Monthly Archive for August, 2007

Big Brother 8: Last Rites

The Last Rites (Big Brother, days 90-93) by Grace Dent

And so it gasps its final breaths. Not that anyone gives a stuff.

Well, aside from me. And maybe poor Dermot, who’s surviving on about 18 minutes’ sleep a week right now. OK, I’ll be honest, even I won’t miss this series of Big Brother.

I can’t lie to you. Even I was slightly lost and I’ve watched every series from day one. It’s not that there was one thing hugely wrong with BB8. Just a thousand tiny things instead.

I started feeling narked back in week 2 after days of watching a houseful of vaguely neurotic women arguing about gas cylinders. Oh, and Charley. Bloody Charley, rambling incoherently like a Victoria coach station crackhead from dawn to dusk.

Then I started giving up on eviction nights. Every Friday night the same deal. Davina clad in black, standing in the same spot, going through the same links. Oh, and everyone getting booed. That unappetising crowd of mean-spirited ne’er-do-wells bellowing abuse at everyone.

And sometimes Davina evicted people we’d only known for five minutes, like Shanessa and David, and even they got showered with spittle and profanities.

Why are you booing David? Please tell me, spam-armed woman of Borehamwood? Yes, you with the hate-filled face and the foamy rivulets forming in the corners of your gob? Why are you screaming abuse? You don’t know, do you? Oh, well, never mind, you enjoy yourself anyway. I’ll just turn over to Midsomer Murders on ITV1 and see if they’ve found another vicar in the rhododendrons.

The weird thing was that no matter how many folk were evicted, there were still at least 268 housemates in there, cluttering up the sofas. It never emptied out. And just when you thought we were getting somewhere, four more “fresh faces” were shoved in.

I’ve so had it with evictions and voting these days. I don’t care if a housemate gets evicted as I know they can creep back at any time like herpes simplex 1. One week we’re voting to save and the next week we’re voting to evict. The week after that we’re voting to “fake evict”, and the week after that it’s a double eviction and someone in the house has to evict someone else.

And by Big Brother 8, it didn’t even matter if you walked out the back door in a huge strop like Chanelle did. You could still come back two weeks later, lording it up as part of the show. Oh, God, what’s the point?

Ahh, remember the days when we evicted for seven weeks and then we voted for a winner. Those were Fridays worth getting wine and takeaway in for.

The thing is, if there’s no thrill in voting or in evictions any more, all we’ve got to enjoy is the “social experiment”. But nowadays just watching people getting along isn’t enough, is it? We’ve started to expect hideous arguments and bullying.

And this year TV watchdogs have realised that that’s not terribly healthy for society, so they’ve put a stop to it. So BB8 didn’t have a Grace Adams-Short or a Jade Goody. We just had Carole rinsing out her gussets. And the twins, who spent 90 days being respected and admired by everyone. And Brian, who was a lovely big lump of snuggliness we all wanted to take home and mother. And affable Liam, who we just mainly wanted to take home and do stuff with.

No-one worth complaining to Ofcom about, really. At the same time, no-one really worth getting too emotionally involved with. I don’t know Liam a jot better now than I did 70 days ago. The more I studied Tracey, the less interesting she became.

Day to day, the amiable housemates talked about nothing. It was far too risky for C4 to show them talking about religion or politics or crime or anything that could be offensive and cause another Ofcom incident. Instead, the housemates chatted mainly about the weather and it p***ed down every day.

And Carole stayed week after week and everyone acted like they were living at home with their formidable mother. And they asked permission before they had a yogurt because if they didn’t, Carole would cry. And this was quite funny the first 35 times when she didn’t have me rooted to my sofa with my fingers chewed to stumps.

Suddenly, I started to see Big Brother from the other side. From the side of the people who have mocked me for years. Hang on? Why am I lying on the sofa watching someone lying on the sofa? This is ridiculous. OMG – the scales have fallen from my eyes! I need to get a hobby. Or maybe ring my real friends instead.

If anyone should win today, I think it might have to be the twinnies. Sam and Amanda. I think the twins should get the money. Give it to them. Let them blow it on flouncy stuff and bags of pick ‘n’ mix and tubs of glittery leg gel and whatnot.

The twins should win as they’re the only ones who have taught me anything remotely profound over the last 100 days. The twins have taught me that it’s nice to be nice. Damn it, twins. It’s true. In the battle of good versus evil, good will win the day.

The twins have never been unpleasant about anyone. Not even when someone is horrid to them. They don’t bitch or squabble or gossip. They don’t harbour stupid grudges. They just smile and turn the other cheek. Or do a silly dance using cushions as pompoms.

And if you need a cuddle they’ll be there, lark, deffo. And they talk about this place called “pink world” all the time, which used to drive me to distraction, but now I think I’d like to move there too and experience a soupçon of their happiness. To know the twins seems to be to love them. They have never been nominated by anyone, not once in the whole series. Imagine that?

And I used to think that was because they were very, very, very stupid, but now I think that although they’ve got tiny little brains, they’re actually very wise. They were the first to go in and they’ll be the last to leave, I reckon.

And if Big Brother really is a social experiment to see how human beings get along in a shared house, then the results of this summer’s test have been heartwarming but not astounding.

Because as anyone who has ever shared a house will know, it’s not always easy to get along. There’ll always be fights over noise and dishes, but on the whole, humans get along pretty damn well. Like a little family, in fact, all supporting and caring for each other.

Actually, we can stop experimenting now. We’ve done all the tests we need.

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Big Brother 8: Truly, madly, deeply

Truly, madly, deeply (Big Brother, days 86-89) by Grace Dent

As Chanelle gazed longingly into Ziggy’s eyes, she finally said the words that had fluttered about her head for weeks.

“My agent wants to sign you,” she told Ziggy, coquettishly. “Really?” said Ziggy, dislodging lumps of smoky bacon crisps from his back teeth, wondering why Chanelle was dressed up like a 90s in-drag Julian Clary.

Chanelle was indeed quite a vision, stood there with her four simultaneous haircuts, kohl eyes, bustier stuck on with toupee tape and filled with chicken fillets.

Chanelle told Ziggy how “mad” things were outside, albeit in a rather stilted manner as there wasn’t much she could say that wouldn’t spoil their magazine exclusives.

“Can we talk on Wednesday or Friday?” panted Ziggy. “Mmmmmmnm-schloopoop,” mumbled Chanelle, non-committally. There was no way she was telling him that yet. Not with the meter running. Not when some magazine will probably pay for them to go on a “hideaway holiday” in Morocco to discuss it exclusively, with full colour pictures.

Admittedly, Ziggy did look quite desperate to get back together with Chanelle. Clearly he’s forgotten what she’s really like. He’s forgotten that lurking behind the Heat magazine makeover is a limp-limbed sap, who spent weeks following him about nagging like a bipolar sat nav commentary.

“Don’t smoke, Ziggy, don’t smoke, Ziggy, move the bed, Ziggy, move the bed back, Ziggy. Ziggy, have you seen my stuffed bear as I’m only 20 and can’t sleep without it? What are you thinking, Ziggy, NOW?!”

