea, and the inexplicable chokehold it has over modern British entertainment.

Thompson’s Dune interview was published less than two weeks after it was announced that his former Made in Chelsea co-star Jamie Laing would be taking over BBC Radio 1’s coveted drivetime slot. In the past two years, fellow Chelsea poshos Spencer Matthews and Zara McDermott have presented high-profile documentaries for Disney+ and Channel 4, respectively, with Thompson presenting his own Channel 4 doc, too. Ollie Locke has written a series of children’s books. Lucy Watson has a range of cookbooks. Millie Mackintosh is one of Britain’s most successful influencers. Almost all of them seem to have or have had podcasts.

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The individual merits or failings of these projects and ventures notwithstanding, together they represent a vacuous echo chamber that has slowly eroded British culture at large. On our screens we find a cluster of people who speak the same, look the same, went to the same or not dissimilar schools, and whose perspectives on the world are largely identical. Some get by on light self-mockery – Laing’s entire brand involves winking at his own privilege – but merely acknowledging that you more or less grew up in Saltburn doesn’t discount the fact that you’ve spent life being welcomed into rooms most of the country could only dream of.

Historically, reality TV in this country doesn’t tend to provide such a platform. Sure, a handful of Geordie Shore, Big Brother and X Factor contestants can cycle through the I’m a Celeb/Celebrity Coach Trip/Celebrity MasterChef circuit if they’re lucky. But to typically flourish outside of the reality show that got you on telly in the first place, you need to be extraordinary. Think Alison Hammond – a few years out of Big Brother – playing Connect 4 with Beyoncé during an interview for This Morning, demonstrating fantastic comic timing, natural effervescence, and an empathy that makes even the most guarded of celebrities let their hair down. Or Rylan, still bruised from a year of mockery on The X Factor, emerging as one of the country’s most innately likeable and charismatic TV presenters.

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The cast of Made in Chelsea have had to do no such work. None of them, I’m afraid, are particularly funny, or insightful, or interesting. Based on the word salad of his delivery and the bemused expression on Chalamet’s face, Thompson is not ready for public speaking, let alone working the film junket circuit. And as journalist Sarah Manavis wrote last year in The New Statesman, documentaries fronted by Chelsea alum tend to be rooted in “an insubstantial connection to the topic [at hand],” something “typically matched by shallow exploration”.

Despite this, broadcasters have routinely provided them with some of the most desired jobs in entertainment, in a media climate already dominated by identikit voices. A 2022 study by Ofcom found that just 28 per cent of employees across TV and radio come from a working-class background. A 2022 study by the Press Gazette – sampling 40,000 people – found that a staggering 80 per cent of journalists in the UK stem from a higher socioeconomic background.

The trickle-down effect is that culture, as a whole, becomes less interesting. Matching Britain’s socioeconomic climate of late, we are in a cultural drought – a landscape defined by its lack of glamour, of cool, of radical art. Our best young stars are spoken to as if they’re children. Our drives home from work are soundtracked by Jamie Laing. Our new Louis Therouxs are benefactors of inherited wealth eager for a professional rebrand. Made in Chelsea was fine, distracting reality TV to watch when you’re hungover. It should never have become the future of British entertainment.