The heavily trailed “Thursdays are funny” began with The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle and Jennifer Saunders as Jeremy Kyle – a morally bankrupt talk show host who baits her violent guests whilst her scripted audience of morons and the unemployed cheer from the stands. Vivienne is herself assaulted (something we are still waiting to befall Jeremy Kyle) and Fern Britten is drafted in to a wonderful cameo. Vivienne has to re-asses her life with the help of her gay husband, her weak-minded therapist and her demented producer. What did work were the darker segments, the miserable nature of working for sensationalist TV – especially for the runners and the background staff. There were also some funny little side-stories – Miranda Richardson’s baby that can only speak Spanish after bonding too much with the nanny, Jennifer Saunder’s Vivienne, pushing 50, desperate for her dead husband’s baby. What doesn’t work is that the entire show is three or four years out of date. We’ve had Jerry Springer for years. Jeremy “human bear baiter” Kyle has become so ludicrous that he is a parody of himself. Fact! What can a comedy show such as this tell us about the nature of barrel scraping, ethically dubious talk shows that we don’t already know?
Following on from Vivienne Vyle was The Peter Serafinowicz Show – even more heavily trailed if that is at all possible. This was billed as a showcase for a “new comedy star” although Peter Serafinowicz has been around for years, acting, performing, and appearing on panel shows. Once again BBC2 seems hopelessly out of step. I was a little apprehensive I have to admit. How many more sketch shows can be thrown at us before we die of fun fatigue – Little Britain, Catherine Tate, Mitchell and Webb. The targets were somewhat obvious – personal injury claims, crap shopping channels, Cillit Bang, but they were largely amusing and thankfully they didn’t dwell on the sketches for too long or return to them too often. I hope to goodness they don’t make a reappearance all series as the thought of another catchphrase spawning show is making me quiver in fear.
Perhaps I am too much of a media obsessed bint to really appreciate the ironic and post-modern take on current TV that both Saunders and Serafinowicz have attempted – none of it is new, none of it is making a statement, or maybe I’m just too thick? The Clone House Big Brother with the interchangeable dull Scouse housemates is fine but I’ve seen it before, I’ve seen it on Google Groups and Digital Spy by mere posters and forumites, not experienced comedy performers. I’ve seen student reviews in the late 1990s doing piss-take skits on cheap plastic earrings that will rot your skin for only £39.99. I did enjoy Pirate Chat “talk to dirty pirates” and Sherlock Holmes who became amorous with Watson whenever he was close to cracking a case. Overall it was a decent thirty minutes and it’s a series I think is worth staying with, if only to ensure there are new sketches each week and no lazily reliance on catchphrases and comfortable characters.
Am I talking rubbish again? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Friday 5 October 2007
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Holby City - Tuesday 2nd October 2007
It’s been a long time since I watched Holby City. To be honest actually, I haven’t really been an avid or regular watcher, but dipped in very occasionally to see one consultant give birth whilst operating and another consultant suffer a heart attack as another bumped off his wife. Now, I know the NHS can be exciting (well, that is what I tell myself daily to quell the rush of rapidly diminishing brain cells) but please! Yes it is a drama, yes it cannot be entirely realistic but we all know that in reality consultants tend to wander around in patchwork jumpers, bow ties and sleeveless shirts three sizes too small for them – with an ingrained facial expression of disgust tinged with disappointment. We all know there are few female consultants, at least not ones who don’t spend their time yanking out wombs re-starting the heartbeats of early babies, but Holby can dispense with this. And does. Often.
Last night Abra, the “maverick” surgeon somehow managed to get Nick the “honest” surgeon on board to his illegal and deeply unethical ship-poor-kids-from-Africa-and-use-NHS-resources-to-mend-them-scheme. Only the kid they ended up with was a child soldier from Liberia who enjoyed torturing and killing opposing gang members. With him he brought Abra’s long-lost and unpleasant father, a sort of mercenary arms dealer with an exaggerated panto-style face. Somewhere entangled in this was an on-going and - let’s be frank - tedious battle between a po-faced wooden posh boy Registrar and a hard-faced, two-dimensional, old bag Registrar who accused him of stealing her ring – when it was stolen by an equally wooden ward sister out of revenge. I think they dealt with a patient at some point, but I cannot be certain.
Abra, with the standard conflicting emotions, mended the child, thought he had successfully concealed his father’s identity and was ready to move the scheme on only his hard-drinking nurse girlfriend, Kyla, had been listening to his father’s home truths and ended her shift by slapping him in the face. Posh boy doc gave the stolen ring to a dying man and hard faced doc sped off on her motorbike (a bitch needs a bike!) Holby City is not a show you can dip in and out of. It requires a bit of commitment so, in that respect, will never be quite as easy and everlasting as Casualty which has never let continuity be its guide. I can’t say I was gripped by the illegal surgery plot or the “who stole my ring” story, but I may well tune in next week, just to see if any other dimensions can be added.
Still love Holby? Want more stories about the ring? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Last night Abra, the “maverick” surgeon somehow managed to get Nick the “honest” surgeon on board to his illegal and deeply unethical ship-poor-kids-from-Africa-and-use-NHS-resources-to-mend-them-scheme. Only the kid they ended up with was a child soldier from Liberia who enjoyed torturing and killing opposing gang members. With him he brought Abra’s long-lost and unpleasant father, a sort of mercenary arms dealer with an exaggerated panto-style face. Somewhere entangled in this was an on-going and - let’s be frank - tedious battle between a po-faced wooden posh boy Registrar and a hard-faced, two-dimensional, old bag Registrar who accused him of stealing her ring – when it was stolen by an equally wooden ward sister out of revenge. I think they dealt with a patient at some point, but I cannot be certain.
Abra, with the standard conflicting emotions, mended the child, thought he had successfully concealed his father’s identity and was ready to move the scheme on only his hard-drinking nurse girlfriend, Kyla, had been listening to his father’s home truths and ended her shift by slapping him in the face. Posh boy doc gave the stolen ring to a dying man and hard faced doc sped off on her motorbike (a bitch needs a bike!) Holby City is not a show you can dip in and out of. It requires a bit of commitment so, in that respect, will never be quite as easy and everlasting as Casualty which has never let continuity be its guide. I can’t say I was gripped by the illegal surgery plot or the “who stole my ring” story, but I may well tune in next week, just to see if any other dimensions can be added.
Still love Holby? Want more stories about the ring? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Wednesday 4 July 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 35 - 3rd July 2007
In the early hours, Jonathan leaves the Big Brother house because his grandmother has died. Sam and Nicky are upset. Charley is angry she has been upstaged and kicks off. Again. You could almost set your watch by her. It matters not her Sin task is not to argue…she digs at Chanelle and Brian about being adopted, sending Chanelle out of the room and prompting Charley to launch into a poisonous diatribe and vitriolic impression session – with Laura, the giant monkey, laughing with the demonic organ grinder.
Brian is so incensed he has to march around the garden to calm himself. Ziggy does his relationship no favours by staying up all night with Charley to counsel her alongside Liam. Charley then decides to spill the beans to Liam about Nicky’s feelings, not a good idea now that Nicky has decided to back off. By 6am everyone goes to bed. Laura sports an unevenly spread orange tan face and a fake limp – hoping she won’t have to do her “six miles” for her Sin task.
Liam worries what lust will entail. He can’t worry too long because Carole runs around rationing the bread and telling everyone they cannot have toast. Liam was right to worry; he is made to dress up as a member of the village people again. His lust task is to look a tw*t basically.
As the bread argument goes on, Charley is accused of stirring which she vehemently denies. As if Charley would stir! I mean! Honestly! She poisons Ziggy further against Chanelle and to his shame he begins to question himself. Nicky is sent to the Room of Nicky, surrounded by pictures of herself. She must wear green and a jacket of herself…and learn some “self containment” but she looks uncomfortable
Outside Charley goes off again – this time calling Gerry boring (okay, she is right this once) as a camp Liam tries to break into the caravan and an annoyed Amanda is dragged from the shower by Carole who thinks she has been “too long” washing. Ziggy goes back up in my estimation when he goes to Chanelle and tells her what Laura and Charley have said…suddenly Laura is lost for words. “I never said it!” She cries.
Charley then argues with Laura, Laura argues with Chanelle, Chanelle argues with Ziggy. Argh! Shut up. Everyone! Shut up! Gerry, complete with a green face pack, tries to bring some calm – but as usual, no one listens. Chanelle is angry, “You can go sleep with ‘er!” She screams, pointing at Charley. Nicky claims she doesn’t want to get involved, whilst getting involved.
A bizarre scene follows here Laura rants to Liam, dressed as a scary gay biker, Gerry, a green alien, and Amanda, a giant hotdog. Liam deflates Laura, not willing to listen to her wittering. Charley isn’t finished in her campaign to split Ziggy and Chanelle and when Ziggy goes to the diary room she moves in on Chanelle, telling her not to trust her man.
Laura’s task is to walk a mini marathon whilst wearing piggy slippers. She somehow passes and the group wait to see if they all passed. In the meantime Chanelle and Laura discover they are to face the public vote which only makes Charley squeal with delight…let’s see how she squeals when her lackey Laura is booted out to boos.
When the task results are announced everyone but Charley has passed. The group are not happy; especially when Charley finds it amusing she has spoiled the party plans. All hell breaks loose again. First she shouts at Ziggy with Laura giggling on. Amusingly Ziggy tells Laura “find your own personality.” Liam is annoyed that Charley has spoiled the mood and another row kicks off.
Its tedium personified for a while until Big Brother intervenes and Charley is sent to the Sin Bin whilst everyone else gets a party – a PVC party. This leads to some of the most disturbing things I have ever seen – namely Brian as a giant condom and Tracey pushing her hands between his legs! And the twins rubbing each other in chocolate. And Nicky rubbing Ziggy. And worse – Ziggy rubbing Carole.
Yet – gross though it was, it was like heaven compared to another Charley “I’m just being honest” whine.
Like PVC? Want to slap Charley? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Brian is so incensed he has to march around the garden to calm himself. Ziggy does his relationship no favours by staying up all night with Charley to counsel her alongside Liam. Charley then decides to spill the beans to Liam about Nicky’s feelings, not a good idea now that Nicky has decided to back off. By 6am everyone goes to bed. Laura sports an unevenly spread orange tan face and a fake limp – hoping she won’t have to do her “six miles” for her Sin task.