Sadly, now Ziggy remembers Chanelle as the girl of his dreams, glossing nicely over the time when he merrily watched her pack her bags and leave. Well, leave eventually. It took her about six attempts. She had more fake encores than Prince at the O2.

I can forgive Ziggy for being confused. He’s not got much else to think about. Neither have we, really. Let’s be honest here, it’s not been a brilliant Big Brother, has it?

I was so bored in week 8, I spent three days trying to patent a name for the area of cellulite-y skin around the back of the knee, as this is where Carole’s bikini line actually finishes.

Last week, I started flicking channels during the live feed and watching That Antony Cotton Show instead, even enjoying his dance routine at the beginning where he honks his way through Copacabana while community centre-style step and point tap-dancing.

The highlight of last Thursday for me was watching Jonty dry his testicles and willy (which is bizarrely of totally different ethnicity to the rest of his body) for ten minutes under the fixed hairdryers. I think that’s possibly the saddest sentence I’ve ever typed in my career.

It’s not helpful to begin blaming people for ruining Big Brother, but I’ll start and end with Carole. If we pretty much accept these days that Big Brother meddles with the rules to keep the drama fresh, then how is that crotchety old crone still there at the end?

Carole evokes strong memories in me of the old bats who used to hang about my Brownie pack when I was seven, and volunteered free of charge to come on Brownie camp as “helpers” so they could spend a week screaming at us to eat crusts and comb our hair into side partings.

It was always the highlight of the week when one of them got kicked by a bull or fell backwards into the camp latrine. Anyway, they probably don’t have Brownie camps any more as all the busybodies like Carole prefer to go on Big Brother instead and make people devour carrots fried in Marmite.

The only reason Carole is there, as far as I can see, is because the government are using her real house to develop hyperstrength penicillin on her washing-up drainer.

Incidentally, if food has really been so scarce for so long in there, why is Carole getting bigger? Thank God this is the last week, because that swimming costume is starting to look all taut like Borat’s.

The series has gone on for so bloody long and become so inconsequential that Emily, who was chucked out in week 2 for saying “n****r” has been showing up on BBC3 all weekend during the Reading Festival coverage as a “regular festivalgoer” talking about Nu Rave. But by now she’s so anonymous that no-one except me even recognises her.

And now even Celebrity Big Brother’s been axed (for a year apparently) too. And Dermot’s said to be quitting Big Brother’s Little Brother. And Davina is so tired of eviction night she’s taken to throwing herself down the stairs to liven up matters.

And there are so few presenters left in Britain who haven’t had a go at hosting Big Brother’s Big Mouth that even Richard Madeley’s children have been given the gig for a week. And Richard Madeley – who doesn’t really watch the show – is a guest expert.

Who wins? You decide! I’m not sure that anyone’s bothered. As it stands right now, it may as well be Brian. Not Amanda, who’s spent weeks straddling him in hot pants telling him to cool his passion. Or Ziggy, who’ll just spend the cash on 44D fake baps for Chanelle.

So yes, let’s all vote for Brian. He could do with the money. It might make him more attractive to Amanda. It might even stop him cutting his own fringe with the bread knife.

As ever, on behalf of everyone else in Britain, I’ll stay tuned till the bitter end.

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Big Brother 8: Mind your manners

Mind your manners (Big Brother, days 83-85) by Grace Dent

It’s been a disappointing time for all involved with Big Brother. The menfolk of Britain are especially sad now Kara-Louise has ruled out a sexy post-house Nuts or Zoo shoot.

Obviously, this would have been valuable fodder for any man aroused by a limp, winsome women in a smock frock with a Stepford wives’ smile being jolly “nice” all the time. Let’s hope Connie Fisher needs some cheap publicity soon.

Kara-Louise is upset as she’s up for eviction. Jonty and Tracey are both up for the chop, too. Jonty is livid that people such as Liam and Brian have actually insinuated that he might be “insane”.

How unfair! He’d tried so hard to make a good impression when he arrived. He’d pressed his striped pyjamas, he’d given his talking knitted monkey a good bath, and he’d spent hours perfecting the exact angle in which his bum should be parallel with the floor to make a maximum “parp” sound whenever he let one rip.

Why would anyone insinuate Jonty is simply insane? Jonty’s behaviour insinuates a whole host of better, juicier accusations than mere insanity. The children’s toys? The imaginary friends? The obsession with bodily functions and sadomasochism while all the time acting like a lickle lost boy? The last time I saw all these traits together was in that bloke Buffalo Bill off Silence of the Lambs, with the poodle and the women’s skin dress.

Obviously, I hasten to add that Jonty is NOT a psychopathic serial killer who spends Saturday nights luring victims to their bleak fate. (Doctor Who is on Saturdays, he wouldn’t miss that.) OK, I’ll be serious. Jonty is totally harmless. He’s actually rather sweet. But why’s he so upset that people think he’s mad when he bends over backwards to prove it?

Tracey, on the other hand is FINE that she’s up for eviction. Fine. She’s fine, fine, fine! A lot of men aren’t good at reading women’s body language, but as a general rule I’d say that if a woman is telling you she is “fine” at a volume that blows your hair about while she’s rooting through the ashtray for dog-ends to make a rollie, she’s probably not “fine”.

The housemates have been learning “etiquette”. They’ve been learning to act like posh folk do, minding their p’s and q’s and walking about with books on their heads obsessing about fish forks. I can’t believe people still fall for this utter rot.

They actually believe that very posh people spend all day fussing about soup spoons and being weighed down by dos and don’ts. Obviously, the truth is that very posh people do whatever the bloody hell they want all of time and honestly don’t give a hoot.

It was exactly the same in Victorian times when Britain’s proles were merrily scrubbing their doorsteps and being harangued about their drinking by the Temperance Movement, as this wasn’t how “good folk” behaved, while all the lords and ladies were swilling back gin, smoking opium and getting knocked up by the local right honourable during boozy grouse shoots.

So to be quite honest, having spent time in Rock, Cornwall during the summer, I’d say that the antics of BB5′s fight night were more akin to how “good people” behave. But this hasn’t stopped supposed class warrior Carole walking about with War and Peace on her head, which is no mean feat considering she’s also been farting like a set of Scottish snare drums.

According to Carole, she is the only one trying in the etiquette task. Why, Carole’s even been correcting herself on her mistakes when she’s been on her own in the toilet.

I quite like the image of Carole sitting on the loo berating herself to wee properly, then eventually crying and sending herself to Coventry shouting “I don’t wanna talk about this no more, Carole! I don’t wanna have this conversation! I’m not speaking about this no more!”

Carole has been dressed as a “proper lady” this week. She even dressed up nicely for dinner with a silvery sparkly thing in her hair and a bit of glitzy jewellery. Of course, what would really set her outfit off would be a nice sparkly bauble for either side of her moustache. And a nice table-for-one in the garden so she couldn’t ruin the atmosphere with her infectious gloom.

