As long as we have celebrity culture, we will have celebrity tragedy. And whose fault is that?

Just ask why there is so much money to be made and why people are so curious and obsessive about the lives of strangers

There are inevitable consequences for those who are considered fair game, even for those who think they are cynically manipulating the media themselves (Getty)

Like so many commenting on the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack I haven’t much idea about why she died, and it is none of my business. It’s obviously a tragic affair, and her personal circumstances are all too well known. What I think it might be right to say something about is around some of the reaction. I’d like to try and answer the question “Should Love Island now be taken off the air, for good?”

The answer is yes, but not because of what might have happened with Caroline Flack. The show is an organised, cruel grotesquerie, comparable to a Victorian freak show – the worst of exploitative reality TV.

I’ve been unkind about it and about its presenters – but also about its viewers. Yet it is there not so much because ITV is greedy but because the public have an insatiable appetite for this sort of stuff. If they wanted to watch endless documentary series about the planet starring Al Gore, or repeats of Highway, with Harry Secombe, then ITV2 would be full of that stuff. But they don’t. They want to watch glamorous young folk copping off. And then they want to go online and read about their troubled pasts, presents and futures, their embarrassing relatives, old disastrous relationships, party mishaps, scrapes with the authorities, favourite type of vacuum cleaner – the lot. Facebook pages are looted for the most salacious images.

There are inevitable consequences for those who are considered fair game, even for those who think they are cynically manipulating the media themselves.

As long as we have celeb culture – and it is nothing new – we will have celeb “tragedies”.

There have been celeb breakdowns and suicides before and there will be again. Scrapping Love Island might help a bit, for a week or so, but would of course make no difference in the longer run. But please don’t blame ITV or the papers, venal as they are, entirely for any of these tragedies. Just ask why there is so much money to be made and why people are so curious and obsessive about the lives of strangers. Even when their lives have ended.

Yours,

Sean O’Grady

Associate editor