Liam worries what lust will entail. He can’t worry too long because Carole runs around rationing the bread and telling everyone they cannot have toast. Liam was right to worry; he is made to dress up as a member of the village people again. His lust task is to look a tw*t basically.
As the bread argument goes on, Charley is accused of stirring which she vehemently denies. As if Charley would stir! I mean! Honestly! She poisons Ziggy further against Chanelle and to his shame he begins to question himself. Nicky is sent to the Room of Nicky, surrounded by pictures of herself. She must wear green and a jacket of herself…and learn some “self containment” but she looks uncomfortable
Outside Charley goes off again – this time calling Gerry boring (okay, she is right this once) as a camp Liam tries to break into the caravan and an annoyed Amanda is dragged from the shower by Carole who thinks she has been “too long” washing. Ziggy goes back up in my estimation when he goes to Chanelle and tells her what Laura and Charley have said…suddenly Laura is lost for words. “I never said it!” She cries.
Charley then argues with Laura, Laura argues with Chanelle, Chanelle argues with Ziggy. Argh! Shut up. Everyone! Shut up! Gerry, complete with a green face pack, tries to bring some calm – but as usual, no one listens. Chanelle is angry, “You can go sleep with ‘er!” She screams, pointing at Charley. Nicky claims she doesn’t want to get involved, whilst getting involved.
A bizarre scene follows here Laura rants to Liam, dressed as a scary gay biker, Gerry, a green alien, and Amanda, a giant hotdog. Liam deflates Laura, not willing to listen to her wittering. Charley isn’t finished in her campaign to split Ziggy and Chanelle and when Ziggy goes to the diary room she moves in on Chanelle, telling her not to trust her man.
Laura’s task is to walk a mini marathon whilst wearing piggy slippers. She somehow passes and the group wait to see if they all passed. In the meantime Chanelle and Laura discover they are to face the public vote which only makes Charley squeal with delight…let’s see how she squeals when her lackey Laura is booted out to boos.
When the task results are announced everyone but Charley has passed. The group are not happy; especially when Charley finds it amusing she has spoiled the party plans. All hell breaks loose again. First she shouts at Ziggy with Laura giggling on. Amusingly Ziggy tells Laura “find your own personality.” Liam is annoyed that Charley has spoiled the mood and another row kicks off.
Its tedium personified for a while until Big Brother intervenes and Charley is sent to the Sin Bin whilst everyone else gets a party – a PVC party. This leads to some of the most disturbing things I have ever seen – namely Brian as a giant condom and Tracey pushing her hands between his legs! And the twins rubbing each other in chocolate. And Nicky rubbing Ziggy. And worse – Ziggy rubbing Carole.
Yet – gross though it was, it was like heaven compared to another Charley “I’m just being honest” whine.
Like PVC? Want to slap Charley? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Friday 29 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 30 - 28th June 2007
Jonathan who really wants to go, yes he really wants to leave. He wants to go you know? Yes, that’s right – leave, he wants to leave. Well, by 10.30am after he has said he wants to leave – go, you know, leave, is still sleeping. Blimey, even Blair didn’t take this long to exit. Chanelle and Ziggy sleep on the sofas, Chanelle sick and Ziggy wanting to leave as well. When Jonathan wakes up, he (shock horror) is having second thoughts. “You still here then?” Tracey grumbles when she sees him. Good old Trace – that rudeness in her they don’t like is what makes her better to watch than Jonathan and his contrived ‘I’ve made up my mind’ bollox.
They are all allowed to sing for their breakfast…and they are all awful Why am I reminded of the Eurovision episode of 'Father Ted' with the 'My lovely horse' song? Only it isn’t even as good as that. Yet, somehow and inevitably, they pass.
They receive a little hamper with bread, oranges and sausage from the Diary Room. Laura quickly snaffles the sausage as everyone else perks up at the carbohydrates on offer. Finally, after Billi whines on like an injured dog, Jonathan packs his bags and says goodbye. Nicky and Brian dance by the bath and even manage to elicit a smile from Carole Fun-Sucker. Jonathan then returns from the diary room to announce he will stay. What an absolute prat he is. Either stay or go, don’t mumble on about it! Tosser!
Laura straddles Liam to give him a massage which is a shock since a) she doesn’t crush him and b) he quite likes it. Jonathan reminds Nicky and Brian they are being watched by “eight million people” (more like half that Jon) but tells them they will have fans. “Charley will have fans too,” he says. “About 11 of them”
The youngsters bar Laura (because it involved movement) play around in the pool, as Ziggy and Chanelle snuggle somewhere. When it gets too cold Nicky and Liam return to the shower for…well, a lot of “harmless” rubbing, touching and wrestling. If that is Liam giving someone the brush off, he can give me the brush off any time he likes! In the garden later Liam discusses his ‘mental block’ when it comes to relationships with a (far too) philosophical Gerry who simply just wants some “cock”.
In the evening, as Carole and Laura cook hearts and kidneys provided by Big Brother (cue – more Chanelle vomiting) Brian is still perplexed by number twos. “I don't think women do proper poo” he says. “Next time I do a proper poo I'll proper show you” Tracey tells him. “It’s like the culture show”. Says Jonathan, immediately regretting his decision to stay.
Brian and Nicky decide to have fun and dance in the garden most of the evening, only it is more like a kind of bizarre giggling than dancing. Nicky tries to teach Brian cartwheels but he ends up falling over a balloon and then talking about his “boners” and how everything is ‘mentawl’. Billi snakes around with Charley, plotting something…Sam breaks a jug, Amanda laughs but it sends Carole mad. “The jug!” she cries – the jug has replaced the towel in Carole’s affections.
Fancy throwing jugs at Carole? Wants a shower with Liam? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
They are all allowed to sing for their breakfast…and they are all awful Why am I reminded of the Eurovision episode of 'Father Ted' with the 'My lovely horse' song? Only it isn’t even as good as that. Yet, somehow and inevitably, they pass.
They receive a little hamper with bread, oranges and sausage from the Diary Room. Laura quickly snaffles the sausage as everyone else perks up at the carbohydrates on offer. Finally, after Billi whines on like an injured dog, Jonathan packs his bags and says goodbye. Nicky and Brian dance by the bath and even manage to elicit a smile from Carole Fun-Sucker. Jonathan then returns from the diary room to announce he will stay. What an absolute prat he is. Either stay or go, don’t mumble on about it! Tosser!
Laura straddles Liam to give him a massage which is a shock since a) she doesn’t crush him and b) he quite likes it. Jonathan reminds Nicky and Brian they are being watched by “eight million people” (more like half that Jon) but tells them they will have fans. “Charley will have fans too,” he says. “About 11 of them”
The youngsters bar Laura (because it involved movement) play around in the pool, as Ziggy and Chanelle snuggle somewhere. When it gets too cold Nicky and Liam return to the shower for…well, a lot of “harmless” rubbing, touching and wrestling. If that is Liam giving someone the brush off, he can give me the brush off any time he likes! In the garden later Liam discusses his ‘mental block’ when it comes to relationships with a (far too) philosophical Gerry who simply just wants some “cock”.
In the evening, as Carole and Laura cook hearts and kidneys provided by Big Brother (cue – more Chanelle vomiting) Brian is still perplexed by number twos. “I don't think women do proper poo” he says. “Next time I do a proper poo I'll proper show you” Tracey tells him. “It’s like the culture show”. Says Jonathan, immediately regretting his decision to stay.
Brian and Nicky decide to have fun and dance in the garden most of the evening, only it is more like a kind of bizarre giggling than dancing. Nicky tries to teach Brian cartwheels but he ends up falling over a balloon and then talking about his “boners” and how everything is ‘mentawl’. Billi snakes around with Charley, plotting something…Sam breaks a jug, Amanda laughs but it sends Carole mad. “The jug!” she cries – the jug has replaced the towel in Carole’s affections.
Fancy throwing jugs at Carole? Wants a shower with Liam? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Thursday 28 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 29 - 27th June 2007
Jonathan wakes and pads around the bathroom, his moobs on shuddering display. An alarm wakes the housemates, who now fearful of another bowl of slop. Brian moans. “They are annihilating us” he says. Jonathan grumps on about not wanting anything, not even a task. Leave then mate, feel free. Jonathan discusses Charley; "everyone is talking about her inside the house and everyone is talking about her outside it, so its working for her!”
Ziggy hates Charley, he has decided that she is simply nasty. Jonathan disagrees, “she has talent” he says. Excuse me? If talent is wearing crotch crippling hot pants and shouting expletives ten to the dozen then yes, she sure has talent. I expect her to display it in front of Cowell, Holden and Morgan on the next series of that God awful ITV1 “talent” show. Ziggy gets up and walks away in disgust. Another rift?
Their slop is delivered along with a vitamin pill. Laura and Tracey pretend it tastes much better but Brian, Charley and Nicky still retch as they struggle with their tiny mouthfuls. Everyone else manages surprisingly well.
Later Nicky and Liam help Brian wash the skid marks out of his pants. Dear. Lord. How shall I recover? Outside the twins try and drown Ziggy in the pool as Carole pontificates about how the “game is fixed” in favour of Charley. Nothing to do with you being up for eviction then, eh Carole? Jonathan, the Endemol insider, rubs his hands with glee. Makes sense I suppose for Endemol to put one of their own in…no more Emily style n*gger slip-ups.
After their millionth blazing row, Charley and Billi are sent to a “Happy Room” where they get champagne and strawberries to help them calm down. Ziggy is apoplectic (he’s also more coherent when angry, have you noticed?) and tries to get into the Diary Room but BB won’t let him in. Carole starts cleaning in frenzy, twittering about BB favouring Charley over and over like a manic Duracell bunny left out in the rain for too long.
By evening, Jonathan announces he has talked to Big Brother and he has asked to leave. There are some tears and a few shrugs. Brian gets stressed and walks up and down repetitively to calm himself down. Everyone pretends to be sorry that Jonathan is leaving, shedding “crocodile tears” as Gerry calls them. Carole is gutted and snipes that it must be Nicky’s fault (of course. I hold Nicky responsible for my badly behaved dog and my mounting debts, the existence of Peaches Geldof, the recent heavy rain, house prices rises and the war in Iraq.)
