Before Channel 10 committed the most unspeakable of thought crimes – bastardising that cautionary tale “1984” by turning Big Brother into a non-celebrity game show and helping perpetuate the ultimate double-think (reality television) – author George Orwell tried to warn us what was coming.

He sought to terrify us about the rise of fascist regimes using funny wall screen thingies in every room that told us how to act and think.

But he didn’t tell us they would be owned and controlled, not by an ultra-right-wing state, but by the broadcasting corporations.

And that Gretel Killeen would be the most diabolical of dictators – overseeing regular popularly elected purges euphemistically called “evictions”, before she became one of the regime’s many “non-persons”.

Nor did George clearly foresee the ultimate totalitarian figurehead, who is the poster boy for the very worst of those corrosive, free-to-air fascist powers controlling our lives – Channel 9.

In Nine’s version of the Ministry of Love, where truth is endlessly tortured and distorted – Friday Night Footy – Gus Gould is not Big Brother but Big Bopper.

And his hate sessions are not just limited to two minute sprays – Big Bopper mouths off whenever he feels like it and for as long as he likes. Right at the moment he is digging the grave of his ex-Rooster mate Ricky Stuart, for apparently poaching Anthony Tupou to the Gummy Sharks.

Ricky reckons the Big Bopper is trying to mess with his mind as the Aussie coach prepares to meet their enemy – the Kiwis in tomorrow night’s Centenary Test – by hinting that he and Aussie trump Johnathan Thurston have issues.

After 100 years of classless warfare known as rugby league, Big Bopper is right where he wants to be – instead of writing about the football, all some southern league scribes can focus on (apart from the fragility of Darren Lockyer’s knee) is Gus’s mind games. He is all that matters … the only game in town.

If some Orwellian heavy tried to scare Gus into toeing the line more by telling him: ‘Big Brother is watching you’ he’d take it as a compliment and probably say the show has got class.

A better propaganda slogan, given Gus’s ability to get people where it hurts is: Big Bopper is crutching you.

Even if Big Bopper had ever read a word of Orwell’s book, he would probably just dismiss it as being out of date. Yet he is the living embodiment of the regime’s credo: War is Peace – Freedom Is Slavery – Ignorance Is Strength.

The very fact that Big Bopper has got me to devote a whole piece on him rather than how crazy Charlie Webb is going to go against the kamikaze Kiwi forward pack, is testament to how brainwashed I have become.

I just pray tomorrow night that I don’t do a Winston Smith (he is the rat-hating 1984 fall guy) and midway through the broadcast switch to drinking Winston’s battery acid-like, Victory Gin.

Then as Gus rants and raves, I sit horrified, as a tear rolls down my cheek I realise that, though I may hate his Cockroach-loving guts, a sordid part of me actually loves Big Bopper!

How else can I get the satisfaction of screaming my two minutes of hate at the TV every Friday night?