Ziggy has finally seen the light with Carole. He’s told her that she’s not touching the shopping list. He’s told her to stop crying like a baby. He’s told her she’s rude and that people are scared of her.

Ziggy even tried to put his foot down about her obsession with ordering enough carrots to feed Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen twice over and still cater for a Hare Krishna buffet.

Everyone else just wants a fortnight of eating biscuits, crisps and fizzy crap that will give them spots, piles and heart palpitations and possibly need some Ritalin.

Oh, why can’t you just let them, Carole? Try it, you might like it. I can almost 100% guarantee that a packet of Penguins and a can of Lilt tastes better than old carrots fried in second-hand fat served with Dijon mustard.

Carole’s response is to snivvel and sob and sulk some more.

Two people are being chucked out of the Big Brother house this Friday night. Neither of them will be Carole. As I say, it’s all been very disappointing.

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Big Brother 8: Our Daily Bread

Our daily bread (Big Brother, days 79-82) by Grace Dent

It’s been an exhausting weekend. Firstly, I’ve had to watch Big Brother on behalf of almost the entire British Isles, who can’t be arsed any more.

Secondly, after a series of powerful nightmares about pestilence and plague, I finally snapped and broke into Carole’s house in Leytonstone and gave her net curtains a good boil wash, then Mr Muscled her fridge.

Meanwhile, Carole is still in Elstree mopping and sloshing and grumbling about crumbs. She’s standing there in her mole-coloured baggy tracksuit ensemble, like an am-dram Wind in the Willows Mr Mole, crying scalding tears of betrayal each time Liam spreads an extra milligram of cooking margarine onto his long-life bread without her consent.

Carole has been extra-ordinarily stab-able-in-the-forehead-with-a-fork-able over the past week as she’s been forbidden from doing any household duties. This was as Kara-Louise, Jonty and Gerry were being punished for a rule-break incident involving a piece of paper, some pencils and a secret symbol, aka Pascal’s triangle.

Basically the three biggest nerds in the house were given access to pencils, paper and privacy. Instead of whipping up an evil plot to forge their brains, ruthlessly conquer, then split the winnings, the nerds opted to teach each other about a complex geometric arrangement of binomial coefficients, which dates back to tenth-century Sanskrit.

Sigh. This is why governments aren’t particularly worried about people like Sir Clive Sinclair, Stelios from easyJet and Bill Gates being friends. It doesn’t matter how many millions of dollars they make, it’s not like they’re going to buy bloody plutonium with it. They’re more likely to sit around at Clive’s house drinking weak lemon cordial, swapping Ood stickers and talking about Pythagoras.

So Kara-Louise was supposed to be cooking, and in fairness, she has proven herself as an able cook in the past. Sadly Kara-Louise’s nimbleness in the kitchen was sort of impeded by a 14-stone woman from Leytonstone in a Primark tracksuit quacking her “advice”.

“Noooo! You whisk eggs like THIS, Kara-Louise!” Carole nagged, grabbing the fork. Oh, my gosh, this would be a flash point for me if she’d tried to teach me to whisk eggs. “Errrrrm, Carole!” said Jonty, amiably. Bumbling amiability is the only voice Jonty can do. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be cooking, Carole!” “I’m not cooking! I’m just demonstrating,” grunted Carole, elbow-deep in yolk, drunk on power once again.

Hours later the entire house is being punished on Carole’s behalf. Their week’s shopping budget is £78. More long-life bread, which they can obsess about day and night. Carole’s worst crime was harbouring a packet of contraband biscuits. They were chocolate digestives, apparently, although it was clear when we saw them that they weren’t good brand digestives, with the thick chocolate and crunchy biscuit, of which it’s impossible to eat just one, so you eat ten then think, “Oh, well, never mind, may as well finish the packet” and the next thing you know you’re in a changing room trying to get a pair of jeans higher than your knees, blaming glandular problems for your bum, which looks like Big Daddy’s. Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, they weren’t good digestive biscuits, they were bad, cheap, supermarket-brand chocolate “flavour” digestives, where the chocolate-flavour coating is just icing sugar and cocoa and the biscuit is made of old floor sweepings, and they don’t taste of much aside from Carole’s 24-hour girdle, as she’s had them in her pant drawer since just before Shabnam left.

“I hope the biscuits were worth it, Carole,” chided Big Brother. “Yes, they were, actually,” said Carole, before going out and telling the gang that she’d messed up their task.

The gang responded by arguing for a while and then evicting Gerry. Poor Gerry. I’m sad to see him go but I know he’s in a better place. Even Gerry had a hand in his own downfall.

“Let Carole stay, she neeeeeds the money!” said Gerry, kindly, “She needs the money more than me!” Of course she needs the money, Gerry, she doesn’t have a job.

She’s an unemployed sexual-health worker, which is bizarre as she’s from a district of London so riddled with chlamydia that you could probably pick it up on the rush hour 155 bus to Walthamstow if you got wedged in too close to a teen with particularly baggy low-slung underpants (of which there are LOTS).

Why doesn’t Carole work? She’s clearly physically able as she’s always on the go in the house. I’d love to earwig in on the Social Security meeting when they hand her a list of vacancies for knicker-manglers and cleaners in east London. Personally, I think she’d be good working for Rentokil. There is no-one more obsessed with uninvited creepy-crawly things than Carole.

Carole thinks the Disney film A Bug’s Life is actually a true-life documentary. She believes that at any given time a bunch of anthropomorphised sugar-obsessed ants are in their secret war cabinet meeting pointing at maps and discussing the whereabouts of that box of Tunnock’s caramel teacakes you bought from Lidl.

So anyway, Gerry left the Big Brother house. Most people were sad to see him go. Especially Liam, who’ll miss taking the mick out of Gerry’s manhood. Liam had seen it once in the shower and had great glee announcing to everyone that it wasn’t huge. In fact, as far as I can gather, it resembled a malady-tormented slug peering over two Bitesize Shredded Wheat.

Gerry’s biggest mistake was to take on Carole over the past fortnight over food control issues. When Gerry remarked that he wanted to eat bread as he was “starving”, Carole wept, “Starving? You don’t know what starving is! When I was a child we were glad if we got bread and sugar! Starving! Hah!”

Then Carole cried for half an hour remembering her childhood where she lived on gravel sandwiches and walked 42 miles to school each day with a stone in her second-hand Hush Puppies and a smile on her grateful face.

But no-one told her to shut up and stop emotionally blackmailing them. They chucked Gerry out and let her stay. I’ve got the live feed on now. She’s in her tracksuit, scowling, her hold is as rock solid as ever.

In other news, Brian has finally got the message about Amanda. It’s only taken him a week of her baulking when he touches her to work it out.

When Brian swoops in, Amanda acts a lot like one of my cats does whenever I pick him up. Rock solid limbs, pulling face away, tolerating it with an expression that seems to say, “I’m only putting up with this as I pity you, you lolloping great shovel-handed fool. Make it stop quickly.”