At midnight twins are set a psychic test, but are pretty terrible – yet they some how pass. “I drawed an apple and she drawed a pineapple” they laugh when they manage to draw one image correctly through being ‘psychic’. “We are psychopathic” Amanda says. I always thought so. They choose Chanelle and Liam to celebrate with them but Chanelle is already feeling sick, Nicky goes instead but the cakes will not be made of icing sugar.
Gerry in protest covers his head in the slop. He threatens to put it on his genitals but says there isn’t enough. Billi and Charley won’t eat – Charley is forced to eat it in the Diary Room – que: a mighty strop for the highlights. Billi angrily bangs on the diary room door to protest again about Charley’s ‘preferential treatment’
The twins are appalled when they find their cake is filled with slop. Liam is happy enough that one of the cakes has corned beef. “I like corned beef” he laughs. Nicky takes it well, although she manages to swear some crudeness to Big Brother first. Sam and Liam bond over their mutual dislike of Carole and her attitude.
Back in the bedroom Charley, on a loop of irritancy, maintains she will leave in the morning if she has to eat slop again. Here is your chance BB, more slop for Charley and she can bugger off home.
Want a corned beef cake? Think Carole is a bit mental? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Ziggy hates Charley, he has decided that she is simply nasty. Jonathan disagrees, “she has talent” he says. Excuse me? If talent is wearing crotch crippling hot pants and shouting expletives ten to the dozen then yes, she sure has talent. I expect her to display it in front of Cowell, Holden and Morgan on the next series of that God awful ITV1 “talent” show. Ziggy gets up and walks away in disgust. Another rift?
Their slop is delivered along with a vitamin pill. Laura and Tracey pretend it tastes much better but Brian, Charley and Nicky still retch as they struggle with their tiny mouthfuls. Everyone else manages surprisingly well.
Later Nicky and Liam help Brian wash the skid marks out of his pants. Dear. Lord. How shall I recover? Outside the twins try and drown Ziggy in the pool as Carole pontificates about how the “game is fixed” in favour of Charley. Nothing to do with you being up for eviction then, eh Carole? Jonathan, the Endemol insider, rubs his hands with glee. Makes sense I suppose for Endemol to put one of their own in…no more Emily style n*gger slip-ups.
After their millionth blazing row, Charley and Billi are sent to a “Happy Room” where they get champagne and strawberries to help them calm down. Ziggy is apoplectic (he’s also more coherent when angry, have you noticed?) and tries to get into the Diary Room but BB won’t let him in. Carole starts cleaning in frenzy, twittering about BB favouring Charley over and over like a manic Duracell bunny left out in the rain for too long.
By evening, Jonathan announces he has talked to Big Brother and he has asked to leave. There are some tears and a few shrugs. Brian gets stressed and walks up and down repetitively to calm himself down. Everyone pretends to be sorry that Jonathan is leaving, shedding “crocodile tears” as Gerry calls them. Carole is gutted and snipes that it must be Nicky’s fault (of course. I hold Nicky responsible for my badly behaved dog and my mounting debts, the existence of Peaches Geldof, the recent heavy rain, house prices rises and the war in Iraq.)
At midnight twins are set a psychic test, but are pretty terrible – yet they some how pass. “I drawed an apple and she drawed a pineapple” they laugh when they manage to draw one image correctly through being ‘psychic’. “We are psychopathic” Amanda says. I always thought so. They choose Chanelle and Liam to celebrate with them but Chanelle is already feeling sick, Nicky goes instead but the cakes will not be made of icing sugar.
Gerry in protest covers his head in the slop. He threatens to put it on his genitals but says there isn’t enough. Billi and Charley won’t eat – Charley is forced to eat it in the Diary Room – que: a mighty strop for the highlights. Billi angrily bangs on the diary room door to protest again about Charley’s ‘preferential treatment’
The twins are appalled when they find their cake is filled with slop. Liam is happy enough that one of the cakes has corned beef. “I like corned beef” he laughs. Nicky takes it well, although she manages to swear some crudeness to Big Brother first. Sam and Liam bond over their mutual dislike of Carole and her attitude.
Back in the bedroom Charley, on a loop of irritancy, maintains she will leave in the morning if she has to eat slop again. Here is your chance BB, more slop for Charley and she can bugger off home.
Want a corned beef cake? Think Carole is a bit mental? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Wednesday 27 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 28 - 26th June 2007
The morning after the failed sleep task Ziggy, Jonathan and Carole gather for their daily old granny bitch session. Apparently it is all Nicky’s fault that they failed. Oh, of course…a task where you have to stay awake for 60 hours is clearly failed by the only person who managed to, and was willing to stay awake! Ziggy is a prize prat. He’s been beaten by Amanda at swimming and Nicky at sleeping – women keep beating him and he can’t stand it. Although Charely is wearing him down into a shadow of his former self and Carole – Ziggy, step away from Carole – she is a Dementor, she is sucking out your soul.
As punishment Big Brother takes back all the food in the house, but a mini revolt ensues when Laura tells everyone to eat and eat it all and fast. The first casualty of food war is Brian - "I bib my tongue..." he cries whilst chomping on chocolate. Laura is determined not to hand back the food "we worked hard on the task, its not our fault others couldn’t physically do it" she says. Yes. Seriously. The same Laura who would have eaten her own kidney rather than stay awake for more than an hour.
Liam returns some of the food to the storeroom – realising further punishment will follow if he doesn’t. He’s a canny lad that Liam, I think he will do well. Jonathan is distressed thinking that the public will see it as them whinging about things they are contracted to do – well I do!
Carole sits on the bed with boxes of meat pies by her side – looking like Les Dawson in drag, pushing up her bosom and staring wistfully at her trophies, Jonathan at her side - her Roy Barraclough. But Liam presses on, clearly he has won his second 100k today, as he clears the fridge.
The food is finally returned and everyone – even (shock) Sam, has the hump.
Someone dares to touch Carole’s towel again – and hell fire it was Nicky. Carole is off on one like a demented Hagrid but with an even bushier beard. “It’s not private poperty” Ziggy chimes in, finally exhausted by Carole's incessant whining. “She didn’t do it on purpose” Liam says. Bad move boys – two men defending Nicky to woman hater Carole? She will blow into a million pieces shortly, mark my words.
The housemates have to weigh and measure tehmselves. Chanelle is 5 foot 5 and a “shocking” 8 stone 3 (up from 7 stone 10 ) and not impressed. She suspects BB wants to weigh them to give them low calorie meals after failing the task. She is right. Brian is a huge 6 foot 6. Laura is 5 foot 3 and 12 stone 2 and reckons she has lost some (how? Did she slice a leg off when no one was looking?) Liam is 6 foot 2 and has lost a stone is now 15 stone 12! Nicky is only 4 foot 11 and 8 stone. Charley is 7 stone 11 and 5 foot 6 – dangerously underweight.
When the nomination results are announced later in the evening all hell breaks loose because Billi and Charley’s votes don’t count, freeing Nicky and Charely from the public vote.
Chanelle is so shocked that Charley is not up she cannot help but make an innocent-ish comment so Charley kicks off and Ziggy gets all over protective…making Charley blow up even more…everyone gets flamed…Carole, Billi, the twins, Jonathan and Gerry. Nicky is devastated that she was nearly up. “I thought they were my friends” she whimpers. No Nicky – trust no one! This is Big Brother, no one likes you.
Billi drips more poison. “She’ll be hated” he screams of Charely. “Who else could have nominated me, I can only think of two.” Shut up slimeball, try eight! Eugh. Miserable Carole miserys on but I switch off when she shows up, much like I do when Gerry talks.
After being force to eat nutritional slop for failing the task, the twins are not allowed a party so create their own pink party with no tunes, booze or fun (lets be honest – it’s more like “humouring” the kids than fun) Charley and Nicky stay away – Charley getting ready, and shunned for being a bitch, and Nicky poisoned by the slop and depressed. Laura lays down with them – exhausted at the non musical chairs game she just lost. Tracey joins them after banging her bottom on the chair.
In the bathroom a sexually frustrated Gerry asks the lads if they fancy a 'homosexual orgy'. They all decline. “I'll be gentle” Gerry says. “I don't think you could possibly be gentle enough.” Liam nods.
Wish Charley could stay forever? Like a bowl of slop first thing? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
As punishment Big Brother takes back all the food in the house, but a mini revolt ensues when Laura tells everyone to eat and eat it all and fast. The first casualty of food war is Brian - "I bib my tongue..." he cries whilst chomping on chocolate. Laura is determined not to hand back the food "we worked hard on the task, its not our fault others couldn’t physically do it" she says. Yes. Seriously. The same Laura who would have eaten her own kidney rather than stay awake for more than an hour.
Liam returns some of the food to the storeroom – realising further punishment will follow if he doesn’t. He’s a canny lad that Liam, I think he will do well. Jonathan is distressed thinking that the public will see it as them whinging about things they are contracted to do – well I do!
Carole sits on the bed with boxes of meat pies by her side – looking like Les Dawson in drag, pushing up her bosom and staring wistfully at her trophies, Jonathan at her side - her Roy Barraclough. But Liam presses on, clearly he has won his second 100k today, as he clears the fridge.
The food is finally returned and everyone – even (shock) Sam, has the hump.
Someone dares to touch Carole’s towel again – and hell fire it was Nicky. Carole is off on one like a demented Hagrid but with an even bushier beard. “It’s not private poperty” Ziggy chimes in, finally exhausted by Carole's incessant whining. “She didn’t do it on purpose” Liam says. Bad move boys – two men defending Nicky to woman hater Carole? She will blow into a million pieces shortly, mark my words.
The housemates have to weigh and measure tehmselves. Chanelle is 5 foot 5 and a “shocking” 8 stone 3 (up from 7 stone 10 ) and not impressed. She suspects BB wants to weigh them to give them low calorie meals after failing the task. She is right. Brian is a huge 6 foot 6. Laura is 5 foot 3 and 12 stone 2 and reckons she has lost some (how? Did she slice a leg off when no one was looking?) Liam is 6 foot 2 and has lost a stone is now 15 stone 12! Nicky is only 4 foot 11 and 8 stone. Charley is 7 stone 11 and 5 foot 6 – dangerously underweight.
When the nomination results are announced later in the evening all hell breaks loose because Billi and Charley’s votes don’t count, freeing Nicky and Charely from the public vote.
