The reaction to Trisha Goddard on Celebrity Big Brother was disgraceful

Perhaps I’m an awful person but I enjoy watching Celebrity Big Brother villains get booed.

Celebrity Big Brother is a panto where its winners and losers are held to account for their actions and true colours.

Last night, though, I was ashamed to be a Big Brother fan when the mob in the audience booed terminally ill Trisha Goddard with the same furore they gave disgraced Hollywood star Mickey Rourke.

Just days earlier, Rourke made homophobic remarks to 21-year-old Jojo Siwa, and inappropriately grabbed host AJ Odudu before entering the house.

Trisha is currently receiving palliative care for stage 4 breast cancer.

Ahead of entering the house she stressed that she didn’t want pity and should be treated the same as every other housemate.

She’s right – she doesn’t deserve our pity, but she does deserve our respect.

The response to Trisha last night, and for the last few days during her time on Celebrity Big Brother, has involved levels of unwarranted disrespect. The kind I’ve never seen across all 27 series.

Just nine days ago, Trisha entered the house to the cheers of a champion. For the first time in Celebrity Big Brother, a cancer patient would be living in the house with the same pressures and demands as everyone else.

Trisha isn’t just living with cancer – she is thriving. We have been watching a woman go through a remarkable journey, seizing the day like few others, despite living with an incurable disease.

She is, without question, remarkable.

But she was more than her cancer journey, too. She was inquisitive, wiser than anyone else and gave one of the strangest feuds ever seen on Celebrity Big Brother, clashing with EastEnders actress Patsy Palmer over coming from the East and West coast of America when they’re actually both from London.

She was giving us everything needed from a brilliant Celebrity Big Brother housemate and it’s criminal she was booted out over Coronation Street’s Jack P. Shepherd who has thus far had next to no airtime, his most memorable line being a terrible joke about having sex with his wife on their wedding night.

So were did it go wrong for Trisha?

The only moment I can really pinpoint is when she warned former Tory MP Sir Michael Fabricant of his words appearing Islamophobic.

During a challenge last week, the house was drained of all its electricity and the only way to get it up and running again was through the housemates’ ‘star power’.

Given Fabricant’s better known for his wig than any discernible talent, he was tasked with giving a speech.

During his speech about immigration, he said: ‘Jewish people, when they usually come to this country, believe: do in Rome as the Romans do.’

He added: ‘Do not come to this country if your aim is to change everybody to your way of thinking.’

That’s when Trisha jumped in, complaining: ‘Hang on – are you slipping into Islamophobia? Because you’re going to have trouble. It’s getting dangerous.’

‘Who has mentioned Islam?’ he replied. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I’m trying to explain this country has benefitted from wave upon wave of immigration.’

Granted, Fabricant didn’t mention Islam but even he’s well aware of the language and terminology regularly used to demonise the Muslim community.

Accusing Muslims of trying refusing to live ‘like the rest of us’ is a famously common trope.

Fabricant may not have been referring to Islam, but it’s not surprising Trisha spotted the parallels between his speech and others like it, which are specifically aimed at Muslims.

But both inside and outside the house, it seems to me that it was Trisha’s remark that made people feel more uncomfortable than Fabricant’s.

Chris Hughes even used the incident to nominate her. He said: ‘She takes thing very personally, which aren’t personal. That can be tough because that can make another person feel like they’ve done something wrong in a situation where they haven’t.

‘An example would be when Michael was on stage doing his speech about things he’d change. He categorically didn’t say anything about Islamophobia in there. When she said that it made him feel quite upset.’

Chris was correct that he didn’t mention Islam but anyone who reads the news regularly or is aware of far-right language could see how Fabricant’s remarks could be interpreted – even if they were supposedly misinterpreted.

Elsewhere, it’s hard to find incidents where Trisha has done anything so offensive it would justify her being so aggressively booed.

She perhaps had an air of self-importance compared to others. Even if that’s true, she’s Trisha Goddard, and in the words of the eternally wise Gemma Collins, she’s earned that diva-ship.

Personally, I feel like Trisha was misunderstood by both her housemates and the viewing public.

She stood up for what she felt was right, and in Celebrity Big Brother, unless you’re standing up to someone so clearly in the wrong like Mickey Rourke, you’re deemed confrontational.

From what we saw, no one actually took Trisha aside and asked her why she called out Fabricant’s comments; if they had, they might have understood the context.

Trisha has been let down by Celebrity Big Brother fans and we’ve been robbed of watching one of the best housemates this series had to offer.