(From top) Sean Yazbeck (C) winner of The Apprentice, season five with (L-R) Mark Burnett, George Ross, Donald Trump and Carolyn Kepcher; model Jordan (Katie Price); Essex and England cricket star Darren Gough and dance partner Lilia Kopylova in Strictly Come Dancing; and contestants of the reality show Love Island

As surely as night follows day, several reality television programmes that are, at present, entertaining audiences in Britain and the United States will migrate to India over the next few years. To be successful, however, the formats have to be adapted to suit local conditions and culture. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? ? which underwent reincarnation as Kaun Banega Crorepati? ? might not have worked as well if Amitabh Bachchan hadn’t done the job that Chris Tarrant performs in Britain. Indian Idol, though, does not seem to be that different from the parent model in the UK, Pop Idol.

Tarrant, who has presented Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? since its inception in 1998, is now believed to be putting together a consortium to buy the show for $175 million from its creator, Paul Smith, who has expressed his desire to sell to the highest bidder. The winner will get worldwide rights to the programme, which is shown in 106 countries.

One that is more than likely to travel to India is Big Brother, in which a dozen men and women are locked up in a house for 15 weeks and watched round the clock by cameras. They are apparently drawn at random from all walks from life but are, in fact, carefully selected. The show takes its name from George Orwell’s 1949 novel, 1984, where the dictator of the state of Oceania reminds his subjects that they are under continual surveillance ? “Big Brother is watching you.”

Devised by John de Mol of the Netherlands in 1999, the rights are held by his production house, Endemol, which has made a fortune by selling the concept to an estimated 70 countries. The housemates are allowed some privacy, but not a great deal. How much is shown, especially when there is sexual interaction between the housemates, varies from country to country. In some territories, the sex and the nudity are edited out but in others the show, some feel, borders on the raunchy.

To protest that reality television has encouraged dumbing down of standards, never particularly high with popular networks in the West, is pointless. The battle has long been lost, though this is a point that appears to have escaped the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. Incensed by an incident in the Australian version of Big Brother, in which two male housemates held down a woman and appeared to assault her sexually, he recently urged the broadcaster, Channel Ten, “to get this stupid programme off the air”.

Can Big Brother work in India?

Judging from the experience of Britain, where the seventh series is currently being broadcast (there is, alas, a tired air about it), it assuredly can. But sexual banter will not be allowed in the way it is positively encouraged in Britain. Full sex is not permitted in the UK though on a couple of occasions it has come pretty close to that and, on others, couples have hinted that, unseen by the cameras, they have “gone all the way”. They hope tabloid newspapers will pay them large sums to learn the details.

Big Brother wouldn’t work if the inmates turn out to be 12 normal, well-adjusted men and women who will have polite conversation. Those who select the housemates vet the candidates ? and there are thousands who apply ? to ensure that those who enter Big Brother House either are psychologically vulnerable or will crack easily under the strain of living in close proximity with strangers. At the least, they have to be lively, stimulating characters. As the weeks progress, members of the public vote by telephone to eject housemates until the last one remaining is declared the winner and emerges, blinking, to the outside world to fame and fortune.

The formula relies on housemates losing their inhibitions and quarrelling with fellow inmates at the slightest provocation. In the dead of night when the lights are turned out, special cameras will pick out housemates asleep in bed, though, occasionally, one might stir or get up, go to the bathroom, have a drink of water and climb back into bed. Why viewers should remain awake at 3 am in order to watch such inane footage is not easy to explain. But thousands do.

The sixth series, Celebrity Big Brother ? it put together B- and C-listers ? is a format that would probably have the best chance in India, especially if a few genuine A-listers can also be persuaded to join. (In Britain, housemates for Celebrity Big Brother are reportedly paid a minimum of ?25,000 each (Rs2,150,000). If there was to be an Indian equivalent, where higher standards of behaviour would obviously be expected, the show would work best if housemates revealed unknown but quirky aspects of their own personality and encouraged others to do the same.