Chanelle is so shocked that Charley is not up she cannot help but make an innocent-ish comment so Charley kicks off and Ziggy gets all over protective…making Charley blow up even more…everyone gets flamed…Carole, Billi, the twins, Jonathan and Gerry. Nicky is devastated that she was nearly up. “I thought they were my friends” she whimpers. No Nicky – trust no one! This is Big Brother, no one likes you.
Billi drips more poison. “She’ll be hated” he screams of Charely. “Who else could have nominated me, I can only think of two.” Shut up slimeball, try eight! Eugh. Miserable Carole miserys on but I switch off when she shows up, much like I do when Gerry talks.
After being force to eat nutritional slop for failing the task, the twins are not allowed a party so create their own pink party with no tunes, booze or fun (lets be honest – it’s more like “humouring” the kids than fun) Charley and Nicky stay away – Charley getting ready, and shunned for being a bitch, and Nicky poisoned by the slop and depressed. Laura lays down with them – exhausted at the non musical chairs game she just lost. Tracey joins them after banging her bottom on the chair.
In the bathroom a sexually frustrated Gerry asks the lads if they fancy a 'homosexual orgy'. They all decline. “I'll be gentle” Gerry says. “I don't think you could possibly be gentle enough.” Liam nods.
Wish Charley could stay forever? Like a bowl of slop first thing? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Monday 25 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 27 - 25th June 2007
The sleep deprivation task continues. Billi slithers around trying to convince everyone that Nicky and Charley should be the ones nominated this week only he’s too thick to realise that Nicky and Charley talk to one another and they rumble his rouse. “We’ll still be up though,” Charley says wisely. Billi is a game player, which is usually a good thing for BB only he’s not very good at it, which is a dreadful sight to behold.
After less than 24 hours the housemates discuss whether to give up or not. Laura is simply too tired (from what? Lazy cow does nothing but sleep and lay around) but Liam wants to try for longer. Tracey needs to keep going so she can have her cigs but this only brings out Ziggy’s snappy side “I’m sick of you telling everyone to deal wiv it. You deal wiv it,” he barks. “Zac! You haven’t had a strop like that for weeks,” Chanelle chimes in.
Jonathan guarantees himself a longer stay in the house by telling the twins they can go to his Portuguese villa free for a week as a “birthday treat”. They refuse to nominate him when he says the still can. It perks up Sam though who was really struggling to keep her eyes awake.
Laura tries to pull a “hilarious” prank when she claims Big Brother wanted her to sabotage the task by falling asleep but Carole's having none of it, “You just wanted to sleep” and Laura gets the derision of all Housemates when she reveals the “joke.”
Big Brother sets a ‘counting sheep’ task so everyone can earn an extra 1 hour on the clock for sleep considering Carole has used most of the existing time by dozing off mid-sentence they need it. Liam and Laura play Bo Peep and everyone else has to dress as a sheep – Jonathan as a sheep is almost as scary as Jonathan in the YMCA task. Amanda looks impossibly sweet as a sheep.
Eventually, “smart” Gerry works out that they can all sleep collectively and wake after an hour or so and still not lose the time. Liam, Nicky and Tracey agree to stay awake and make sure no one over sleeps. Only Nicky has the staying power to remain awake and as Liam succumbs to sleep, she buries him amid a mass of pillows before bonding with Jonathan over meatballs and anger issues.
There is a mass debate (not involving Brian’s leakage thankfully) where they come dangerously close to quitting but the twins rally on, desperate to get to their 19th birthday and have some fun, despite everyone else looking like death warmed up. Laura, already whining because her sabotage for sleep didn’t work, whinges when everyone else has backbone and camaraderie to stay up she develops her face like a torn clog – a face I would never tire of kicking. God, I’ve never disliked someone so much. She’s a nanny? I wouldn’t let her look after my shoes, let alone a living creature.
By midnight there is another vote and everyone bar Liam, Nicky, Sam and Amanda wants to quit and accept basic rations. Why do I sense that bad things will happen now with the shopping budget – especially as Ziggy, Nicky, Laura and Jonathan have accepted responsibility?
If Laura dares complain she is hungry next week, someone better shove her head in the oven and cook it on Gas Mark 4.
Can you last 60 hours sleepless? Want to batter Laura to death with her own foot? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
After less than 24 hours the housemates discuss whether to give up or not. Laura is simply too tired (from what? Lazy cow does nothing but sleep and lay around) but Liam wants to try for longer. Tracey needs to keep going so she can have her cigs but this only brings out Ziggy’s snappy side “I’m sick of you telling everyone to deal wiv it. You deal wiv it,” he barks. “Zac! You haven’t had a strop like that for weeks,” Chanelle chimes in.
Jonathan guarantees himself a longer stay in the house by telling the twins they can go to his Portuguese villa free for a week as a “birthday treat”. They refuse to nominate him when he says the still can. It perks up Sam though who was really struggling to keep her eyes awake.
Laura tries to pull a “hilarious” prank when she claims Big Brother wanted her to sabotage the task by falling asleep but Carole's having none of it, “You just wanted to sleep” and Laura gets the derision of all Housemates when she reveals the “joke.”
Big Brother sets a ‘counting sheep’ task so everyone can earn an extra 1 hour on the clock for sleep considering Carole has used most of the existing time by dozing off mid-sentence they need it. Liam and Laura play Bo Peep and everyone else has to dress as a sheep – Jonathan as a sheep is almost as scary as Jonathan in the YMCA task. Amanda looks impossibly sweet as a sheep.
Eventually, “smart” Gerry works out that they can all sleep collectively and wake after an hour or so and still not lose the time. Liam, Nicky and Tracey agree to stay awake and make sure no one over sleeps. Only Nicky has the staying power to remain awake and as Liam succumbs to sleep, she buries him amid a mass of pillows before bonding with Jonathan over meatballs and anger issues.
There is a mass debate (not involving Brian’s leakage thankfully) where they come dangerously close to quitting but the twins rally on, desperate to get to their 19th birthday and have some fun, despite everyone else looking like death warmed up. Laura, already whining because her sabotage for sleep didn’t work, whinges when everyone else has backbone and camaraderie to stay up she develops her face like a torn clog – a face I would never tire of kicking. God, I’ve never disliked someone so much. She’s a nanny? I wouldn’t let her look after my shoes, let alone a living creature.
By midnight there is another vote and everyone bar Liam, Nicky, Sam and Amanda wants to quit and accept basic rations. Why do I sense that bad things will happen now with the shopping budget – especially as Ziggy, Nicky, Laura and Jonathan have accepted responsibility?
If Laura dares complain she is hungry next week, someone better shove her head in the oven and cook it on Gas Mark 4.
Can you last 60 hours sleepless? Want to batter Laura to death with her own foot? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Sunday 24 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Days 25 and 26 - 24th June 2007
Another late night ensures that the lazy housemates do not wake until 12pm. They are told to wait in the bedroom for a task that seemingly never appears to happen
A knobbly knee competition is hastily set up, almost unbelievably unimaginative. Everyone has to pull up their trousers and display their knees behind curtains dancing to music one woman and one man will win the ‘reward’ of a 1970s caravan. Charley and Brian win. When Charley is told she is excited but Brian, bless him less so, considering Charley punched him in the balls earlier during an argument its not surprise. Big Brother gives them hideous clothes. Charley has a floral two piece, pop-socks, flat sandals and a knotted hanky, Brian has a checked shirt, half-mast pants, white socks and Jesus sandals and another knotted hanky. They are like a hip and happening George and Mildred.”I hope she’s in there a week” Jonathan declares. In the caravan Charley and Brian slate Billi for his posing skills, his pervyness and his isolating attitude, despite Charley spending hours previously with Billi slating everyone else.
Liam varnishes Nicky’s toes. They worry me…they are even starting dress the same – all matching stripes and slippers. It’s a pity Liam has let things go on so long…he clearly has different feelings. In a cider frenzy Brian dances madly in the caravan alone, mad hat and everything…he’s on top form actually, he even manages to get Charley to laugh through her whinges.
The next day the caravan task ends early because Charley is bored. She can’t bear Brian’s constant “shaht up” and his inappropriate erections. Liam takes a bath and invites Nicky to talk to him. A word of advice Liam, if you want to let a woman “down gently” don’t lay in front of her nearly naked and get her to rub your face. Nicky grumps for the rest of the day, back to her misery mode. When an endurance sleep task of 60 hours is set, where the pool, straighteners, sharp objects and the beds are banned Nicky nearly loses her mind, “You’re going to be fun” Jonathan says. A nation nods.
In all white pyjamas, teddy bears and robes the housemates set sail to stay awake. Jonathan and Ziggy are sceptical. The twins and Gerry are happy to play fight with pillows, but am I alone in hoping to see the twins frayed, angry and shouty on no sleep? Big Brother immediately stops the fun and everyone moans. Oh dear…
Chanelle settles down with everyone to listen to Goldilocks as the bedtime story. “Is this the one with a poisoned apple?” she asks. Blimey! Thankfully Gerry makes Chanelle’s bear Betsy have sex with one of the task bears for light relief. Charley vows not to speak to anyone before speaking to EVERYONE.
Laura, who I would singe to death with the dreaded Big Brother hair straighteners if I could, shouts and stomps, overriding everyone trying to “keep up spirits”. I’d rather fail the task and give in to weeks of endless sniping and nomination than have Laura geeing me up.
Carole tries to expose Ziggy's penis (hell fire) as Sam and Amanda play pillow fights to keep awake. Tracey is buzzing again. I don't know where she keeps her acid but I wish she'd give some to everyone else...and me!
Think Billi is a rough diamond? Is Besty a slut? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
A knobbly knee competition is hastily set up, almost unbelievably unimaginative. Everyone has to pull up their trousers and display their knees behind curtains dancing to music one woman and one man will win the ‘reward’ of a 1970s caravan. Charley and Brian win. When Charley is told she is excited but Brian, bless him less so, considering Charley punched him in the balls earlier during an argument its not surprise. Big Brother gives them hideous clothes. Charley has a floral two piece, pop-socks, flat sandals and a knotted hanky, Brian has a checked shirt, half-mast pants, white socks and Jesus sandals and another knotted hanky. They are like a hip and happening George and Mildred.”I hope she’s in there a week” Jonathan declares. In the caravan Charley and Brian slate Billi for his posing skills, his pervyness and his isolating attitude, despite Charley spending hours previously with Billi slating everyone else.
