Archive for the 'Big Brother 8' Category

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.

Technorati Tags: TV, Channel 4, Big Brother, Big Brother 8

Chucklevision (Big Brother, days 55-57) by Grace Dent

To me, Chanelle and Ziggy seemed more “on” this week than “off”. After all, as Ziggy reminds us constantly, he is “very fond” of Chanelle. Very fond indeed. If I was Chanelle, I wouldn’t be too overjoyed at that description of their affair. “Very fond” is the sort of blasé way I might reminisce about an old cardigan I’d left in a pub. “Oh, it’s a shame I lost that,” I might sigh absent-mindedly, “I was very fond of it.”

Emotionally, Ziggy is by no means a robot. He has the capability to love passionately and insanely. We saw that this week when Molly the dog arrived and Ziggy’s knees literally buckled under him, his speech temporarily robbed, his eyes swimming in two teary pools. Ziggy is definitely more than very fond of Molly. That’s real love.

It’s the type of love that makes you do a half-hour detour to reach the shop with the special biscuits the bloody thing prefers. The sort of love that has you crying like a fool in vets’ waiting rooms, then presented with a bill that could have bought you 14 nights in Mustique. The sort of love that has you using a secret language of grunts, yelps and wibbles that only you and they understand.

Ziggy loves Molly. And Molly loves Ziggy too, although when they were first reunited and Ziggy was dressed like Seth Armstrong from Emmerdale, she didn’t quite recognise him. But then Ziggy did the silly “Mooooollyyyymollyyymoo” noise and Molly went wild and wanted to lick Ziggy half to death. Meanwhile, people all over Britain with muddy hallway carpets and gnawed sofas covered in pet hair wiped tears from their stupid sentimental eyes. Not me, obviously. Ahem, other people.

Molly is a Shar Pei, which means she has wrinkles and furrows in her fur. She has one deep wrinkle between her eyes not dissimilar to the one I’ve developed over the last 50 days through the stress of watching Charley. I’m not sure what to do with it. Botox? Grow my fringe longer? Put a thong over it and try to pass it off as a bum crack? Obviously, Charley fans say I talk out of my ass all day anyhow.

When I get angry emails from people defending Charley, it makes me quite jealous because I just don’t feel like that about any of the housemates this year. I don’t feel that insane loyalty and ability to make excuses for anyone. It’s not like last year when I felt like it was myself versus the world over St Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace.

You could have shown me footage of Aisleyne clubbing baby seals with a cricket bat and I’d have laughed and said, “Pah! I think a more pressing question is ‘who tricked Aisleyne into holding the bat?’! Endemol, that’s who!”

I’m hoping Charley gets booted out on Friday. She’s exhausted any interest I had in her. Apparently six new people are arriving on Friday, meaning she’ll be forgotten quickly – one hopes.

I’m sure some people will write in angrily shouting about how Charley has a bright celebrity future ahead of her, but I can’t quite see it myself. Being even a D-list celebrity requires one to be able to negotiate normal everyday situations without causing a messy argument and p***ing people off. Charley can’t do that.

I can’t quite imagine her agreeing to endless 4am call times for breakfast TV appearances, or difficult questions from journos, or being forced to wear clothes she doesn’t like for photo shoots, or being jostled about in crappy nightclubs during a personal appearance. Being famous requires a lot of hard work, false smiling, biting your lip and looking at the bigger money-making picture.

But maybe it isn’t Charley’s fault she scares me. Maybe it’s Endemol and Gerry’s fault for tormenting her, and south London’s fault for giving her a harsh background, and Chanelle’s fault for being annoying, and my fault for being such a BIGG RACIIALIST that I want her to lose.

I’m not entirely sure whose fault it is that Charley has turned into someone who can get wound up to the point of near-violence by imagining someone ten feet away has “looked funny” at her. I’m not sure whose fault that is at all.

In completely unrelated news, Charley received a message from her family this week. Apparently they are very, very proud of her.

Saying that, imagine if all the female housemates had been like the twins. Ah, the twins. Remember them? The poor little twinkies hardly get a look-in these days, do they? Their nominations and involvement in the tasks are usually clipped out of the highlights show, as if to say, “We’ve spared you the twins, it was exactly as you’d imagine it”.