Amanda is free now to concentrate on more important things. Hopefully including her Social Work studies, as my anxiety about Britain’s dysfunctional families grows ever deeper as I watch her gormless, blank face every day.

Jonty tried to teach the twins geography the other day. “Which country’s population is predominantly made up of Jewish people?” he asked. The twins didn’t know. “I’ll give you a clue,” says Jonty, “It begins with I!” “Ireland!” hoot the twinnies, “Erm, no….OK, I.S…” “Isle….of…Island!? Isle of Man?”

Jonty sighs, “No…OK, another letter…I.S.R…?” “Israq!” shout the twins. “Is it Israq?!”

Israq? Where is Israq? How are these two going to be in charge of some sort of social care?

Actually, I hope they put them in charge of asylum claims. I’m going to pack in writing this column and say I need some money as I’m a political refugee on the run from YugoSpania.

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Big Brother 8: Belly aching

Belly aching (Big Brother, days 76-78) by Grace Dent

For a moment it felt like the revolution was going to be televised. A rumble was heard from the caravan. No, it wasn’t Jonty’s eerily quadraphonic bum hole. It was Liam, Ziggy and the twins talking about Carole’s Pol Pot-style regime of culinary communism.

Carole was unaware that people were bitching. This is unusual because Carole usually knows everything. She reminds me of that song Take That Look Off Your Face by Andrew Lloyd Webber. “I knew beforeeeeeee!” is Carole’s motto. I love to turn on the live feed and listen to all the things that Carole either knows or would know much more about if she had her book, which is indoors (ie behind a pile of rubble in her front room in Leytonstone).

Anyway, Carole was happily making dinner. It was a tempting, succulent smorgasbord, bound to have the people of Britain casting aside their lazy ready meals and returning to good home cooking. Roughly chopped carrots fried in cheap margarine with a tin of supermarket-brand watery, acidic spaghetti in tomato sauce chucked in, with Dijon mustard and two-day-old bread served on a dusty dustpan, as it had been on the floor.

In fairness, Carole’s dinner looked like something the BBC prop people mix up in bins before shooting a plot about Holby being struck by the Ebola virus. But it was made with love, and that’s the main thing. OK, Carole’s sort of love. Brooding, malevolent love that might send you to Coventry at any moment.

But the kids had had enough. They wanted a different world. A world where they could eat fajitas and go wild and have a bread roll now and then.
A world where they didn’t have to ask Carole’s permission before eating a branflake. “Yer-nah, I’m finking we’re gunna have to say something,” says Liam, who looked set to lead the troops.

“What did he say? I divvent understand what he’s gan on aboot?” shout people all over Newcastle and Sunderland, who also can’t understand Liam’s accent as it edges day by day into Klingon. “Um, er, yeah, um, that would be, wow,” said Ziggy. In Ziggy-speak this is massive unequivocal support.

“Oh, noooooo, you’ll make her cry!” said Brian, “Don’t make her cry!” Brian and the gang are the only people in the country still taken in by Carole’s crying. Oh, boo hoo, someone has eaten some bread. Oh, Carole’s so hurt and disappointed. Oh, the sky has fallen in. Oh, she tries her best, she does. God knows she tries, but this is all the thanks she gets.

At least Carole has Kara-Louise, who is apparently very “courteous”. Actually the word you’re looking for is “compliant”. When Carole says that people should ask permission from everyone before touching the cereal box, she doesn’t mean everyone, she means her. She couldn’t give a damn about Brian or the twins’ opinions.

Kara-Louise is just a massive pile of wet toilet rolls in a Monsoon shift dress. Oddly enough, she still manages to get the point across that she thinks she’s slightly more saintly and pious than everyone else. I started disliking her when she threw the crying fit on her second day when someone dared say her name and the words “game plan” in the same sentence.

“I can’t belieeeeeeeve you said I had a game plan,” she howled as if she’d never ever set eyes on Big Brother before. That’s all that anyone ever talks about, bloody game plans. What’s so wrong with having a game plan? You’d be an idiot not to have a few set rules in your head before you went in. Or to watch the dwindling numbers of housemates and think, “I need to get rid of that person there if I want to be here in the last week as they wind me up.”

Kara-Louise is so wet that she even managed to have some sort of attack during the assault course. I’m not sure what it was; it didn’t look like asthma or hypothermia or exhaustion. But never mind, because Gerry sorted it all out by doing a Tibetan version of the chicken dance beside her head while Brian shouted “Go away with your weird maaaaadnesss, Gerry, you weirdo!’

One person I do quite like is Liam. Now, I’m alone here, I fear. Some people who watch Big Brother avidly and have gone to the dark side believe that Liam is some sort of evil necromancer. They think Big Brother should dub in an evil slide trombone every time he appears, a bit like the Hooded Claw from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop used to have. Then Liam could stand by the pool twirling his Victorian curly moustache, wondering which of the twins’ bums to thwack next.

I’m not so sure Liam is that exciting. From the moment I saw Liam I wrote him off as a normal, slightly boring, “lad”. And that’s exactly what he is. According to Liam, he likes going out on Saturday night, getting tanked up, meeting birds and going home with them. Some of them he doesn’t even know!

And Liam likes having a laugh with his mates. Liam’s default sense of humour is laddish ****-taking and slightly cruel jokes, but over all his heart is in the right place and he can be a softy sometimes in the right company. His hero is Hugh Hefner, on account of all them lasses and that. Liam can’t be doing with lasses crying and all that, he doesn’t know what to say.

Liam would rather be on his own, just going out and having fun than saddled with some bird he doesn’t really like just for the sake of having a girlfriend. Liam’s opinion of women is that they’re all a bit mad, but he loves his mother with all his heart and would do owt for her. I think I’ve just described almost every single lad I ever knew up north from the ages of 18-25.

We don’t see much of Liam’s like on television. It’s almost unpalatable to some people that he refuses to be a Renaissance man and talk about his feelings. I quite like it when Liam picks the twins up like a caveman and chucks them in the pool. And you know something, the twins bloody do too.

Of course, the twins are the women that emancipation also forgot. “Ooooooh, nooooo, not the pool! Hee, hee! Ooh, I don’t know anything about polly-ticks or anyfink! Is Tony Blurrr still the king? Does he like pink?!!!!”

And where has all the simpering and giggling got the twins? The pair are virtually bulletproof on their way to £100,000. Oh, yes, I’d have gone in with my women’s lib and strong opinions, spouting Elaine Showalter and chinning Liam if he tried to thwack my arse, shouting, “Don’t oppress me, you b*****d!” and where would that have got me? Well, at least I’d have been able to put the kettle on and get the Endemol green room ready for Shabnam.

“Eet isn’t fair,” cried clever Gerry, who is being picked on right, left and centre, “They say I’ve got a game plan! But I’ve not got one! What a horrible place for me to choose to spend my summer.”

Gerry cried and talked to himself in the loo. His upset would have been more convincing if he’d been talking in Greek and not translating his outrage at being called a game player into English so that viewers could understand. Cos that’s the thing about Gerry, he might be a pain sometimes, but he certainly isn’t stupid.