Liam varnishes Nicky’s toes. They worry me…they are even starting dress the same – all matching stripes and slippers. It’s a pity Liam has let things go on so long…he clearly has different feelings. In a cider frenzy Brian dances madly in the caravan alone, mad hat and everything…he’s on top form actually, he even manages to get Charley to laugh through her whinges.
The next day the caravan task ends early because Charley is bored. She can’t bear Brian’s constant “shaht up” and his inappropriate erections. Liam takes a bath and invites Nicky to talk to him. A word of advice Liam, if you want to let a woman “down gently” don’t lay in front of her nearly naked and get her to rub your face. Nicky grumps for the rest of the day, back to her misery mode. When an endurance sleep task of 60 hours is set, where the pool, straighteners, sharp objects and the beds are banned Nicky nearly loses her mind, “You’re going to be fun” Jonathan says. A nation nods.
In all white pyjamas, teddy bears and robes the housemates set sail to stay awake. Jonathan and Ziggy are sceptical. The twins and Gerry are happy to play fight with pillows, but am I alone in hoping to see the twins frayed, angry and shouty on no sleep? Big Brother immediately stops the fun and everyone moans. Oh dear…
Chanelle settles down with everyone to listen to Goldilocks as the bedtime story. “Is this the one with a poisoned apple?” she asks. Blimey! Thankfully Gerry makes Chanelle’s bear Betsy have sex with one of the task bears for light relief. Charley vows not to speak to anyone before speaking to EVERYONE.
Laura, who I would singe to death with the dreaded Big Brother hair straighteners if I could, shouts and stomps, overriding everyone trying to “keep up spirits”. I’d rather fail the task and give in to weeks of endless sniping and nomination than have Laura geeing me up.
Carole tries to expose Ziggy's penis (hell fire) as Sam and Amanda play pillow fights to keep awake. Tracey is buzzing again. I don't know where she keeps her acid but I wish she'd give some to everyone else...and me!
Think Billi is a rough diamond? Is Besty a slut? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Friday 22 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 24: 22nd June 2007
The alarms sounds at 11am and the sleep deprived housemates away, retiring to bed at 6am. Everyone looks rough…and anxious. It is eviction day! Brian is still waiting for his forfeit after being the loser of the swimming task but he is too concerned that he has lost his earring in bed…Tracey has nasty bruises on her thighs. Hang on! Brian has lost his earring ‘tossing and turning’ and Tracey has bruised thighs? A secret passion that no one spotted?
Ziggy wants and “honest day” and decides he will tell Carole to shave her legs and chin before the eviction. Unfortunately the flaw in this is that Ziggy is incapable of honesty. Seány is afraid he will be evicted and people will shout “ave it” at him. Sadly I think Seány will go, which is a shame as fun sucker Carole should be booted back to her Giro and stash of free condoms.
Billi lays next to Amanda, his hand disappearing under the covers. I’m sorry, but I cannot look. Billi groping Amanda? That’s akin to an axe murder decapitating a kitten. The four newcomers are called to the diary room to make a podcast and do impressions of their fellow housemates. Laura makes breakfast – hot chocolate and biscuits. Dear, dear me.
Seány wants to go around schools telling everyone how bad it is to be in a gang. I would have thought it was pretty bad to be a curly topped ‘prankster’ with bad dress sense and no obvious emotions but there you go. Billi is given a laminate to read out – everyone has to pick an object from the house and do a presentation on it.
Amanda chooses her pink tutu and everyone else nods. “It’s pink and cute, like you.” “It reminds me of parties lahk,” Amanda says. Billi chooses his sunglasses. “It’s so no one can see who you are looking at,” Liam suggests. Yes Liam, a perv’s paradise the old sunnies. Everyone starts to agree that Billi is sneaky and a watcher, except Amanda who thinks his glasses are no more than “fashion n’ stuff” Seány - wearing sunglasses himself.... says 'anyone wearing sunglasses in a house is an eejit. Brian has chosen a pepper pot (this is Brian who though he could use his fingers and then a lemon zester to peel an apple) he didn’t understand he could choose his own object and thought he needed one from the house. They think its because Brian is “slick” I think it is because you can probably twists Brian’s head 360 degrees and he’d sprinkle the floor with spices.
Carole chose plants because, according to the housemates, she’s “natural and hates perishables” Billi gets a dig in, “plants can’t walk and talk and you like to be needed” Carole waffles on as to why she chose it but Liam and Charley cannot bear it and laugh heartily. Chanelle herself chose Victoria Beckham’s mirror. Seány jokes “obviously she's taken Victoria Beckham's mirror from her, I don't condone theft so I can't comment”. Ziggy struggles what to say and Tracey tells Chanelle it’s really because she needs to “remind yourself you are you.” Wise words Tracey, wise words.
Charley also chose a mirror *sigh * which Laura insists means she is “vain.” “The lights are on but no one is home” Seány says. Charley gets ripped apart as much as Billi. Liam feels sorry for Charley and thinks they should all stop making a big deal out of it.
Gerry chose his ‘worry beads’ and analyses himself to death. He really needs to dumb himself down. Jonathan chooses a camera as his representation because it is about showing off and judgement.
Laura chooses the shower, because it is huge and immovable (not really) and drippy like she is. Carole thinks it is because she “scrubs up well”. Does she? I’ve yet to see her wash. Liam chooses a photo of himself. Makes sense, it is totally representative then…but the housemates see more, thinking Liam is full of “gratitude” (not surprising since you bestowed £100k on him)
Nicky’s object was a sponge, Carole thinks Nicky is a natural sponge, soft and absorbent…Jonathan agrees but Billi thinks it is simply because she “uses it a lot and all that.” Thank you Professor Freud. Sam picks something pink but everyone’s enthusiasm has gone and no one really cares what it represents.
Carole and Ziggy have to do lines as punishment for writing on the wall with chalk. The both have school ties… "It’s Grambo, not Rambo” Seány cries when Carole puts the tie around her head. He then rubs out all of Ziggy’s lines…as when Ziggy goes to the Diary Room, Seány locks him in with chairs and proceeds to write, “Ziggy is an eejit” on the blackboard
The moronic voting British public vote out the most entertaining housemate again...Seány is evicted…. oh good more days of Carole bitching, whining, crying and playing the martyr and Jonathan scheming. Fascinating. – 44.5% of the vote. Charley, despite voting for him claims “I’m not being funny right,” before Jonathan butts in "You are right, you are not funny” He might be evil but he is amusing…
After everyone cries at Seany’s death (eviction) Liam intensifies Nicky in his thoughts, telling her he hates what everyone is saying before flirting outrageously with Chanelle…Ziggy can’t intimidate Liam as easily as he managed to intimidate Billi.
Liam and Nicky play piggybacks again, Jonathan calls Billi “Lazy” and Laura and “Deaf bully” (I like him). Bill pervs on Sam. Everything seems normal suddenly.
Bored? Loving it, woo? Chillwinter@hotmail.co.uk
Ziggy wants and “honest day” and decides he will tell Carole to shave her legs and chin before the eviction. Unfortunately the flaw in this is that Ziggy is incapable of honesty. Seány is afraid he will be evicted and people will shout “ave it” at him. Sadly I think Seány will go, which is a shame as fun sucker Carole should be booted back to her Giro and stash of free condoms.
Billi lays next to Amanda, his hand disappearing under the covers. I’m sorry, but I cannot look. Billi groping Amanda? That’s akin to an axe murder decapitating a kitten. The four newcomers are called to the diary room to make a podcast and do impressions of their fellow housemates. Laura makes breakfast – hot chocolate and biscuits. Dear, dear me.
Seány wants to go around schools telling everyone how bad it is to be in a gang. I would have thought it was pretty bad to be a curly topped ‘prankster’ with bad dress sense and no obvious emotions but there you go. Billi is given a laminate to read out – everyone has to pick an object from the house and do a presentation on it.
Amanda chooses her pink tutu and everyone else nods. “It’s pink and cute, like you.” “It reminds me of parties lahk,” Amanda says. Billi chooses his sunglasses. “It’s so no one can see who you are looking at,” Liam suggests. Yes Liam, a perv’s paradise the old sunnies. Everyone starts to agree that Billi is sneaky and a watcher, except Amanda who thinks his glasses are no more than “fashion n’ stuff” Seány - wearing sunglasses himself.... says 'anyone wearing sunglasses in a house is an eejit. Brian has chosen a pepper pot (this is Brian who though he could use his fingers and then a lemon zester to peel an apple) he didn’t understand he could choose his own object and thought he needed one from the house. They think its because Brian is “slick” I think it is because you can probably twists Brian’s head 360 degrees and he’d sprinkle the floor with spices.
Carole chose plants because, according to the housemates, she’s “natural and hates perishables” Billi gets a dig in, “plants can’t walk and talk and you like to be needed” Carole waffles on as to why she chose it but Liam and Charley cannot bear it and laugh heartily. Chanelle herself chose Victoria Beckham’s mirror. Seány jokes “obviously she's taken Victoria Beckham's mirror from her, I don't condone theft so I can't comment”. Ziggy struggles what to say and Tracey tells Chanelle it’s really because she needs to “remind yourself you are you.” Wise words Tracey, wise words.
Charley also chose a mirror *sigh * which Laura insists means she is “vain.” “The lights are on but no one is home” Seány says. Charley gets ripped apart as much as Billi. Liam feels sorry for Charley and thinks they should all stop making a big deal out of it.
Gerry chose his ‘worry beads’ and analyses himself to death. He really needs to dumb himself down. Jonathan chooses a camera as his representation because it is about showing off and judgement.
Laura chooses the shower, because it is huge and immovable (not really) and drippy like she is. Carole thinks it is because she “scrubs up well”. Does she? I’ve yet to see her wash. Liam chooses a photo of himself. Makes sense, it is totally representative then…but the housemates see more, thinking Liam is full of “gratitude” (not surprising since you bestowed £100k on him)
Nicky’s object was a sponge, Carole thinks Nicky is a natural sponge, soft and absorbent…Jonathan agrees but Billi thinks it is simply because she “uses it a lot and all that.” Thank you Professor Freud. Sam picks something pink but everyone’s enthusiasm has gone and no one really cares what it represents.