There was a point about two weeks ago when the twins made me laugh. It was a grey, drizzly day and the twins came scampering out in the garden, dressed as usual in their flouncy, toddler day-wear outfits: white vest, tiny flarey skirt, bare feet, bare legs. “Oooh, it’s raining again,” said Amanda. “Yeah,” said Sam. Then they both stopped dead still and sighed. “It’s crap in this house,” sighed Amanda, “There’s nothing to do.”

The twins both stood there miserably. Temporarily zapped of pinkness. Looking more like the characters from Ghostworld. “No, don’t say that,” said Sam anxiously, “There IS stuff to do.” It was as if for a moment, the fluffy clouds had parted and a chink of reality had invaded twinland. “We can…we can make up dances,” sighed Sam. “Pgghhghgh,” tutted Amanda, staring at the rain. “It’s crap here. Really crap.”

Obviously, ten minutes later the twins had recharged their batteries and were racing about the house shouting “Boooooogies!”, but that moment of misery really made me giggle.

If only they’d been like that on their first night. If they’d come in dressed in black then shuffled about the house mumbling, “Pghh, look at the bath? It’s crap” and “Look, a pink pepper grinder. Boring”.

This week’s television task has provided many moments of tears and joy. Tears unsurprisingly from Chanelle, who is just a huge, moaning, highly strung sap of a woman. I hold no true malice for Chanelle, but come the revolution, she will receive a letter from my guards asking her to vacate the People’s Republic of Gracedentonia forthwith.

Sadly, there will be no place for women like Chunnel when I rule the land. “I caaaaannn’t play the violin, I can’t plaaaaaaay the violiiiiin! I won’t do it! I don’t want to do it! I caaaaaaaan’t!” she screamed for 24 hours, before eventually bashing out Vivaldi capably, although sounding slightly p***ed.

“I won’t wear that dress! It makes me look stupid! I won’t look stupid!” Chanelle spent hours sobbing. It was actually a very nice dress. It simply covered most of her skin, which is a travesty when you’re that age. When you’re that age you don’t feel dressed up unless you’re wearing something that shows your cleavage and at least a portion of your lower labia and could leave you dead from hypothermia in a front garden on your way home from a Christmas party.

“I won’t wear the dress! It makes me loooook pregnnnannnt!” shouted Chanelle. She didn’t care about poor Carole who was standing in a lumpy leotard, top hat, tights and tails looking like a crusty version of Mr Peanut. Or poor Ziggy in his leather trousers warming up to sing Love on the Northern Line. Coincidentally, I have had love on the northern line. Not that I knew it at the time. I realised when I got to the escalators at Chalk Farm and saw the back of my raincoat. I love London rush hour.

Anyway, Chanelle has spent the last few days demanding to go home. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! I’ll walk to the bus stop barefoot, with me hair like this! Let me out! You can’t keep me here! I want to leave!” she’s been shouting. It’s been SUCH fun. Not at all grating.

I wish Big Brother would call someone’s bluff just once and kick them right out. How brilliant would it be to see footage of that?

It would be hilarious to see someone like Chanelle go into the diary room, cause holy havoc and screech that she wants to leave, then Big Brother just say, “OK, Chanelle. You have now been evicted from the Big Brother house. Please leave via the door on your right. You are not permitted to say goodbye or gather your belongings. You will not be taking part in the spin-off shows or invited to the wrap party. You will not have our help to secure any magazine deals. Thank you for being a housemate. Goodbye.”

Then the door could be flung open and she could be made to sit in the green room for half an hour while producers pretend to gather her stuff and ring a taxi.

I’d love to see how long it was before the panic and incredulity set in and screams filled the air: “Let me back in! I wannnnnnnnt back in! Let me baaaaack in! Oh, my god, please let me back in! I didn’t mean it. Let me back innnnnnn!”

Please, Big Brother, just once. It would be cruel yet priceless.

Technorati Tags: TV, Channel 4, Big Brother, Big Brother 8

Party Fears Two (Big Brother, days 51-54) by Grace Dent

It’s the morning after Big Brother’s eighth-birthday bash.

Big Brother has had a right old knees-up. He’s had the sort of party I guess most Endemol employees would love right now: one containing no sight nor sound of the housemates. A chance to get right royally clattered on booze with no need to warn anyone about their microphones. No need to listen to Chunnel, aka Chanelle, whingeing about period pains. No need to step in when Charley borders on violent. What bliss! No wonder Big Brother got so wrecked.

