Charley, who is black, was shocked. She knew Emily meant it as a joke but she has known Emily only five days.

"I can't believe you said that, " Charley said. "Where did that come from?" Charley is usually argumentative and talks like a spitfire but she showed a softness and maturity. As the hours wore on, it was clear she was upset. Emily was confused, regretful and said in her defence, "You hear it in songs all the time."

That was at 8.30pm. At 3.30am, Emily was called to the Diary Room. "People say it to me all the time at home, no matter who you are or where you come from. I never meant any offence to anybody. I'm a kind girl with a big heart." Big Brother was full of long silences.

It knew this was heartbreaking television and, even now, had its evil cyclops eye on ratings.

Emily was told she had to leave the house. "Oh my God, " she whispered, as it sank in. "I am so sorry. . . Not in a million years would I want to offend someone." Bad cases make bad law, so Emily was made walk the plank in her nightdress.

Sure, her removal will send a zero-tolerance message to the millions of teenagers watching but I can't help feeling that she is Big Brother's sacrificial lamb, offered up as penance for the bullying of Shilpa Shetty by Jade Goody & Co and proof of Channel 4's all-new moral guardianship. Unlike Jade, this was one ill-judged, na�ve moment, not a sustained campaign of abuse. And, unlike eskimo, regarded by many Inuits as a derogatory term - Emily knows she made a big mistake.

A black audience member on Big Brother's Big Mouth, hosted by the unctuous George Galloway, put it best. "We use that word, " he said. "She thought she was being urban."

And thought she was being cool.

It is a dirty word, stuck in a muddy transition. But Big Brother is what American family therapists would call a "splitter", someone within the family unit who is a supportive and divisive force. It's worth noting that the only man in the house, Ziggy, said, "You just watch the changes next week when guys come in this house - you'll all be sluts." Big Brother didn't sanction Ziggy or even threaten him with eviction. It likes Ziggy. It thinks one man amongst women causes conflict.

Even now, I have far more faith in Emily's motives than in Big Brother's .

For actual car crash television, Diana: The Witnesses In The Tunnel got Channel 4 free publicity for using grainy, blackand-white photographs of a doctor giving the princess oxygen at the crash scene in the Pont d'Alma Tunnel 10 years ago, though producers blanked out her face.

Dr Frederic Mailliez said the paps didn't impede his work, the photographers spoke "for the first time" - the excuse for this rehash - of their treatment by French authorities and, for those who fled the scene, of their near-successful attempts to sell pictures for �300,000, which became worthless the moment Diana died.

This hour-long clip-job had all the ambitions of a snuff film. But it was all hype. Photographer Romuald Rat - and no, that wasn't his professional nom de plum - recalled, "I leaned over the princess to try to see if she was alive to take her pulse, she moved and breathed a little bit, so I spoke to her in English, 'I'm here it's going to be all right.'" But even Rat's revelation was not new. Like all the photographers who descended on the scene like the proverbial vultures, Rat told his story in 1997 when he was interviewed by French police.

Afterwards, commissioning editor Hamish Mykura stuttered his way through a debate. "What if it was your mother?" Krishnan GuruMurthy asked him. "Eh?" Mykura replied before he was interrupted/saved by Roy Greenslade, the ex-editor of the Daily Mirror.

The panel disagreed most vehemently about the use of a commercially available photograph showing the ambulance, which was apparently carrying the critically injured princess inside. Oddly, in this case it was what we could not see, but could still imagine, that seemed to cause the panel the most distress.

SEE EOIN MCNAMEE INTERVIEW PAGES 4 AND 5

Reviewed Big Brother Channel 4 Diana: The Witnesses In The Tunnel Channel 4