Carole and Ziggy have to do lines as punishment for writing on the wall with chalk. The both have school ties… "It’s Grambo, not Rambo” Seány cries when Carole puts the tie around her head. He then rubs out all of Ziggy’s lines…as when Ziggy goes to the Diary Room, Seány locks him in with chairs and proceeds to write, “Ziggy is an eejit” on the blackboard
The moronic voting British public vote out the most entertaining housemate again...Seány is evicted…. oh good more days of Carole bitching, whining, crying and playing the martyr and Jonathan scheming. Fascinating. – 44.5% of the vote. Charley, despite voting for him claims “I’m not being funny right,” before Jonathan butts in "You are right, you are not funny” He might be evil but he is amusing…
After everyone cries at Seany’s death (eviction) Liam intensifies Nicky in his thoughts, telling her he hates what everyone is saying before flirting outrageously with Chanelle…Ziggy can’t intimidate Liam as easily as he managed to intimidate Billi.
Liam and Nicky play piggybacks again, Jonathan calls Billi “Lazy” and Laura and “Deaf bully” (I like him). Bill pervs on Sam. Everything seems normal suddenly.
Bored? Loving it, woo? Chillwinter@hotmail.co.uk
Big Brother 8: Day 23 - 21st June 2007
Nicky is asleep on the sofa. She had been in bed with Liam but the repercussions worried her. She can’t return to her own bed because Billi is in there. I can sympathise. If Billi was in my bed I’d rather sleep in my dog’s poo-infested kennel than clamber next to him and his special ‘masturbation T Shirt.’ Carole and Ziggy go to the kitchen for their morning bitch. Charley and Jonathan’s row is still hanging in the air, “I’ll see her in a new light” Carole says, “but she’s not spiteful, she’s just Charley” Not spiteful? Oh Carole, you have a shock coming. Ziggy moans about Billi’s ‘game plan’ and Nicky’s ‘moodiness’. Sometimes Ziggy is such an old woman, no wonder he has bonded with Carole, the pair of fun sucking kill joys. “Chanelle likes Billi,” he says, “because he’s younger.” Eh? Billi is 25 Zig, you are apparently 26…that isn’t really much of a difference now, is it?
Seány dances out of the bedroom like a pixie on glue. He pushes Ziggy into the pool and drapes himself on a bored looking Gerry. Jonathan opines, “Liam was the right person to give the money to. They’ll see that out there.” He’s obsessed with public perception which is a shame as after the way he spoke to Charley overnight and his bitter obsession with putting Nicky down, he won’t get such a good reception.
Billi having evicted Nicky, snuggles up to Amanda waiting until Ziggy leaves Chanelle alone long enough for him to splay himself on her next. Ziggy returns however and Billi scuttles off like a woodlouse. Laura finds a burger under her bed and immediately eats it. You really could not make this stuff up. Billi gets a shower and is joined by Chanelle and Amanda…he must think it’s his birthday. Chanelle promises Ziggy she will keep her distance from Billi Slimeball but whenever she turns around he is there,
Carole teaches Brian to swim. Carole loves it when she is allowed to be in charge and nurturing and Brian is a willing candidate, a sweet uncomplicated boy what has actually achieved something worthwhile now from his Big Brother experience. Jonathan thinks Ziggy will win – no he won’t Jonathan. Pick a bland male with a false persona…he’ll win. Actually, that is Ziggy?
After watching Chanelle lay on the bed with Billi (and shower with him, and play with him) Ziggy has that “difficult talk” and basically dumps her. “I won’t be made a mug of” he says. Too late Zac mate, too late. Chanelle tells her side to the twins but embellishes the story until Ziggy is the devil incarnate. Nicky and Liam don’t notice they are too busy wrestling and playing piggy backs to care
Amanda comes into her own, offering advice and cheering Chanelle up. Amanda is my favourite of the twins, a lovely simple girl with a heart of gold. Pity they won’t show how great she is on the highlight. Billi thinks he is part of “Team Wang” with Chanelle, the twins, Charley and Laura…but Charley doesn’t get the reference to Laura’s ‘wangers’. "Wotsit mean?" Everyone bitches that Jonathan and Ziggy have drunk all the wine. Billi creeps me out. I’d rather he were out than Charley! Shocking. He whines that the boys will “turn” on him as he thinks he caused the Zigelle split. Chanelle is one smart lass and quizzes Zig at night, questioning his motives and those who have ‘whispered’ to him. I like her, I’d like her more if she told Billi to f*ck off.
Nicky confides her Liam lust with Billi. Bad idea. Bad idea. Gerry thinks they make a sweet couple, despite Charley’s attempts to upset the relationship. By bedtime, Chanelle has badgered, bullied and nagged Ziggy into giving her another go (oh heck) after Billi said “nuffin’ to do wiv’ me mate” and Zigelle is back to bed sharing and the 'romance' is saved!
Is love in the air? Fancy using Carole’s towel? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Seány dances out of the bedroom like a pixie on glue. He pushes Ziggy into the pool and drapes himself on a bored looking Gerry. Jonathan opines, “Liam was the right person to give the money to. They’ll see that out there.” He’s obsessed with public perception which is a shame as after the way he spoke to Charley overnight and his bitter obsession with putting Nicky down, he won’t get such a good reception.
Billi having evicted Nicky, snuggles up to Amanda waiting until Ziggy leaves Chanelle alone long enough for him to splay himself on her next. Ziggy returns however and Billi scuttles off like a woodlouse. Laura finds a burger under her bed and immediately eats it. You really could not make this stuff up. Billi gets a shower and is joined by Chanelle and Amanda…he must think it’s his birthday. Chanelle promises Ziggy she will keep her distance from Billi Slimeball but whenever she turns around he is there,
Carole teaches Brian to swim. Carole loves it when she is allowed to be in charge and nurturing and Brian is a willing candidate, a sweet uncomplicated boy what has actually achieved something worthwhile now from his Big Brother experience. Jonathan thinks Ziggy will win – no he won’t Jonathan. Pick a bland male with a false persona…he’ll win. Actually, that is Ziggy?
After watching Chanelle lay on the bed with Billi (and shower with him, and play with him) Ziggy has that “difficult talk” and basically dumps her. “I won’t be made a mug of” he says. Too late Zac mate, too late. Chanelle tells her side to the twins but embellishes the story until Ziggy is the devil incarnate. Nicky and Liam don’t notice they are too busy wrestling and playing piggy backs to care
Amanda comes into her own, offering advice and cheering Chanelle up. Amanda is my favourite of the twins, a lovely simple girl with a heart of gold. Pity they won’t show how great she is on the highlight. Billi thinks he is part of “Team Wang” with Chanelle, the twins, Charley and Laura…but Charley doesn’t get the reference to Laura’s ‘wangers’. "Wotsit mean?" Everyone bitches that Jonathan and Ziggy have drunk all the wine. Billi creeps me out. I’d rather he were out than Charley! Shocking. He whines that the boys will “turn” on him as he thinks he caused the Zigelle split. Chanelle is one smart lass and quizzes Zig at night, questioning his motives and those who have ‘whispered’ to him. I like her, I’d like her more if she told Billi to f*ck off.
Nicky confides her Liam lust with Billi. Bad idea. Bad idea. Gerry thinks they make a sweet couple, despite Charley’s attempts to upset the relationship. By bedtime, Chanelle has badgered, bullied and nagged Ziggy into giving her another go (oh heck) after Billi said “nuffin’ to do wiv’ me mate” and Zigelle is back to bed sharing and the 'romance' is saved!
Is love in the air? Fancy using Carole’s towel? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Thursday 21 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 22: 20th June 2007
Seány has spent the night putting Gerry and Chanelle’s toys into condoms. Chanelle sees the funny side but Gerry is angry and throws Seány’s hats in the pool. It’s only a bear Gerry man. Carole awakes the next day to take her rightful place as head of the kitchen – “it’s washing day” she announces once again taking it upon herself to look after everyone. Stop playing the martyr Carole and maybe you won’t keep getting nominated. Ziggy is depressed, he wanders around with a long face, avoiding Tracey’s questions and telling Billi he’ll be “watching him” if he goes. Billi grins…he hasn’t had to do much to wind up old Zig.
“Nicky’s in love” Carole snipes. I think Nicky is really just in lust. Liam doesn’t return her affections however; his eyes cannot help but appraise Chanelle whenever she is near. Jonathan and Gerry investigate the eye logo, coming desperately close to the ‘secret room’ (Please not another House Next Door!) Jonathan admits that although he was deeply cynical of the twins he has now been “won over”. Carole still thinks they are false. “They’ve been coached,” she barks before viewing herself in the mirror. "My pouch is saturated" she says. Good. God. I don’t want to know.
A twin thinks they should sit and discuss the shopping list before ordering it. Blimey that is sensible. If only I knew which one it was so I could heap my praise on the correct person.
Brian is annoyed by Laura who declares she will stay in bed all day (Never!). “You are a diva,” he tells her. “You don’t know what a diva is!” Laura squeals. "Yes I do, you sit there in your Bet Lynch housecoat.”
As the individual winner in the swimming task, Amanda has to order the shopping list alone as her reward, only when she returns to the house armed only with hairspray, candyfloss and strawberry laces I think it will be more of a punishment – especially when Nicky and Carole realise that Jays fluid and Mr Muscle have been replaced by un-chewable gobstoppers and chocolate mice. Amanda returns, “I got loadsa cake and choccie lahk” Carole is annoyed; Amanda forgot washing powder but remembered Nicky’s hot sauce and Charley’s fags. Tracey goes berserk. “No tobacco man! No tobacco!” Please! Go and ‘deal wiv it’ Tracey and smoke a fagage.
“Seány, you are hard work.” Gerry declares in between rambling on about architecture and the chaos theory and how ‘fantastic’ his own penis is. “My poor bear” he complains. Gerry, you are a 31-year-old man with several degrees and an apparently great knowledge, get over the bear already.
By the evening all of the housemates are called to the sofas and shown £100,000 sitting in the Diary Room. Laura squeals, “It’s the prize fund, it will count down!” She’s wrong. Carole, Jonathan and Seány are called in to the Diary Room. Carole is tearful and fractious because Jonathan used her precious towel and he DIDN’T ASK PERMISSION. The three cannot receive the prize, but they can choose which remaining housemate does get the money. A poisoned chalice?
