LONDON, Jan 11 (AFP) - Germaine Greer, the writer who inspired a generation of feminists, walked off the set of "Celebrity Big Brother" on Tuesday after four days in the spotlight of British reality television.
After leaving the house peopled with second-tier celebrities, Greer admitted she had been "naive" and hadn't realized that fellow contestants had joined the show armed with publicity-seeking "agendas".
"I had no idea who would be in here and it's wrong for me to present myself in the same context as they are," she said.
One contestant was trying to promote her lingerie line, another his rock band, while actress Brigitte Nielsen, the former wife of Sylvester Stallone, was a "professional reality TV person", Greer said.
"I'm 65 and you can't teach an old dog new tricks," she said, adding: "I've made a mistake, it's called cutting your losses."
The Australian-born author of "The Female Eunuch", the influential book whose publication in 1970 provided intellectual fuel for the women's movement, left the television show three days before evictions of contestants began.
The BBC website reported that a newly arrived housemate, Jackie Stallone -- the mother of the US actor and former mom-in-law of Nielsen -- had tried but failed to convince Greer to stay in the house, where the contestants are voted off by television viewers over two weeks.
Greer, who has worked as a broadcaster and university professor, previously criticized the "Big Brother" shows, calling its contestants exhibitionists who "risked the wreck of their pampered egos by humiliation".
Viewers who participated in the voting were "worse than voyeurs" who were "happy to judge their fellow humans on capricious and partial evidence and condemn them to ostracism just because they don't like them," she wrote.
It was unclear why Greer, known better for advocating sexual freedom for women and, in "The Female Eunuch", mocking marriage as a legalized form of slavery for women, chose to participate in the Channel Four show.
But just before entering the "Big Brother" house days earlier, the outspoken writer said: "I've got to strike a blow for the old ladies."
No stranger to media stunts, Greer posed naked for magazines a few years earlier, and has chalked up a string of romances with celebrities in past decades, before declaring herself celibate.
She is not the first celebrity to quit a reality television midway through the season.
Former Sex Pistol John Lydon, boy band singer Brian Harvey and an actress quit "I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here", another British show, while athlete Dwain Chambers and several others walked off of "Hell's Kitchen", a cooking reality television show.
Channel Four said in a short statement simply that Greer "has decided that she no longer wishes to remain in the Big Brother house".
01/11/2005 19:12 GMT - AFP