AND FINALLY

Big Brother and the like might be flailing along here on British TV, only still clinging on thanks to the need to fill crap z-list papers with ‘stories’ and Simon Cowell’s bank account with money, but the concept is still busy sweeping the world before it.

In Malaysia, for example, they don’t bother with whiny, egocentric wannabee twenty-somethings desperate to launch meeja careers. No, they’ve been putting the fun back in fundamentalism with a religious-reality contest called Imam Muda (Young Leader), running since May this year. In what could have been called ‘I’m an Infidel Get Me Out of Here’, aspiring Muslim clerics were pitted against each other in such unmissable contests as slaughtering sheep, reciting verses from the Koran and counselling young people against promiscuity.

In true reality style, the contestants have been confined to a hostel, cut off from family and friends and the world at large whilst being kept under constant surveillance for moral fortitude... “Day 23 in the Big Mullah house... And Mohammad is in the praying room again...”

Gradually the field was nail-bitingly whittled down, with the Alan Sugar role each week played by judge Hasan Mahmood al-Hafiz, a former national grand imam. “You’re fatwahed!” Last week, Kuala Lumpa’s biggest mosque played host to the grand finale and a 26-year-old religious scholar was finally ordained the winner, scooping prizes including a job as a cleric, an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Mecca and the Prophet’s special prize... an iPhone (presumably already set up with a hotline to Allah).

How long before the Christians keep up with the bin Joneses and launch their own Pope Idol when the current ex-fascist, kiddie-fiddler-friendly incumbent kicks the bucket?