The house is in a right state. It’s been one of those mad parties that teenagers today truly believe they invented. There’s jelly all over the garden and damp bog roll strewn willy-nilly over the floors. There are fag butts all over the lawn and upturned glasses of sticky sweet liquid on work surfaces that will no doubt encourage ants. Carole’s internal ant-alarm is honking. Carole is obsessed with ants.

Oh, yes, it’s all very well having fun (if fun is your sort of thing), but don’t come crying to Carole when the entire cast of A Bug’s Life have moved into your larder. Don’t come crying to Carole when you’re feasted on alive in your bed by shrews. Don’t come crying to Carole when you jump in the pool and you’re blinded by a blob of shaving foam.

Carole stands surveying the post-party mess, blatantly dying to roll up her sleeves and get stuck in cleaning. But Big Brother bans her from helping. This is the worst punishment you could dole out to Carole. Imagine the martyr mileage she was going to squeeze from that one? Carole puts on the boxing gloves BB has given her and wishes she could punch herself unconscious to null the pain.

She’s not even allowed to clean up the stray poo on the toilet floor, which I guess was a dirty protest by an Endemol soundman who’d finally gone postal after 40 days of listening to Gerry lovingly describe the Bayeux Tapestry.

Elsewhere Brian is forbidden from cleaning up too. Brian isn’t so upset about that, though. Brian sits about on the sofa looking like the Fresh Prince of Badly Cut Hair. His ear is still bandaged with the blue plasters.

Endemol was forced to buy blue plasters just in case one of the housemates turned out to be a Smurf who might feel stigmatised and offended by beige ones. I rang Ofcom anyway and complained, cos it was the weekend and I was sort of bored. They love me at Ofcom. (Those cease and desist letters they send me are just them larking about. Great guys.)

Meanwhile Nicky, who knows she’s on her way out of the door on Friday, is scrabbling about on the grass for dog-ends to dry out and smoke. Charley is helping her. Heaven forbid the pair should go without nicotine in their veins for more than an hour. Even if it means hoovering up everyone’s second-hand saliva.

Nicky’s had some fine and funny moments over the past few days. Smiling and laughing in her frilly party frock and stuffing herself with cake and being silly. I really like her sometimes. Unfortunately Nicky’s basenote is always misery and pessimism.

It amuses me wildly when people mail me and say I’ve not picked up on the real, happy, fun-loving Nicky, as basically I’m a huge imbecile who has never heard of the concept of editing.

Of course I’ve seen Nicky being sweet. Nicky can be lovely. But she is also a massive pain in the ass. Call me picky but I don’t want to be around anyone for long who truly believes “Love is for losers”.

Love is NOT for losers, Nicky. If everyone thought like that and rejected love for their fellow man we’d all be in hell. Love, in fact, Nicky, is all you need. That’s why John Lennon wrote a song about it. “All you need is love,” he said. He didn’t sing, “All you need is fags”. That would have been a rubbish song. Although I’m sure you might have bought the 12″ extended electro version to play in your bedroom while scowling your way through a packet of duty-frees.

To be honest, it’s impossible to write anything about Big Brother this summer without outraging or disappointing someone. There simply aren’t any clear favourites or cast-iron villains.

If I criticise Charley, every single time people will write defending her to the hilt. In comparison, during The Apprentice, I didn’t get one single mail ever defending “villain” Katie Hopkins.

A lot of people may love Gerry but a lot of people HATE him. Some people are convinced Brian is a devious fake who is every bit as sly as Charley.

Whenever I say I don’t really mind Liam, then I’ll get mail ranting angrily about him. Liam hasn’t helped matters by bragging about his sexploits. Now people are calling him sleazy and sexist.

Liam seriously needs to stop telling folk about his threesomes, back-of-class fumblings and round-the-back-of-Bigg-Market knee-tremblers. Fair enough, his life is like one long Razzle readers’ letters page, but it’s causing a mixture of jealousy and revulsion. I still quite like Liam, though. He’s sort of OK.

The one big difference about trying to discuss this year’s Big Brother is the viewers’ all-consuming obsession with editing. Everybody seems convinced that Endemol is editing their favourite housemate to look bad or good. Nothing is ever as it seems and we are all being hoodwinked and manipulated and everything is crap and we’re all going to stop watching and never watch again (until 9:00pm tonight when we’ll be back for more).