They get just one minute. They dissuade Seány from giving the money to Laura and Jonathan from giving it to Amanda or Sam and give the money to Liam but he looks less than pleased; in fact he bursts into tears. Brian reassures him. “Don’t worry about crying mate, I’ve mugged myself off.” Charley immediately readjusts her sights and hovers around telling Liam he is “so worft it.”
Carole looks distraught. Seány cannot believe he is up for eviction. (Really?) Jonathan cries, “I don’t need the money anyway, I’d throw it to the crowd!” Shut up, fool. Nicky tentatively sits with Liam but now her burgeoning romance has been stopped. Everyone will think she wants the money. Brian and twins are delighted as usual. You could probably burst into the house and tell the three of them their parents and spontaneously combusted and they’d find the joy somewhere, somehow.
Charley ups her flirting with Liam so Nicky is forced to reveal her hidden weapons – her chest and Amanda’s make up routine. Chanelle has another strop when Gerry touches her sandwich (not a euphemism). Carole takes it upon herself to now dislike Chanelle as well (Carole’s ‘dislike list’ sure is big) and she lies to Laura that she was “in with a chance” of the money. Carole, you vetoed Laura.
Laura tries to convince Ziggy there is something evil about Jonathan but he isn’t so sure. “He’s alright” he tells her. No, Ziggy – for once, Laura is correct. Jonathan continues his hate tirade against Charley but she’s had enough and retaliates, causing another Diary Room trip for the pair and Jonathan stalks the garden alone and forlorn in the early hours. Oh dear, Jonathan has been rumbled.
Think Liam deserved his cash? Wish that Charley was rewarded instead? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
“Nicky’s in love” Carole snipes. I think Nicky is really just in lust. Liam doesn’t return her affections however; his eyes cannot help but appraise Chanelle whenever she is near. Jonathan and Gerry investigate the eye logo, coming desperately close to the ‘secret room’ (Please not another House Next Door!) Jonathan admits that although he was deeply cynical of the twins he has now been “won over”. Carole still thinks they are false. “They’ve been coached,” she barks before viewing herself in the mirror. "My pouch is saturated" she says. Good. God. I don’t want to know.
A twin thinks they should sit and discuss the shopping list before ordering it. Blimey that is sensible. If only I knew which one it was so I could heap my praise on the correct person.
Brian is annoyed by Laura who declares she will stay in bed all day (Never!). “You are a diva,” he tells her. “You don’t know what a diva is!” Laura squeals. "Yes I do, you sit there in your Bet Lynch housecoat.”
As the individual winner in the swimming task, Amanda has to order the shopping list alone as her reward, only when she returns to the house armed only with hairspray, candyfloss and strawberry laces I think it will be more of a punishment – especially when Nicky and Carole realise that Jays fluid and Mr Muscle have been replaced by un-chewable gobstoppers and chocolate mice. Amanda returns, “I got loadsa cake and choccie lahk” Carole is annoyed; Amanda forgot washing powder but remembered Nicky’s hot sauce and Charley’s fags. Tracey goes berserk. “No tobacco man! No tobacco!” Please! Go and ‘deal wiv it’ Tracey and smoke a fagage.
“Seány, you are hard work.” Gerry declares in between rambling on about architecture and the chaos theory and how ‘fantastic’ his own penis is. “My poor bear” he complains. Gerry, you are a 31-year-old man with several degrees and an apparently great knowledge, get over the bear already.
By the evening all of the housemates are called to the sofas and shown £100,000 sitting in the Diary Room. Laura squeals, “It’s the prize fund, it will count down!” She’s wrong. Carole, Jonathan and Seány are called in to the Diary Room. Carole is tearful and fractious because Jonathan used her precious towel and he DIDN’T ASK PERMISSION. The three cannot receive the prize, but they can choose which remaining housemate does get the money. A poisoned chalice?
They get just one minute. They dissuade Seány from giving the money to Laura and Jonathan from giving it to Amanda or Sam and give the money to Liam but he looks less than pleased; in fact he bursts into tears. Brian reassures him. “Don’t worry about crying mate, I’ve mugged myself off.” Charley immediately readjusts her sights and hovers around telling Liam he is “so worft it.”
Carole looks distraught. Seány cannot believe he is up for eviction. (Really?) Jonathan cries, “I don’t need the money anyway, I’d throw it to the crowd!” Shut up, fool. Nicky tentatively sits with Liam but now her burgeoning romance has been stopped. Everyone will think she wants the money. Brian and twins are delighted as usual. You could probably burst into the house and tell the three of them their parents and spontaneously combusted and they’d find the joy somewhere, somehow.
Charley ups her flirting with Liam so Nicky is forced to reveal her hidden weapons – her chest and Amanda’s make up routine. Chanelle has another strop when Gerry touches her sandwich (not a euphemism). Carole takes it upon herself to now dislike Chanelle as well (Carole’s ‘dislike list’ sure is big) and she lies to Laura that she was “in with a chance” of the money. Carole, you vetoed Laura.
Laura tries to convince Ziggy there is something evil about Jonathan but he isn’t so sure. “He’s alright” he tells her. No, Ziggy – for once, Laura is correct. Jonathan continues his hate tirade against Charley but she’s had enough and retaliates, causing another Diary Room trip for the pair and Jonathan stalks the garden alone and forlorn in the early hours. Oh dear, Jonathan has been rumbled.
Think Liam deserved his cash? Wish that Charley was rewarded instead? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 21: June 19th 2007
The swimming task continues and Chanelle spends every waking second trying to find a way not to actually do any swimming. “I’ll go in the boat” she says as everyone scowls in the background. Laura and Ziggy do the majority of the work, length after length after length. It’s great to see Laura move and to see her smile for once. Carole, the Demon Headmistress, frowns and whines about how she is “done with everyone” before she then goes on to make everyone’s breakfast. Yes, really “done” aren’t you Carole? Amanda dives into the pool and swims until she drops. She may have few brain cells but she has a hell of a lot of stamina.
Charley and Seány take it turns to out annoy everyone by dressing as demented fishermen and shouting through a megaphone. If only a torpedo firing submarine was passing at that very moment. Kill two knobs with one strike!
Carole continues to dominate the kitchen, ticking off every bit of food that may have possibly been eaten without her express written permission. “Where is the sweetcorn? The sweet corn is gone!” She cries with a panic. Carole dear....it's only sweet corn love. I'm surprised she hasn't numbered each bit of corn. She'll be checking everyone's stools to see who had what! Poor Ziggy gets the blame even though it was Liam who ate it. Having said that, the sweet corn was bought with Liam’s luxury shopping budget so he can eat what he wants…but don’t tell Carole I said that.
Billi wants to cause trouble for Ziggy. Charley jumps at the chance but they are a bit too stupid to come up with anything other than a some backstabbing! Whoa, original! Sam gets food poisoning….surely, in some way; somehow this is Seány’s fault? He’s probably been “pranking” again by sprinkling his urine in Sam’s food when she wasn’t looking.
Nomination results are announced, Carole, Jonathan and Seány are up for the vote. There isn’t a huge amount of surprise except on Charley’s face – even she thought she was a goner. Ziggy and Chanelle stare aimlessly into the distance. They’ve grown bored of one another but are too polite to admit it. Gerry has noticed but he gets too giddy when he’s alone with Ziggy to actually tell him straight.
Nicky is attracted to Liam but keeps, unsuccessfully, trying to talk herself out of. “Men repulse me,” she says before slavering over the tree surgeon and giggling like an overexcited schoolgirl when he says he’d quite like to settle down. Nicky is still perplexed as to why Carole won’t speak to her. Here is a clue Nicky, calling someone a “hag” and a “kitchen Nazi” is not inductive to friendship.
Billi lays on the bed in his ill fitting Speedos. He has an incredibly annoying and worrying habit of splaying his legs in front of every camera. I really don’t want to see Billi’s love spuds thanks Big Brother, please make him wear a skirt…and tell Chanelle to put some pants on too – her arse aint any more attractive than Billi’s. Brian thinks he will “die from dehydration man” as the heat in the bedroom increases. He camply wafts himself with a fan and whines that his leg is broken as Billi stares at the twins telling them “Amanda you have the biggest eyes, but Sam yours are wider.” Say what? Either their eyes are the same are they aren’t you twerp.
Lightening and storms around my way kill the live feed so who knows what happened during the night? I imagine it wasn’t anything groundbreaking. Let’s hope Carole is evicted. She’s got nothing left to offer now and Seány and Jonathan, scary though they are, have a little depth.
Like Carole’s weeping Mrs Mop routine? Is Seány actually a leprechaun? Chillwinter@hotmail.co.uk
Charley and Seány take it turns to out annoy everyone by dressing as demented fishermen and shouting through a megaphone. If only a torpedo firing submarine was passing at that very moment. Kill two knobs with one strike!
Carole continues to dominate the kitchen, ticking off every bit of food that may have possibly been eaten without her express written permission. “Where is the sweetcorn? The sweet corn is gone!” She cries with a panic. Carole dear....it's only sweet corn love. I'm surprised she hasn't numbered each bit of corn. She'll be checking everyone's stools to see who had what! Poor Ziggy gets the blame even though it was Liam who ate it. Having said that, the sweet corn was bought with Liam’s luxury shopping budget so he can eat what he wants…but don’t tell Carole I said that.
Billi wants to cause trouble for Ziggy. Charley jumps at the chance but they are a bit too stupid to come up with anything other than a some backstabbing! Whoa, original! Sam gets food poisoning….surely, in some way; somehow this is Seány’s fault? He’s probably been “pranking” again by sprinkling his urine in Sam’s food when she wasn’t looking.
Nomination results are announced, Carole, Jonathan and Seány are up for the vote. There isn’t a huge amount of surprise except on Charley’s face – even she thought she was a goner. Ziggy and Chanelle stare aimlessly into the distance. They’ve grown bored of one another but are too polite to admit it. Gerry has noticed but he gets too giddy when he’s alone with Ziggy to actually tell him straight.
Nicky is attracted to Liam but keeps, unsuccessfully, trying to talk herself out of. “Men repulse me,” she says before slavering over the tree surgeon and giggling like an overexcited schoolgirl when he says he’d quite like to settle down. Nicky is still perplexed as to why Carole won’t speak to her. Here is a clue Nicky, calling someone a “hag” and a “kitchen Nazi” is not inductive to friendship.
