Boy Zone (Big Brother, days 15–18) by Grace Dent
So into a house top-heavy with women, four more men have been shoved. Lucky for Ziggy. He’s had a bumpy ride for a couple of weeks.
What sounded like girly heaven with him as king quickly transpired to be hell. Chinese whispers and chicken-fillet boobs. Dirty looks and squabbles over hair straighteners. Circular arguments where no-one could really remember the point but everybody was enjoying shouting. The constant silent inference that although Ziggy hadn’t done anything specifically wrong, they all wanted him to know that he was a complete male s**t.
After seven days Ziggy was exhausted. Putting in Gerry and Seány didn’t exactly help. Gerry is a gay, box-bedroom philosopher who thinks the twins are adorable and all the hair straighteners arguments remind him of a “fass-eeee-nating Aristotle seminar I once took during one of my degreeees”. Seány, meanwhile (also gay, or claiming to be gay this month), could start a bitter dispute in an empty bus shelter.
What the house needed was some simple, straightforward blokes. And they don’t come much simpler than Billi, 25, from Middlesex. Billi is a model. In his head he’s very, very good-looking. He leaps from the car, pulling pouty faces like Hansel from Zoolander, wearing snug jeans, a ladies’ blouse and what looks like a child’s Dora the Explorer dress-up wig.
Billi’s also sporting a white towelling John McEnroe headband. He’s channelling Marcus Schenkenberg. I’m getting 118 118 runner.
Billi “doesn’t like women who think or challenge him”, which is a shame, as I bet there are heaps of clever, opinionated women dying to hear him drone on about modelling in his Henry’s-Cat-on-Rohypnol voice.
“Billi is soooo sweet! He’s such a sweet guy, isn’t he?” Chanelle says to Ziggy, staring across, with a small trail of drool forming on her chin. Translation: “I’m a bit bored with this Ziggy thing now. Me and Billi would look amazing on the cover of Heat! And if we got married we could sell it to Hello! And Michelle Heaton and Sarah Harding could be my bridesmaids! And I would get paparazzied! And then I could write a column about us! And then I could design my own swimming costume range! And then I could… And then…”
“Are you gay?!” shouts Seány at the top of his voice as Billi arrives. “No, I’m not,” says Billi. What a bizarre way to greet a stranger. Seány’s such a complete tosspot. He’s even worse when Jonathan, 49, a media mogul from London, arrives. “It’s an old man! It’s an old man!” shouts Seány, dancing from foot to foot like a Malawian tribeswoman with cystitis. “An old person!”
Does Seány think that at 49 Jonathan is too old to hear him? Then Seány surpasses himself, thrusting forth Carole, another “old person”, as some sort of sexual offering. “This is Carole! She’s single! She’s single!” he shouts.
Jonathan looks at Carole curiously, wondering if he’s allowed to take his coat off before he’s forced to ritually mate with a woman who looks like she runs the merchandise stall at a Joan Armatrading concert.
I don’t know what to make of Jonathan. My gut instinct is I’m overjoyed to have an intelligent, blunt, charismatic older man in there. He does have a touch of the Dark Prince about him, though. I’m also never sure what to make of housemates who are in solid relationships before going into the house but claim their partners are a little bit above Big Brother and never watch it and won’t be affected by it all, etc, etc.
How does this work? “So, darling, doing anything special this week?” she might say on Sunday night as they synchronize their BlackBerries and eat hummus. “Oh, nothing much, darling. Got an executive general meeting on Monday so I’ll be a bit late…then on Tuesday I’m playing squash with Hugo…then on Thursday…ooh, yeah, on Thursday I’m going into a 24-hour-a-day televised reality show that will potentially destroy our lives completely and leave our personal histories open to scrutiny by tabloid reporters. So can you put the recycling out?” “Mmmm, no problem,” she says, distractedly. Weird.
Liam, 22, is next. There’s a large gap in my notebook for the ten minutes when Liam arrives as I’m too busy sitting upright beside the TV pulling a “Meerkat Manor” expression at Liam’s dreaminess.
Liam is a tree surgeon. Liam is a hunk. Liam is looooovely. I watch Liam for 20 more minutes. Liam is really quite dull. Liam is basically a bit like a less orange Anthony Hutton without the 70s dance moves.
Liam reminds me of the sort of bloke you might have got off with aged 18 in Bobby’s Bar in Tenerife after an 18-30s booze cruise where he’d set fire to his own face drinking Flaming B52s and won the break-dancing competition. You might end up having a fling with him for the holiday but you wouldn’t have to worry about him bugging you by sending love letters when you got home because he’d have totally forgotten you during the transfer to Tenerife airport and besides, he probably couldn’t write anyway.
And then there’s Brian, 19, a data-entry clerk from Essex. Brian is sort of adorable. (Nineteen? Brian must use the same pro-ageing acid as Ziggy.) Brian is lovely to look at, even if when he speaks he sounds like Duncan Norvelle. Brian is immediately attracted to the twins. The trio spend the weekend having a dumb-off, gurgling and saying daft things to each other. This cheers Sam up about “bweaking her favouwitest bwacelet” the other day. Hooray.
I’m still bewildered by the twins. OK, OK, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but…social workers? They are training to be social workers. Who advised them to do this? I can just visualise the careers advice talk.
Careers adviser: “So Samanda, what attracts you to social work? Are you particularly upset by the pockets of social depravation in the north west? Or have you always felt a calling to a philanthropic profession?”
Sam: “Oooooh, weeeeh! Hee hee! It was the pinkness! The pinkness! The leaflet was all pinkness! I saw it and it was pink!”
Amanda: “And we were like – woooooo! I can’t believe it! Pinkness! Plus social work is on the bottom floor at college and I don’t like stairs! I like high-heel shoooesies! Like Barbie! Pink shoooesies!”
Sam: “Shoooooesies! Wooooo!”
Amanda: “And we’ve got a social work song too! Sing it, Sam!”
Sam: “Hee hee! Right. Introduce yourself? No way! Introduce yourself! OK! We’re twinnies! We’re giddy! We’re here to take your kiddies! Woooooooo!!”
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