If you ever hear someone moaning about the fact we’ve got no British plumbers or electricians and all our practical jobs are being done, quite necessarily, by foreign workers, then tell them not to fret. What Britain does have in abundance is people with just enough GCSE Media Studies knowledge to spot that Endemol is messing with our heads! Especially when it comes to Charley. Charley isn’t like that, y’see. In truth she is a more benevolent version of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I’d see that if I wasn’t being controlled by propaganda! Sigh.

The truth is that Charley doesn’t need any help to look bad. She is that bad. It’s whether you find that badness entertaining that is the true question.

Despite an unspoken rule among the housemates that they would simply close down and try not to rise to Charley when she’s looking for a pointless fight, Gerry broke loose this weekend and decided to take her on.

At first I thought Gerry’s stance was quite noble. Why should one person be allowed to shout everyone into submission? Why should Charley be able to suck all the fun out of any room and replace it with anger, and no-one dares shout back?

The fact is that most housemates aren’t capable of taking on Charley, but Gerry can. He could turn Charley inside out with his mouth if need be, but so far he has chosen not to. So Charley and Gerry begin to bicker and this time Gerry won’t back down.

And at first he’s clearly enjoying himself, gently baiting her and dragging her around in verbal circles for hours on end and tripping her up and reminding her of stuff she’s said and done. Basically he’s just acting as badly as she does every single day.

And to begin with, it’s fun to watch. It’s interesting to see someone “do a Charley” on Charley and really get down to her level. But where does that leave you in the end? Down at Charley’s level. That’s never a great place to be.

As Charley sobs in the diary room, Gerry sits on the sofa feeling hollow and spent. Everyone in the house is as mad at him as they usually are at Charley. In fact they’re madder at Gerry as they know Gerry should have more brains.

In the meantime Charley has got so angry she’s accused Gerry of something that is right up there with the N-word in levels of being offensive. It’s not true. And she’s “warned” again, then she cries for the rest of the day while everyone comforts her – including Gerry, who feels the worst he has ever done since the day he arrived.

That’s the last time Gerry will be taking on Charley, I’m sure. But it’s OK, cos Charley has like proper learned from this whole prafetic experience and is turning over a new leaf and won’t be arguing with anyone ever again ever.

So if you see her being a nightmare this week, don’t be taken in, suckers. It’s all in the edit.

Technorati Tags: TV, Channel 4, Big Brother, Big Brother 8

Too much to bear (Big Brother, days 48-50) by Grace Dent

So after the pleasing spectacle of “naked nomination” day, two housemates are now up for the chop: Gerry and Nicky. As ever, Gerry is philosophical about things.

“In the past I have had a variety of feelings,” says Gerry, in his typical sing-songy way. Actually, I had to rewind Sky+ to double-check that. It sounded like Gerry said, “In zee passst I have had a variety of fillings.” We all know that’s closer to the money.

Gerry has indeed had a variety of fillings. Saying that, during naked nominations when he arrived naked as the day he was born holding a stuffed toy over his dangly bits, he did admit he’d never had an actual monkey down there…yet.

From across London, I swear I could hear the keeper at London Zoo monkey house sighing while sticking Gerry’s picture up behind the admissions desk with the caption “Banned Indefinitely”.

I do like Gerry a lot. I know he can be an irritating, pig-headed git at times and he does like to prattle on and on about high culture and ancient civilisations, often knowing full well that he’s the only one listening, but adoring the sound of his cleverness all the same.

But Gerry, for me, is an intriguing person. I like the idea of a man brought up in a family of psychotherapists, who’s powerless to stop himself analysing stuff all day long. It’s all a bit “Brenda from Six Feet Under”. Anything a bit Six Feet Under is good in my book.

Gerry says himself that he’s “overqualified and unemployable”. It’s odd because his parents have done a brilliant job of keeping him in education and making him empathic to others and highly sensitive to the world around him. Still, he seems more lost and alone on the planet than Brian, the boy who calls himself stupid all day long.

Oh, but I know, I know, Gerry can’t half prattle on, though. And I don’t mind a bit of chat about moooooseumnanart, but enough is enough sometimes. I don’t think Gerry’s had 3,000 boyfriends because he’s such a love god – I think it’s because his idea of post-coital snuggling is deconstructing Derrida’s reading of Lévi-Strauss.