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Big Brother 8: Let it all out

Let it all out (Big Brother, days 72-75) by Grace Dent

Unsurprisingly, Amy was voted out of the house on Friday. Amy wasn’t a malicious housemate. She wasn’t especially bitchy. Or starry, or vain or stupid. Amy, however, was one of those women whom other women seem to decide they don’t like on sight. Myself included.

There was something slightly insipid about the way Amy operated. The coy expression, batting eyelashes, itsy-bitsy bikini, the way she was always trying to encourage the men to “open up and show their emotions”. The way she’d forever pepper conversations with the fact that she was “a glamour model” but was also “so insecure about herself”.

I can’t put my finger on what made Amy seem unsisterly, but only an idiot would leave their boyfriend alone in a room with her. You’d come back ten minutes later and find him face down in her schnockers sobbing while she patted his head and cajoled him to “let all his emotions out”.

Amy’s finest hour was possibly last Thursday when she cornered Ziggy and simpered about how he shouldn’t be so strong and silent about missing Chanelle but should “talk about things”. This was inspired logic, what with Ziggy having rambled on about his bloody emotions for 75 days without pausing, like Sir Cliff reading the audio book of James Joyce’s Ulysses, while cobwebs grew in the nostrils of everyone in Britain as we waited for him to GET TO THE POINT.

Later, Amy told Brian he should be honest about his emotions for Amanda. “You can never look stupid when you’re being honest,” Amy told him. From which cut-price fortune cookie she got that piece of wisdom, I’m not sure. Maybe it gives us a clue as to why Amy ended up earning a living standing around the Birmingham NEC retrieving her bikini thong out of her bum and dispensing leaflets about the new Ford Focus, rather than as, say, chairman of ICI.

Of course you can be honest and still look stupid. Just look at Jonty. Look at him “honestly” admitting how his best friend is a stained puppet and he likes to spend his weekends being smacked on the bare bum cheeks with a variety of spatulas and light sports racquets. Do we all respect his honesty? No, he makes us want to fill a bath with bleach and hot water and exfoliate ourselves with wire wool to remove the grubbiness.

Alarm bells went off for me about Amy when she modelled herself on Jodie Marsh during the fashion show. Belts over her breasts. Skirt vaguely covering her bits.

If Amy thinks Jodie Marsh is someone to aspire to, I don’t have much hope for her future. Jodie Marsh, who is currently making a colossal arse of herself on MTV roaming the UK begging strangers to marry her, doesn’t seem very happy at all. If I was behaving like Jodie Marsh right now, I honestly hope someone who loved me would step in and have me sectioned.

Carole isn’t sad to see the back of Amy. Carole couldn’t stand her. The more I look at Carole the more I vow to use a good moisturiser and to keep a close eye on my facial hair as the years pass by and I shuffle towards resembling Dickie Davies with his head stuck onto a large King Edward potato.

I imagine Carole looks how Anita Roddick from the Body Shop would look if she hadn’t spent decades slathering mashed guava onto her cellulite, splodging vitamin-E cream on her eye circles and doing yoga in her Adriatic villa, and had instead lived in a one-man tent beside a lay-by in Greenham Common, washing her face in puddles, moisturising with Stork SB margarine and living on broccoli boiled on a Calor gas stove for three months solid.

Carole is aggravating me greatly. Why does she stay there? What is she achieving? Everyone has to live on bread, milk and butter now for a week with the occasional sprinkling of salt and pepper, which should be used SPARINGLY, mind, as it’s limited. I wish someone would shove a crust sideways down her huge quacking gob hole.

I’ve not seen anyone as manipulative on Big Brother before. It’s awesome. Everyone is compliant to her wishes as it’s simply easier than to try and disagree with her and face her crying and depression. They don’t even form splinter groups and plot to secretly overthrow her. They’re not even aware how much she’s controlling them.

“I spent half an hour yesterday picking pasta off the chairs,” moans Carole. Well, it’s half an hour more than you’ve ever spent cleaning your house in Leytonstone, Carole. I saw it on BBLB. I keep waking up in the night sweating, wanting to take some Toilet Duck and Ajax over there and give it a good mop.

Elsewhere, Liam let us all into the secret of exactly what sort of woman he likes. Basically, he likes tall women, or short women, or medium-sized women, with skin of any colour and boobs of any level of perkiness or pendulousness. He’s not too fussy, but the important thing is, now listen carefully, they’ve got “to be one of ‘em lasses that can like get their point across without saying anything an’ ‘at but yer kna’ what they mean”.

I’m not sure what Liam is going on about. Does he want a woman who can operate via telekinesis? Or does he want a very, very quiet woman who communicates by being quiet and perhaps fetching him the odd cold beer? Well, obviously, that’s what all men want.

Whatever, Liam’s accent is definitely getting stronger the longer he’s away from Tyneside. I’ve mastered a few phrases from watching him, like: “Nah, yer-not-rightbigshotten-it-aboot-here-an-at!” (Translation: please stop being over-confident) and “Ayealiketogetinallabootitandthat!” (I am a sensitive and sensual lover who is prepared to even take his socks off.)

I worry about Brian and Amanda’s “relationship”. Brian isn’t really that brilliant with women, is he? For a start, he thinks he can call them “Vaginapersons” or “Wombpeople”. Worse still, now he’s in love with Amanda, he sits staring at her much like I would stare at Mogwai from the Gremlins or a basket of sheepdog puppies if you left it on my desk. Sort of misty-eyed and dribbling.

Amanda thinks Brian is “so cute”, “so sweet” and “really adorable”, which are all words women use to describe a boy they’ve put in the “just a friend zone”. Now she’s saying that they should definitely wait at least three weeks before getting off with each other again. The thing is, true love or lust doesn’t wait three weeks when you’ve got nothing else to do but sit about pawing each other. Amanda is too inoffensive to make it clear that he’s got no chance post-Big Brother, either.

And so the poor boy plods on, consumed with lust and hormones, spending all his waking moments watching Amanda jumping about with no bra on…then lie in bed frustrated all night long between her and her slinky identical twin sister. Oh, well, at least Carole will have somewhere rigid to hang those wet tea towels she’s been mangling. She’s spent half an hour rinsing them for the good of everyone. Half an hour, mind?! Half an hour. She just doesn’t like to go on about it.

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Big Brother 8: Amy Alexandra Evicted

Once again, the Great British Public seem to have decided to keep a housemate with all the personality of wallpaper, Kara-Louise, and evict, with 58% of the vote,  Amy Alexandra, someone who had the potential to stir things up in the house.

She did come across rather well in her interview with Davina. She was coherent and lucid throughout, and didn’t use it as an opportunity to bitch or gripe. She got across her mixed feelings about Carole, but ultimately rose above the comments that were made.