If British producers were to be approached for their advice, they have indicated they would ask their Indian counterparts to have a mix that might include, say, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Mallika Sherawat, Mamata Banerjee, Shakti Kapoor, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Nitish Bharadwaj, Rahul Mahajan (if available), Vijay Mallya and Taslima Nasreen (admitted as an honorary Indian). The three other women required could be picked from a shortlist that might include Arundhati Roy, Shobhaa De, Sangeeta Bijlani (providing she can convince the selection committee she can talk), Anjolie Ela Menon and Rakhi Sawant. Someone like Liz Hurley might also be thrown into the cocktail as the gora guest.

Another reality show that is almost guaranteed to attract huge ratings in India, where audiences are still discovering the possibilities of ‘celebrity culture’, is one where reasonably well-known people are thrown into a wild area and made to fend for themselves. In I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! ? the British version is filmed in the Australian outback ? contestants are made to undergo a variety of unattractive tasks such as eating worms or swimming through a crocodile infested moat. Popular past winners have been the former England and Middlesex spinner, Phil Tufnell, and Margaret Thatcher’s journalist daughter, Carol. Those who wish to cling on to their dignity would do well to avoid applying for selection. Carol Thatcher appeared relaxed when she learnt that the cameras had caught her relieving herself under a bush. Would a senior Indian politician’s daughter tolerate such an intrusion into her privacy?

What fuels the success of reality shows in Britain is their close relationship with tabloid newspapers which usually assign experienced journalists to cover every twist and turn in the fortunes of the contestants. The appearance on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here of the model ‘Jordan’ (real name: Katie Price), best known for her surgically enhanced breasts, proved a Godsend, especially when she hit it off with pop singer, Peter Andre. Later, they married and now have a baby.

The first volume of Jordan’s (ghosted) autobiography was bought by John Blake, a small but enterprising publisher, who said: “I took a gamble, paid her a ? 10,000 advance and, by goodness, it paid off. In hardback, the book sold about 650,000 copies and in paperback has sold 450,000. Then she got pinched from me. Random House, the biggest publishers in Europe, paid her more than ? 300,000 for the second volume of her autobiography.” Jordan’s appearance on the reality show has allowed her also to launch her fitness video, perfume and property portfolio. She seems content to allow her critics to go on thinking that she is a dumb model.

In Britain, among the many other reality shows, which have struck a chord with viewers is Blind Date, which was presented from 1985-2003 by the former pop singer, Cilla Black; Love Island, where several handsome young men and women, willing to look for romance (for a fee), are marooned on a Fijian island; and The Apprentice, in which Sir Alan Sugar, boss of a new media group, Amstrad, rejects several applicants for a ?100,000 job (“You’re fired”) before telling the lucky winner, “You’re hired”.

One that has proved especially popular is Strictly Come Dancing, in which amateurs are paired with professionals. The unexpected winner of the last series was an England fast bowler who chose not to travel to Pakistan and India with his team mates. Instead, Darren Gough, paired with Latin American champion Lilia Kopylova, went on to win the contest.

There is no reason why India should not evolve its own reality shows, though American and British producers do seem to have the budgets to develop new ideas. In a health-obsessed age, a new one is inviting contestants with really bad skin (“Is yours prone to acne, gets oily, is ageing?”) with a view to solving their condition; another those with “embarrassing sexual problems such as impotence, cystitis, vaginismus or post natal loss of libido”; and a third is promising to reunite people with family members with whom they fallen out “because they did not approve of their sexual orientation”.

On the principle that the British will copy almost any successful show invented by the Americans, the Bad Girls Club is likely to cross the Atlantic. Its producers “are currently casting for a new reality series which will bring together six bad girls from across the country”. This could be another recipe that the British and ultimately the Indians find unable to resist.

Reality television is limited, really, by the imagination of the producers. In any society, what is shown on television is determined by what programme makers are able to get away with. Britain has a show called Wife Swap, but the name is a trifle misleading. Two mothers exchange places and try to run each other’s home, but do not actually have to take their duties into the bedroom. That might yet come to pass.