I reckon five minutes is the sum total that any normal bloke can stand in Gerry’s bed before grabbing his pants and getting himself back down to G-A-Y to find another boyfriend, hopefully this time a stupid one who can’t really speak.

The housemate I’d like to see turfed out is Nicky. I feel quite sorry for Nicky because she is so intrinsically miserable and negative about everything that she’s barely living half a life. A grey cloud follows her about all day long. Life is essentially meaningless. I don’t think the Big Brother house is somewhere for her to sort this out.

Nicky’s sadness pervades everything. Her voice is ironed out to a monotone Charlie Brown teacher-style wah-wah-wah. Her huge eyes, pretty face and slender body are exquisitely lovely (aside from when she does the Tipp-Ex mascara thing), yet somehow she seems ugly. The man-hating mantra doesn’t help.

Jonathan once said that for about two minutes each day Nicky’s face lights up and you could see an amazing side to her that made her one of his favourite people in the house. Saying that, Nicky claimed that there was something about Jonathan that gave her the creeps. I’d love to see Nicky’s face when she eventually reads the Sunday newspaper claims about Jonathan’s habits when she gets out.

It’s Liam’s opinion of Nicky I trust the most. Liam has sidled into my affections recently with his calm, logical diary room sessions. It’s as if Liam watches the same highlights show as all of us, then goes home, has a good night’s sleep in Tyneside, and shows up next morning on the Star Wars chair refreshed and insightful.

Liam had the mark of Nicky early on. I think it’s to his credit that he’s never jumped into bed with her no matter what alcohol is thrown at him, no matter how much he needs a cuddle, no matter that Nicky is in the pool grabbing his feet and placing them on her damp breasts in her bikini and waggling them about with “Do me now” eyes.

After an initial flirtation, Liam had Nicky down as pure trouble. “She’s the sneakiest person in here,” he said. She’s up against some pretty stiff competition. Liam would have possibly come across more seriously if he’d not been naked and wasn’t appearing to be in the midst of fellatio with one of the Forever Friends at the time.

So anyway, my opinion of Liam is altering. He’s not daft and mysogynistic at all. He’s a good bloke. A deserved winner. Hey, there’s a weird thing – remember when they gave Liam £100,000 that night in a bid to spice things up and make the show more edgy? Erm, what was all that about? I suppose we’ll never ever know.

Anyway, back to Nicky. Just before nominations Ziggy pulled her aside and decided to be “honest” and tell her he “didn’t hugely enjoy her company”. It seemed to come from nowhere, which seemed quite cruel. Ziggy is obsessed with how people see him on the outside.

He doesn’t want people to think he’s sleazy or two-faced or laddish or has bad manners. It eats him up all day long to the point of him orchestrating stupid scenarios like his confession to Nicky, just so Channel 4 has footage of him “being honest”.

The irony is that the only footage of Ziggy Channel 4 has been interested in for the past 50 days is the moment every day when he’s canoodling with Chanelle. No-one cares if he spends all day washing up and holding doors open for ladies and making Carole feel loved and cleaning out the pool. The bits we all remember are the eternal push-me-pull-you conversations between him and a frazzled 19-year-old girl.

Ziggy gives out mixed signals all day long. He never quite tells her it is over as he doesn’t want it to be totally over. Despite all the bickering and the fact that Chanelle is a highly strung, incessantly weeping pain in the bum, she is his closest ally and something warm to sleep with. If he just got rid her of her all together and stood on his own two feet for a few weeks, maybe we’d have more chance of seeing him being the man he thinks he is.

The one thing spoiling the show for me now is Charley. I have quite a like/loathe relationship with Charley. At the moment she is spoiling the show for me. I can’t watch a lot of the live feed and I often Sky+ the highlights so I can fast-forward through her rants. I’ve heard everything she has to say a hundred times before. None of it means anything. She’s only as true as her last conversation and most of that was probably lies. Charley is just a noise now. It’s not going anywhere.

No-one can stand up to her, not because they don’t have the brains or tenacity, just because they’ve chosen not to. Just like dealing with an internet messageboard troll, the best thing to do is simply shut off your attention. Ignore them. Do not respond. Any response is feeding the troll. Do not feed the troll!