Davina: Two weeks – it wasn’t very long. What did it feel like in there?
Amy Alexandra: It’s just gone so, so quickly. A couple of us have been saying it feels like I’ve been there forever, but I haven’t — it was too quick.
Davina: It looked like you were surprised when you heard your name?
Amy Alexandra: I was being optimistic and hoping out of the four of us, I wouldn’t go. Obviously if I could have been in there longer I would have.
Davina: Tuesday, you saw who nominated you and why — what was that like?
Amy Alexandra: It was ok, the people who I thought would have stuck by me, did. I was kinda shocked by a few of the comments. Tracey and Carole were very harsh. I felt they hadn’t got past the glamour model and didn’t see the girl who ran around in her pyjamas and didn’t do her hair.
Davina: Why didn’t you confront Carole?
Amy Alexandra: I hate arguments and I’d spoken to a couple of the guys and they said it would be a massive argument, and I didn’t go in there to argue. I didn’t want to make it awkward for everyone else, I just wanted a laugh so I just chilled. I thought ‘take it on the chin, be the bigger person, get over it.’
Davina: When you knew there was a possibility that you were going into the House, were you watching Big Brother 24/7?
Amy Alexandra: I didn’t watch it! I swear, because it makes things harder – ignorance is bliss. The only bit I’d seen was of Liam in that funny bondage thing and I didn’t know what that was about.
Davina: Did you fancy him then?
Amy Alexandra: No! All my mates were like ‘go for him’ and I thought ‘not my type at all’.
Davina: So no game plan?
Amy Alexandra: No, not at all. The twins grabbed me the minute I walked through the door and dragged me outside to Liam and Brian, and the four of us, we just never moved. I thought, ‘I’m comfy with these guys’. Despite my front, I’m not the most confident girl at all times and they were my ‘safe-zone’.
Davina: What do you think Liam’s feelings for you were?
Amy Alexandra: He was constantly hot and cold. I think it might have been different if he hadn’t had so much pressure put on him [from the other housemates]. It was just a bit of fun, nothing serious. I was trying to make my place in the rest of the group and I needed him to help me with that and he kinda made it worse. I hope we could be good mates. I never took it too seriously.
Davina: Do you think your relationship with Liam is why you’re sitting here now?
Amy Alexandra: It probably didn’t help, but I don’t mind. I’ve always thought everything happens for a reason.
Davina: Would you hook up with Liam on the outside?
Amy Alexandra: He’d have to work a little bit harder now!
Davina: What did you think of Gerry?
Amy Alexandra: Mixed feelings, but not in a negative way — nice guy, got loads to say, but sometimes he’s best not saying anything at all.
Davina: And Kara-Louise?
Amy Alexandra: So sweet, so genuine. In some ways she’s so sensitive but sometimes so strong.
Davina: Jonty?
Amy Alexandra: He’s weird, he’s eccentric, but you’ve got to love him – he’s there when you need him.
Davina: Carole?
Amy Alexandra: Although we didn’t discuss it, I think after I’d seen her nomination, she did chill out with me a bit – perhaps because I didn’t have a go at her about it.
Davina: Tracey?
Amy Alexandra: Wicked.
Davina: Brian?
Amy Alexandra: Hilarious, you gotta love him.
Davina: The twins?
Amy Alexandra: Wish they were my sisters.
Davina: Brian and Amanda?
Amy Alexandra: It won’t happen in there, sorry guys!
Davina: What have you learnt about yourself?
Amy Alexandra: Probably not to doubt myself and just to have fun with things. The twins have made me have more fun in ten days than I have had in the last two years. Defo! Cringe! Triple Cringe! Cheese!
Davina: And finally – who do you want to win?
Amy Alexandra: I’d love the twins to win. They’ve been themselves the whole time. They haven’t got a bad word to say about anyone – how many people are like that in this day and age? Good on ‘em!

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Big Brother 8: Week 10 Nominations

The housemates with the most nominations this week are Amy, Jonty and Kara-Louise so they are facing the boot.

Sam and Amanda join them because of an EVIL Big Brother twist. Yawn! At the start of Big Brother, the twins had asked Big Brother, “We’re just wondering if we’re counted as one or two. Like, one vote, or two votes? Everybody keeps asking and we just don’t actually know! So if we don’t know now, would we know soon? It’s confusing me.” This week Big Brother let them decide. Either they could continue playing as individuals or they could be treated as a single housemate meaning they would nominate together, be evicted together and share winner status and money, should they win. As a forfeit for choosing the latter, they both face the public vote this week as one. Since, I still cannot tell them apart that comes in handy.

Out of that lot I’d like to see Kara-Louise go. All she seems to do is weep or laugh inanely. Both make her sound like a demented Flipper the dolphin. She also came up with the following gem: ”Being minor celebrities *GRIN* is owed to us*GRIN* because being on Big Brother *GRIN* is hard work…*GRIN*. It’s 3 months of accomplishment *GRIN*. We are on 24 hours a day *GRIN*. It’s hard GRIN*.” A remark for which she surely deserves to come out to a completely silent audience (like Charley did during her fake eviction) and to disappear quickly into obscurity.

So who hates who?

