Private dancer (Big Brother, days 62-64) by Grace Dent
Charley and Chanelle’s departures have left a more sensual, increasingly erotic atmosphere in the house. Brian fancies Amanda. Amy fancies Liam. Gerry is making eyes at David. Ziggy wants to kiss himself all over. Shanessa is simply a filthy, wanton strumpet. She’s been sexing up proceedings in the main house by giving the boys an erotic lap dance.
As the gang whoop and cheer, Shanessa “dances” towards Liam flailing her arms and gurning, covered in thick eye make-up, looking a lot like one of those Maori blokes who always seem to be waiting at Auckland International Airport to scare the crap out of Prince Charles.
Shanessa has odd V-shaped boobs, which resemble under-filled Snoopy sock puppets. Her bum cheeks put me in mind of a time in the 70s when my little brother and I made the moon’s surface out of white Lego. Not that any of this is a bad thing, I must add. It just is if you hope to feed and clothe yourself via being sex on legs.
She’s a funny one, is Shanessa. Who in Wales is called Shanessa? Is it a sensual mixture of “Sheila” and “Vanessa”, I wonder? And why do strippers always sound like they’ve named themselves after cans of cheap deodorant body spray? Why do their names always sound hurriedly made up, like they’ve had to conjure them up in 30 seconds against the clock, like on Countdown?
Of course, the alternative to the raw filth of Shanessa is the toothy coyness of Kara-Louise. Kara-Louise is so boring that every time I take my eyes off this page and take a sip of coffee I forget her name all over again. What is it again? Hang on…yes, Kara-Louise.
Kara-Louise is the sort of girl your mother-in-law would never forgive your husband for splitting up with when he was a teenager. And every time you went round to visit, Kara-Louise’s photo would still be on top of the telly beside a postcard she’d just sent from Uganda where she was building an Aids orphanage and teaching deaf kids to sign Swahili. Kara-Louise is niiiiiice.
I’m not massively keen on any of the new housemates any more. I feel quite territorial about my little kingdom, very much like Liam and Ziggy do. Who are these interlopers? Or as Liam so succinctly put it, “Whoo-are-these-big-shots swanen-abootlike?” Exactly, who are they?
And what is going on? It’s even making me feel insecure. Are the newbies in or out or leaving or what? You can say what you like about BB8, but it’s certainly not predictable. That’s why it’s so hilarious every time Carole looks in the washing-up bowl and predicts the future – without success. By the time this is printed everything will have changed again.
Ziggy made me laugh with his magnanimous decision to move next door. “Oh, I’ll go! Don’t worry! I’m happy to go!” he said bravely, before nipping next door and explaining ten times how he’d jumped on the grenade for the good of everyone. “Yes, I volunteered to come over!” he hammered home. “Yes, it was me. I said I’ll go. I didn’t mind!” Ziggy knew full well that by doing this he had made himself into somewhat of a hero and a martyr all round.
Suddenly everyone in the real house was lamenting his strong alpha-male virtues. Brian and Carole were howling his name and crying at the thought that he was gone for good. Even Tracey was sad and she’s spent weeks in a caravan smoking rollies slagging him off.
Once there, Ziggy didn’t seem very happy in the halfway house. He was stuck with Amy, who is rather vacuous and supposed to be a glamour model, although she only looks like one when she’s been in make-up for four hours. Anyway, Amy fancies Liam.
Ziggy got on well with Shanessa, but worryingly her idea of light flirty banter is to question him directly on the size of his penis, then move on to talk about other penises she has viewed, before just rolling about on the grass gurgling and humping the ground dubiously while the BB medics stand by wondering if she’s having some sort of anaphylactic seizure. Scary.
Back in the main house, Brian has fallen slightly in love with Amanda. He wants to make passionate love to her, which he imagines would be like being “surrounded by angels singing while monkeys handed him grapes”. I’m not sure what Brian’s lead-up to lovemaking is like, but from that description it sounds like “a large line of ketamine and then a taxi to Longleat Safari Park to jump the electric fence”.
At least when the housemates are all locked up in the house flirting and crying and doing cartwheels to impress each other, they’re not like us poor saps who have to endure Chanelle and Charley milking a week of publicity from their supposed feud.
I’m not sure I buy that they still dislike each other. Cooped up together all day long, I’m sure they wound each other up as they’re basically two peas in a pod.
Now they’re out of the house, their diaries will be synchronised so they can wander from magazine interview to TV appearance together pretending to be at war. I wouldn’t be surprised if behind closed doors, they’re the closest ally that each other has got. Who else really would understand the craziness of what is going on for them right now?
It suits me down to the ground if they carry on warring in public. As long as they’re both in the same TV studio, I just choose not to watch that TV channel and suddenly life seems very satisfactory indeed. Try it, it’s nice.