In truth, Charley has nothing to argue about any more. Her life in the house is quite comfortable and straightforward. Sadly, Charley simply doesn’t know how to plod through a day. Shouting is all she knows. The feeling of everyone’s livid eyes drilling into her as she shouts about nothing, is as real a buzz to Charley as walking through the crowd on Friday to Davina. Any attention is better than no attention at all.

The moment Charley shuts up for 24 hours and doesn’t cause a huge altercation because someone dared to raise an eyebrow at her, that’s when Charley is nothing. Charley knows the moment she stops being a troublemaker is the moment that people might look at her sitting silently and work out that she’s just a bone-thin, marginally pretty hanger-on with a compulsion for exaggeration.

Charley crossed a line for me last night when she started on Brian. A week ago when Gerry was wigging on about the “N” word and how even black musicians shouldn’t use it and how he has strong opinions on it, Brian listened silently. Clearly Brian felt that his opinions weren’t clever enough to chip in, what with Gerry being such a world authority on bloody everything. Even what it means to be black.

Clearly this conversation got Brian thinking and when Charley brought up the matter of Emily/N-gate, Brian chipped in that he was glad Emily wasn’t there as he wouldn’t want to live with her. For want of something more interesting to do, Charley began shouting. Brian needs anger management. Brian had let himself down. Brian’s “prafetic” with his “Oooh, love me, love me” attitude. Brian makes her sick.

As Brian sat crying in the diary room I’d have given anything to be able to nip in there for five minutes and go, “Look, love, it’s all going to be OK”. I felt so upset for the poor lad sitting there with his hacked-off hair and Elastoplast ear looking like a cross between Van Gogh and the lead singer from Cameo, crying hot tears onto his knee-tambourines. Brought a right lump to my throat, it did.

“I thought she was my friend,” Brian wept, while simultaneously trying to parp out Shaddap Ya Face by Joe Dolce on a kazoo. Honestly, we have to get Charley out – soon. Nothing is worth a summer stuck in there with her. OK, maybe £100,000 might sweeten things. I hope Brian gets it for his troubles.

Technorati Tags: TV, Channel 4, Big Brother, Big Brother 8

It’s now the seventh week of Big Brother 8 and the housemates have decided that Nicky Maxwell and Gerry Stergiopoulos will face the public vote this time.

When Big Brother announced his name, Gerry gave a little smile and looked vaguely excited. “Yeah, why not? Why not? And Nicky,” he guessed.

“Thanks Gerry,” Nicky huffed.

“Nicky,” confirmed Big Brother.

“I told you,” Nicky replied. “I’m not surprised. It’s cool.” She looked relaxed and sipped her tea as Tracey gave her a hug. “I don’t think I deserve it,” she added, “but never mind.”

“I’m starting to enjoy this,” Gerry reckoned.

So who nominated who?