  • Amanda and Sam nominated Jonty and Kara-Louise
    Amanda turned to Sam, saying, “I was going to say Jonty and Kara.” Sam replied, “I was going to say that as well.” Amanda confirmed Jonty because, ”We’ve had the least conversation with him and not got to know him much… he’s got different things to talk about. It’s funny but I just don’t get it. He’s got different interests to us”. On Kara-Louise, Sam said, “She’s way more mature than us and has strong opinions on things.”
  • Amy nominated Kara-Louise and Gerry
    Kara-Louise: “I don’t think she is getting what she wanted out of her experience in Big Brother. She is already moping about and sort of saying ‘I feel like I’m wasting my time’.”
    Gerry: “He lacks a serious amount of tact sometimes and says things to people that can be quite hurtful. Since I’ve been here any arguments that have gone on have involved him, often in a petty way… I think he has managed to have an argument this morning and we haven’t been up that long.”
  • Brian nominated Jonty and Kara-Louise
    Jonty: “Very eccentric. Very nice guy, but I don’t get enough from him to make me want to spend more time with him.”
    Kara-Louise: “You go to one room and they are talking about travelling around the world and I can’t join [in] that, then you go into the next room and Kara-Louise might be talking about museums and renaissance art. Oh my days, you can’t be serious, why are they talking like this in the Big Brother house? Talking about proper full-on stuff. I can’t get involved. I need someone to talk about cider and going out proper full-on clubbing.”
  • Carole nominated Amy and Kara-Louise
    Amy: “I haven’t gelled with her and don’t actually trust her very much, so for that reason I don’t want to live with her any more. I think she came in with a very specific agenda and she was probably prepared to do anything.”
    Kara-Louise: “I feel very bad about this. The only reason I’m nominating her is because the house isn’t what she thought it was going to be. She said yesterday ‘I thought there was going to be loads of eligible bachelors’… I can sit and chat with her, but I don’t think there is very much I can give to her.”
  • Gerry nominated Amy and Jonty
    Amy: “She’s the only one who is going to benefit clearly by being here, being a glamour model. That’s her job – she needs exposure. It’s part of her job to create publicity about herself. Thus it makes me very suspicious that she attaches herself to Liam from the start.”
    Jonty: “It was a difficult decision and it has to be Jonty. Watching a 37-year-old man talking to bears and farting, it’s all a little too much for me. I know we are all strange people in here… I’m having a serious conversation about history and then he’ll (sound effect of a burp). You can’t take him seriously. It’s like living with a seven-year-old child.”
  • Jonty nominated Gerry and Kara-Louise
  • Kara-Louise nominated Jonty and Amy
    Jonty: “I do like him, but from when we were in the halfway house, he just put Shanessa, David and I straight up for the public nomination and I just didn’t like how he didn’t give that a second thought… I just didn’t think that it was fair.”
    Amy: “I felt more betrayed by her than I did by Jonty, for just putting us all up so easily for nomination. I thought we had bonded and we obviously hadn’t. I just can’t trust her.”
  • Liam nominated Kara-Louise and Jonty
    Kara-Louise: “Canny enough lass, but she’s not really exciting. She’s already telling us how bored she is and how she’s thinking about going home. For me, this is a gift and I have no time for people who can’t appreciate what they’ve got… seems like spoilt behaviour.”
    Jonty: “He’s possibly one of the funniest blokes that I’ve met in a long time, but he’s so so irritating, sitting on the floor farting all the time. The first few times it’s funny, then it starts to eat away at you… he would be somebody who I would like to live less with.”
  • Tracey nominated Amy and Gerry
  • Ziggy nominated Amy and Gerry
    Amy: “She loves to talk about herself. I don’t think she is as natural as she could be. I’ve overheard her talking about the twins as her best friends, she loves them so much and I find that hard to believe after a week. She comes across as a bit fake. She’s seen what she’s seen on the outside and tried to fit in here… I find it hard for someone to come in and replace Chanelle with the twins and stuff like that… even Charley was natural… I think she knows what she is doing.”
    Gerry: “Myself and Gerry haven’t really got on this week. We’ve clashed in a big way. He’s got a bit arrogant and big for his boots. He’s very, very patronising in the way he talks to you. I do think he believes he is way too clever for this place… he goes on about the band a lot and I came in here not to talk about it. He mocks it in his own way. You can mock it, but I’m the only person in here with a top ten single.”

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Big Brother 8: Volte-face

Volte-face (Big Brother, days 69-71) by Grace Dent

I hate to dismay any loyal readers, but I fear my heart has softened towards the twinnies. I know. I can’t believe it either. I was just sitting here in my dalmatian-fur frock coat, tucking into breakfast (roast swan and foie gras baguette, as usual) and I saw the twins on live feed and my spiky old anvil expression melted and I thought, “Awwww, how are they so nice?!”

Because the twins are nice, aren’t they? Close your ears to the screaming and all that gubbins about living in a pink world, that’s not the important thing here. The twins simply don’t appear to have an ounce of malice in their bodies.

They don’t have a snide word to say about anyone. They’re a friend to all. And that’s usually the sort of froth that gets spouted by vicars at funerals and it’s never true. If anyone stood up and said that at mine, they’d get heckled. But I’ve waited 72 days for Sam and Amanda to get down to Ziggy, Carole and Liam’s level of underhand sneakiness. Nothing.

The twins even stayed friends with Charley. They tried to comfort Charley when her mania spilled to the point of no return. Are they perchance channelling the spirit of Saint Jude – patron saint of lost causes? Are they on some sort of emotion-blocking SSRI drug that smooths over the jagged corners of life’s woes? Are they replicants? Or does that level of fluffy well-meaningness really occur naturally? I don’t know.

Brian and Amanda have had a bit of a snog this week. It’s quite touching as it’s been on the cards forever. The pair communicate in burbles and giggles and “shutttttttaps” and “noooooyoushattapdonut!” and burps followed by “exsqueeezme” and lots more giggles. It feels like the beginning of something quite real. Saying that, anything seems real compared to Chanelle and Ziggy, or worse still, Liam and Amy.

Amy is still warbling on about being “unsure where she stands” with Liam. I’ll give her a hint. Amy, say Liam is standing in the Big Brother garden, ideally where he’d like you to be standing is back at your own house in Lincolnshire with no access to his mobile phone number. I’m sure the pair will end up snogging again soon, but I’d say his first decision was his final one.

“Why does everyone dislike me?” sighed Amy last night. “Erm, is it because you walk about in a jumper that looks like you caught the hem on a door handle last Tuesday and it’s unravelled as far as your nipples?!” I shouted, to no avail.

Anyway, Brian and Amanda. Brian’s more into the fling than Amanda but Amanda is too lovely to say. Plus, Amanda won’t want her twin to feel alienated as she’s too lovely to do that. I’m sure they’ll go on a date together after the house. Especially as Gerry has offered to take them on a riveting day of mooseumanart in London.

I wonder what Gerry is like to visit an art gallery with? I wonder if he’s ever been ejected from the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern for bickering with the curators about how HE thinks the art should be installed. Deary me, Gerry can’t half witter on once he gets going.

If I was ever feeling really bored in the Big Brother house one Thursday, I’d simply shout, “Ere, Gerry, those Elgin Marbles things wot us Brits own? What’satallaboutthen?” Then I’d simply lie back and shut my eyes and soon it would be Monday.

Gerry knows every one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I think we were all impressed by that. Even Jonty was impressed, but then the jury is still out on whether Jonty is clever or not. It would be nice to think he was clever and at least had his brains to fall back on. If he’s simply that creepy looking and not clever at all, just dim and a bit obsessive about Doctor Who, then that’s awful. The sadomasochistic clubs he keeps boasting about don’t help.

Everyone has to live with a Jonty at some point. We’ve all done it. Usually when you get a room cheap out of Loot and think, “Oh, why is this so cheap?”. Then you realise you’re co-habiting with Monketytonkety and Jonty, who lies on the floor to fart and laughs until he soils himself over a vague pun on the words “magnate” and “magnet”. Even the twins have spotted that something is amiss. The twins don’t really like him. Imagine?

This week’s nominations have been wonderful as everyone knows who has nominated whom. So after 70 days of being told not to talk about nominations, they’re now talking about nothing else. Obviously this is hell for Ziggy, who is exhausted from pulling everyone to the side to um, er, yeah, I need to talk, right, I’m not hugely proud of myself, right, but, y’know, yeah, um, right? Do you get what I’m saying, um right?

No, I don’t, Ziggy, cos you’ve never finished a sentence since last June and I gain more enlightenment as to how you feel from seeing the position of your hoodie’s hood. (Hood up: Ziggy sad/Hood down: Ziggy chilled.)

My entertaining-housemate-of-the-week award goes to Carole. Attila the Gran, stood in her kitchen with her pans and her spoons and her big hair, brimming with resentment. Carole made a lovely nut roast this week (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and no-one listened to her and the next thing she knew someone had put it inside the chicken thinking it was stuffing and it’s not like she was angry, right (retrieves mountain of tissue from jumper sleeve and voice crackles), she was just HURT and DISAPPOINTED.

