‘Reality TV’ is the media phenomenon which has done more for racial and ethnic understanding than any other media creation in recent years, said Trevor Phillips, CRE Chair at the Commission for Racial Equality’s (CRE) Race in the Media Awards (RIMA).

"Until very recently most people’s idea of what a black or Asian or Chinese or Gypsy person is really like is almost entirely based on what they read, hear and see in the media and have been very stereotyped. But so called ‘reality TV’, has given many British people a chance to encounter people from other ethnic groups they would never meet in their own everyday lives.

And I don’t suppose that the Big Brother house is most people’s idea of any kind of reality. But in Kamal the bisexual Muslim; Derek, the world’s poshest black man and Makosi the feminist Zimbabwean nurse, we have three people who would confound any possible stereotyping.

Most encouragingly, according to the man behind Big Brother, Peter Bazalgette, the evidence is that the voters do not line up in any way – that is to say they seem completely uninfluenced by issues of race and ethnicity in deciding who they want to chuck out or keep in.

Take The Apprentice where the final four contestants all came from immigrant backgrounds. The winner Tim Campbell, in spite of being a black man, who grew up with a single parent - turned up to work on time and was at last someone who wasn’t a one dimensional “bad ways” black man.

Reality TV’ has also shown that non-white folks can be just as individualistic as anyone else. We can defy our own historical stereotypes. Young British people are increasingly demonstrating that they can respect the culture of their parents without having to adopt it wholesale. For example who could ever dare to ask British Asian women to be sweet, submissive and silent, after watching The Apprentice’s Saira Khan in action?"