• Amanda nominated Carole again and Tracey
  Carole: “Because she keeps like telling us off for loads of stuff… like jumping on the sofas, but I like jumping on the sofas. It’s one of my favourite things to do in here. I love it. I’m not allowed to, but I still do it.”
  Tracey: “I think she keeps herself to herself a lot and everyone in the house, I just, like, have more conversations with, play games with and know more about.”
• Brian nominated Gerry and Tracey
  Gerry: “I think he looks down on me because I don’t know lots of things about art and stuff and I don’t talk a lot about museums and stuff. I can’t talk about Einstein topics all the time, it fries my brain…Telling me off for farting, he don’t like me farting, he doesn’t like me doing a lot of stuff.”
  Tracey: “I hate to say it, but nominating Tracey. When she’s good, she’s very very good and when she’s bad she’s very, very bad to be around. There’s like a little gang at the moment like of Tracey, Charley and Nicky. I do think that sometimes she puts an agenda in her mind and they sort of follow it.”
• Carole nominated Nicky again and Chanelle
  Nicky: “Nicky is still grating on me. She is someone I can’t live with any more. She will constantly say what a fun person and how wonderful she is on the outside, then she moans and complains and gets compulsive about things. One of the things she goes on about is men – how awful they are, and yet they’re not when it suits her.”
  Chanelle: “It’s going to sound mean, but it’s going to be Chanelle. I don’t know whether I can continue with the ups and downs of Ziggy and the constant need for reassurance. She is quite insecure in herself and has to have people constantly telling her how OK she is, how beautiful she is and things like that.”
• Chanelle was punished for talking about nominations by Big Brother so she was only allowed one nomination. Chanelle nominated Charley
  “I’m just sick of hearing everything to do with Charley, Charley’s make-up, Charley’s clothes and Charley. For example, if I said “Hmmm, this chocolate is nice”, she’d go, “Let me tell you about chocolate I had once, listen to me for a minute, let me tell you about the dress I wore…” And I hate the impression she does of me with her face like this when I never ever do this. I do this [pulling an impression].”
• Charley nominated Gerry again and Ziggy
  Gerry: “Gerry, one he put me up and I saw that on Fake Week when I went out and saw who put me up. Second, he’s so annoying. I’m not even lying Big Brother. His voice… He says you look so nice and he’s usually bitching. He’s so sarcastic and fake and he goes round and tells people, like, behind your back and trying to make people not to like you and he pulls faces, and I go, “How old are you?”. It’s like he’s got the mind of an 11-year-old and he’s so boring.”
  Ziggy: “Because I saw what happened to me on my Fake Week and I said there be nothing like sweet revenge and this week this revenge is mine. Bring it on, baby! He went out and put me up for nomination yeah, and that was why I faced eviction and I saw what he said about me.”
• Gerry nominated Nicky and Charley
  Nicky: “I think Nicky is a very grumpy person who doesn’t get along with everyone except her little group. When they lock themselves in the caravan and talking God knows about what. She is very, very nasty. Sneaky Nicky, we just don’t get along and I’ve given her many many chances and I think she is an unpleasant person.”
  Charley: “At the moment is very very nice, but she can be very very nice just before nomination time and then she snaps one day. She’ll start screaming to everybody. Has Charley changed since seeing herself on the plasma screen being argumentative and nasty to people? I’m a pessimist by nature and I don’t think she has changed and probably her fake eviction has made her head even bigger.”
• Liam nominated Charley and Nicky
  Charley: “I’m going to say Charley again, I don’t want it to look like I’ve changed me mind after she’s come back on the programme. I still think she’s got an explosive side. She’s clever enough to say she’s seen banners and not give anything away all that … she’s not telling people who are liked and not liked and that she’s the star of the show.”
  Nicky: “I don’t particularly get on with her – she is the sneakiest housemate, Sneaky Nicky as Gerry calls her. Nasty Nicky as I would call her. Not nice to be around at times and not really a positive person.”
• Nicky nominated Ziggy and Gerry
  Ziggy: “One of my pet-hates is people exploiting other people’s weakness and I feel he’s done that with Chanelle… he seems to get involved, but won’t take the blame for anything.”
  Gerry: “Oh my God, he is so irritating. He doesn’t clean the floor properly, he never sweeps up and that’s his job. He’s only just started washing up this week. Oh, and everyone is allowed an opinion, but his is more important, that’s what he believes… I just wouldn’t miss him if he wasn’t here.”
• Sam nominated Carole and Tracey
  Carole: “The last couple of days she’s come into the bedroom saying, “Girls, this, this and this”. But we haven’t done it. I just feel like we keep getting the blame for everything… She’ll just shout at anyone and make a big argument about a bowl in a sink.”
  Tracey: “I never know what to really speak to her about and I could never go to Tracey, ‘Let’s go in the pool’. I’m always doing parties and in the pool and Tracey’s the opposite of that. When we get excited and scream she’s like: ‘Argh’.”
• Tracey nominated Gerry and Ziggy
  Gerry: “I specifically came into the house and said if anyone is going to look at the time, can you please not say it out loud and they all agreed. Gerry said, ‘Oooh, it’s 1 o’clock’ and he did it on purpose, it’s taking the piss. He’s a wind-up merchant and an arse-licker.”
  Ziggy: “Mummy’s boy Ziggy. He goes prowling around me, Nick, Charley today ‘Do you like me? Are we alright and somebody told me you don’t like me.’ No I’m not your mate. I don’t know you, I don’t wanna know you. I’m not your mate. I’m no one’s mates.”
• Ziggy, like Chanelle, only has one nomination due to a rule break. Ziggy nominates Nicky
  “Nicky. I don’t get along with her, we have nothing in common and I find her a very sneaky person in the house.”

Oh, and for some reason, all the lads nominated in the nude.

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