I wish Big Brother had said: “Carole, Big Brother wonders if it’s occurred to you that the housemates shoved your lovely nut roast right up the chicken arse as they didn’t want to eat it?” Or “Big Brother wonders what is the worst thing that could happen if you let Kara-Louise cook, considering it’s one thing she’s very good at and it might make her feel a bit more involved and stop her crying?”

God, no wonder Greenham Common went on for so bloody long. I bet it had nothing to do with missiles. It was women like Carole, too stubborn to leave their Calor gas stove in case some other bearded women in sandals dared to prod the communal goulash. “Yes, I knew that!” Carole always shouts. “I knew that! I’ve always known that!”

So far, Carole is controlling the kitchen, the shopping list, the tobacco supplies and the house rota, and she even has a hand in the house relationship. And as far as I can see, she specifically did NOT give permission about Amanda and Brian’s “involvement”. No papers were formally signed off, her blessing was not awarded. It is against Carole’s will.

Be afraid, Brian. Be very afraid.

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Big Brother 8: Not angry, just disappointed

Not angry, just disappointed (Big Brother, days 65-68) by Grace Dent

It was a sour little eviction night. David and Shanessa, two folk we barely knew, were chucked out of the house. Nevertheless the crowd howled and booed, shouting clear directions to them on why they were both so despised.

Davina smooths this over, as ever, as “pantomime”, but I’m not so certain it is. Sometimes, an evictee will be standing on the stage with Davina, waving their hands about, then a lone mocking voice in the crowd will shout something really horrid, making everyone snigger and roar.

And sometimes a millisecond of bewilderment and hurt will flash across the evictee’s face, as if they had never expected a stranger could be so unpleasant. I often think, this isn’t good telly at all. It’s just cruel and sad.

David’s biggest crimes were acting a bit over-cocky and resembling a slightly rotund Matt from Busted en route to a Halloween bop.

David was one of those people who had studied a lot of Big Brother previously and was madly earnest about staying a long time and being a big, well-loved character. So off he goes into the house, little fists scrunched, serious expression, not having very much fun at all, coming across as a bit of a malcontent and a definite harbourer of daft grudges.

Oh, and he was a witch too. Although not a scary witch. Or a very useful one. When faced with a delicious Spam and jam pâté, it would have been fantastic if David could have called upon his pagan gods to make it vanish, or at least turn it into a lovely piece of gateau.

Instead he shouted a few half-arsed mystical words, then retched his way through eight spoons of bleak Spam/jam concoction. I mean, obviously, this sort of otherworldly excitement could have taken up at least 50 pages in Harry Potter and the Extremely Ghoulish Owl (or whatever the last one was called). But it wasn’t enough to keep David as a housemate.

Shanessa was determined while she was in the house to “be herself”. So she was herself 110% (as stupid yet keen people always say) and the crowd still disliked her. Shanessa’s finest moment was dressing up in knee-high socks and a hockey skirt, putting her hair in bunches, then prancing back into the main house like a Bo’ Selecta Britney Spears, hoping to ensnare Ziggy.

Ziggy was – as most men would be – quite bemused by the sight. Why do women dress up like wanton schoolgirls in the hope of provoking an urge in men that, if it was confessed, could see the bloke chased to the city limits by people with pitchforks? It is one of life’s mysteries.

To Shanessa’s credit, she also let one of the twins wear her pink lap-dancing outfit and paraded her through the house for everyone to see. That was very sweet of Shanessa. It is a better woman than I who opens her wardrobe to a size-eight, 19-year-old blonde and shouts, “Hey, everyone, come and look at what my clothes are supposed to look like!” I’d rather drink a pint of curdled mayonnaise and eat some of Carole’s delicious broccoli, steamed for only 40 minutes until it resembles Exorcism gunk.

So now we’re left with Amy. Amy has been having a sort of lacklustre “thing” with Liam, but now he’s gone cold. I’m not sure how interested I am in two people with no natural spark, who haven’t really been in a relationship together, bickering over the fact that their non-relationship never really went anywhere.

To me, Amy seems a bit pathetic. I can forgive Liam for getting cabin fever and feeling like having “a bit of neck-on” with someone. But Amy’s only been locked up for a few days! Why is having a fling in there so crucial to her happiness? Not that it matters whether it goes anywhere. Amy doesn’t care if it goes nowhere, right?! He can just snog her, then ignore her post-eviction, and that will be FINE as it was just FUN.

Hmmm. That’s either a lie, or the forlorn witterings of a girl with no self-respect. And anyway, we’ve seen Amy and Liam together. “Fun” doesn’t seem to be the word for what they were really having. Their fling seemed to consist of a lot of Amy simpering about being a glamour model while Liam wrestled with his hormones and worried about what this looked like on telly. To be honest, Liam’s eyes glow more with humour and affection when he’s talking to Carole.

Meanwhile Carole, curmudgeonly old crone that she is, now has the entire house by the short and curlies. After weeks of silently pulling everyone’s strings, Carole has finally got everyone exactly where she wants them, ie all around the table obediently devouring bowls of stodgy gloop and not answering back about her house rules.

They’re probably all vitamin deficient too, as Carole’s idea of cooking carrots is to put them on the stove, then wander off and listen to Jonty telling one of his great stories about a calamity at the local post office during the last Spod-Weekly “Meet the Daleks” competition.

Three hours later, Carole removes the carrots from the gas and serves the mush with some of her special Yorkshire puddings that look like they’re made of MDF and scorched Bovril. Carole’s tyranny is hilarious to watch, but would be hell if you were in there.

Carole wants to be house-mum. Like most mothers she loves her kids but at times controls them using guilt, disappointment and a touch of fear too. “Pleeeeeeeease, Carole, please can I have another blob of toothpaste from the toothpaste ration?!” they cry. “No, you’ve had yours today, stop being greedy,” she huffs.

Carole had a hand in finishing off Ziggy and Chanelle. Goodbye, Chanelle. Carole wasn’t keen about Liam and Amy and now that’s dust too. Bye bye, Amy. The funniest thing about Carole is that as “house leader” she causes more arguments than anyone and never, ever sorts them out.

What was the point in telling Shanessa that Amy was “looking down her nose at her” during her lap dance? What other way can you look at a spectacle like that? Upwards in awe? And why does Carole always wig on about democracy, then storm out of every house meeting the moment anyone disagrees with her? The twins, on the other hand, sit patiently like real adults.

The other night at 3am Brian and the gang were playing splishy-splashy in the pool. Carole could have gone to bed but instead she mangled her knickers and kept watch. “That’ll stop everyone going too crazy,” she must have thought. “They probably should all be in bed anyway… If they stay up too late it’ll just interfere with their body clocks! Then they’ll not be up in time to eat my delicious porridge that I’ve had simmering gently since just before Shabnam’s eviction. Mmmmm-mmmm, tastes sooo good.”

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