British values seem to revolve around the worship of celebrities

Immigrants wanting to find out how to be true Brits should be shown Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity.

What are these "British values" that immigrants are to be taught as a condition of citizenship? A way to find out would be to attend one of the government's proposed "orientation days" if these, as I hope, will be open to old citizens as well as would-be new ones. Will the instructors emphasise freedom of speech or the limits on it? The right to protest or the duty not to provoke? Does "an active disregard for UK values", for which applicants for citizenship are to be penalised, mean repudiating multiculturalism or embracing it? Will they suggest the wearing of religious symbols, or their concealment for fear of giving offence? The answers to these questions are not obvious; for while tolerance of diversity has long been portrayed in our country as the greatest of civic virtues, there is now more emphasis than previously on protecting Britain's traditional Christian values, which suggests that some intolerance of other cultures is permissible (if not as much as in France, where there is the strong possibility of a law to stop women wearing Islamic veils in public). In Italy, where I am at the moment, the conflicting attitudes of the prime minister have provoked an agonised debate about values. On the one hand, Silvio Berlusconi presents himself as a champion of Christian morality; on the other, he is an alleged adulterer and apparently proud of it, boasting in public that he is "no saint". On the one hand, he promises a greater role for women in government; on the other, he gives one of his top cabinet positions to a former topless model and promotes the idea – both on his television channels and by his own behaviour – that sexiness and media celebrity are the highest goals to which women should aspire. Lately, there have been rumblings of discontent within the Roman Catholic church at the failure of its hierarchy to criticise Berlusconi for his habit of consorting with young models and escort girls. While even his daughter, Barbara Berlusconi, says this week, in an interview with the Italian version of Vanity Fair magazine, that politicians should "defend the values they express" and that "I don't believe a politician can allow a distinction between his public and private life", the Pope and his bishops seem to accept Berlusconi's line that his private life is private and nobody else's business.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/06/alexander-chancellor-britishness-silvio-berlusconi