Billi lays on the bed in his ill fitting Speedos. He has an incredibly annoying and worrying habit of splaying his legs in front of every camera. I really don’t want to see Billi’s love spuds thanks Big Brother, please make him wear a skirt…and tell Chanelle to put some pants on too – her arse aint any more attractive than Billi’s. Brian thinks he will “die from dehydration man” as the heat in the bedroom increases. He camply wafts himself with a fan and whines that his leg is broken as Billi stares at the twins telling them “Amanda you have the biggest eyes, but Sam yours are wider.” Say what? Either their eyes are the same are they aren’t you twerp.
Lightening and storms around my way kill the live feed so who knows what happened during the night? I imagine it wasn’t anything groundbreaking. Let’s hope Carole is evicted. She’s got nothing left to offer now and Seány and Jonathan, scary though they are, have a little depth.
Like Carole’s weeping Mrs Mop routine? Is Seány actually a leprechaun? Chillwinter@hotmail.co.uk
Tuesday 19 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 20: June 18th 2007
Charley sits down, “I don’t need no arguments. I’m showing them out there I don’t need to argue.” I give it five minutes, as soon as she spots the grubby tide mark in the bath that she left and Carole on the cleaning warpath the usual tedious, ‘I’m not been funny yea’ will start again. Its only two minutes later when she discovers water in her £200 boots and she launches into another ear bleeding whinge. Having said that, after watching Seány take a pee on the fake grass overnight, I’m not at all surprised that Charley might be worried.
Jonathan slithers around the house, exactly like that big snake off The Jungle Book. I’m still waiting for his eyes to start spinning in a hypnotic glower but I’m sure this is a trick he is reserving for the diary room. He gives me the heeby geebies. I don’t trust him. Nor Billi with his bizarre candy floss hair and sniping eyelids.
Nominations are due and suddenly everyone wants to hug and kiss and be polite. Seany’s blotted his copy by watering the boots and grass. Carole has blotted hers by telling everyone not to run on slippery surfaces, lest they fall. Huh Carole, God yeah what a bitch! Thinking of your health and safety? Silly old moo. Amanda takes only 15 minutes, probably easily persuaded by BB bosses that she must not nominate Charley under any circumstances, ‘but feel free to choose your dingbat sister with even less personality than yourself.’ “Luv it!”
Billi limps inside and last 18 minutes. Charley indulges the room with her ‘nice’ personality, all soft voice and ‘babe’ chitchat. If anyone falls for that then they deserve to be evicted for sheer foolishness. “You’ve lost weight,” Carole tells Laura. No she hasn’t Carole, not unless she’s cut her own tongue off. Brian next, and he manages a speedy 13 minutes, Carole is two better at 11 minutes (yes, I really do time these things…) Chanelle takes an age so Gerry takes the opportunity to tell Ziggy he thinks that he “has changed” and become “sad” over the week and that it’s the relationship with Chanelle that has done it. Gerry has a hungry look in his eyes when he talks to Ziggy, not the horrified look he gets when Seány drags him into a near faux homoerotic clinch, but the genuine article.
Charley follows a pale-faced Chanelle, a look of grim determination on her face. Make no mistake; she knows exactly whom she will be nominating. Tracey talks of “phat filmage” and flicks her fingers several times. I’ve given up trying to fathom Tracey at all and have resolved that she must be okay because bitchage and nastyage would have shone through by now, surely? Charley stomps out of the diary room and Gerry gleefully takes her place though I drift off and cannot be certain he even went in. Liam takes a busman’s holiday and decides to prune the plants – hopefully not the ones still containing Seány Pee. Jonathan’s nominations are fairly speedy I would hazard a guess that Nicky and a twin are in his internal eyeball target. Laura almost breaks into a run to take her turn, but thinks better of it. Her blood pressure wouldn’t be able to cope – she hasn’t run since she skipped up the steps into the house nearly three weeks ago.
The rest of the afternoon is fairly standard and dull.
An endurance swimming task is set in the world’s smallest pool. Chanelle struggles. “You are so unfit” Gerry jokes but Chanelle aint laughing. “I’m a beached whale, I feel so fat.” “Don’t be a prick Gerry” Nicky tries to retort in gest only it makes Chanelle cry even harder and Gerry storms off whining to Carole and Jonathan about being ‘insulted.’ (Is ‘prick’ really the most insulting thing he’s ever heard? I would have thought being a slightly podgy, over qualified, strangely hairless berk who doesn’t mind sticking his tongue down the throat of a crusty, glitter inhaling pixie like Seány would have warranted a much worse insult by now. ‘Arsehole’ maybe?)
The unholy alliance that is Big Brother’s mum and dad Carothan (Jonale?) riles at Nicky, demanding answers. It’s strange how a seemingly wise and sorted woman like Carole can be so quickly suckered in by a man she has known for 72 hours. I’m a telling ya! It's them devil eyes. Jonathan thinks the twins are fake – so now does Carole! Jonathan thinks Ziggy is deceitful – so now does Carole! Jonathan thinks Nicky is Satan’s spawn – so now des Carole!
Nicky tries not to tell tales about Gerry but he overhears his name and screams at her. She screams back INCREDIBLY LOUDLY as Tracey and Liam look on in utter terror. Charley is amazed that a) she’s not involved and b) at some point Gerry called Nicky fat. “You’re the next thinnest in here.” She says. “After me.” Of course.
Big Brother, bored of the arguing of skinny women and their insecurities, focus instead on an extreme close up if Seány as he pseudo-seductively flutters his eye lashes and whispers something unintelligible to camera. I feel so bilious I’d rather they cut to Billi pulling out his contact lenses. Suddenly Shabnam’s flaky scalp and mucky face don’t seem all that bad.
Think Jonathan is a schemer or a truth teller? Do you like Gerry’s grumpy side? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Jonathan slithers around the house, exactly like that big snake off The Jungle Book. I’m still waiting for his eyes to start spinning in a hypnotic glower but I’m sure this is a trick he is reserving for the diary room. He gives me the heeby geebies. I don’t trust him. Nor Billi with his bizarre candy floss hair and sniping eyelids.
Nominations are due and suddenly everyone wants to hug and kiss and be polite. Seany’s blotted his copy by watering the boots and grass. Carole has blotted hers by telling everyone not to run on slippery surfaces, lest they fall. Huh Carole, God yeah what a bitch! Thinking of your health and safety? Silly old moo. Amanda takes only 15 minutes, probably easily persuaded by BB bosses that she must not nominate Charley under any circumstances, ‘but feel free to choose your dingbat sister with even less personality than yourself.’ “Luv it!”
Billi limps inside and last 18 minutes. Charley indulges the room with her ‘nice’ personality, all soft voice and ‘babe’ chitchat. If anyone falls for that then they deserve to be evicted for sheer foolishness. “You’ve lost weight,” Carole tells Laura. No she hasn’t Carole, not unless she’s cut her own tongue off. Brian next, and he manages a speedy 13 minutes, Carole is two better at 11 minutes (yes, I really do time these things…) Chanelle takes an age so Gerry takes the opportunity to tell Ziggy he thinks that he “has changed” and become “sad” over the week and that it’s the relationship with Chanelle that has done it. Gerry has a hungry look in his eyes when he talks to Ziggy, not the horrified look he gets when Seány drags him into a near faux homoerotic clinch, but the genuine article.
Charley follows a pale-faced Chanelle, a look of grim determination on her face. Make no mistake; she knows exactly whom she will be nominating. Tracey talks of “phat filmage” and flicks her fingers several times. I’ve given up trying to fathom Tracey at all and have resolved that she must be okay because bitchage and nastyage would have shone through by now, surely? Charley stomps out of the diary room and Gerry gleefully takes her place though I drift off and cannot be certain he even went in. Liam takes a busman’s holiday and decides to prune the plants – hopefully not the ones still containing Seány Pee. Jonathan’s nominations are fairly speedy I would hazard a guess that Nicky and a twin are in his internal eyeball target. Laura almost breaks into a run to take her turn, but thinks better of it. Her blood pressure wouldn’t be able to cope – she hasn’t run since she skipped up the steps into the house nearly three weeks ago.
The rest of the afternoon is fairly standard and dull.
An endurance swimming task is set in the world’s smallest pool. Chanelle struggles. “You are so unfit” Gerry jokes but Chanelle aint laughing. “I’m a beached whale, I feel so fat.” “Don’t be a prick Gerry” Nicky tries to retort in gest only it makes Chanelle cry even harder and Gerry storms off whining to Carole and Jonathan about being ‘insulted.’ (Is ‘prick’ really the most insulting thing he’s ever heard? I would have thought being a slightly podgy, over qualified, strangely hairless berk who doesn’t mind sticking his tongue down the throat of a crusty, glitter inhaling pixie like Seány would have warranted a much worse insult by now. ‘Arsehole’ maybe?)
The unholy alliance that is Big Brother’s mum and dad Carothan (Jonale?) riles at Nicky, demanding answers. It’s strange how a seemingly wise and sorted woman like Carole can be so quickly suckered in by a man she has known for 72 hours. I’m a telling ya! It's them devil eyes. Jonathan thinks the twins are fake – so now does Carole! Jonathan thinks Ziggy is deceitful – so now does Carole! Jonathan thinks Nicky is Satan’s spawn – so now des Carole!
Nicky tries not to tell tales about Gerry but he overhears his name and screams at her. She screams back INCREDIBLY LOUDLY as Tracey and Liam look on in utter terror. Charley is amazed that a) she’s not involved and b) at some point Gerry called Nicky fat. “You’re the next thinnest in here.” She says. “After me.” Of course.
Big Brother, bored of the arguing of skinny women and their insecurities, focus instead on an extreme close up if Seány as he pseudo-seductively flutters his eye lashes and whispers something unintelligible to camera. I feel so bilious I’d rather they cut to Billi pulling out his contact lenses. Suddenly Shabnam’s flaky scalp and mucky face don’t seem all that bad.
Think Jonathan is a schemer or a truth teller? Do you like Gerry’s grumpy side? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Monday 18 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Days 17 18 and 19 - 1th June 2007
Eviction night more or less whimpered on to screen. Struggling against the inexplicably popular Britain’s Got Talent (it doesn’t – all weeping kids nursing shattered dreams and big-busted women in ill-fitting leotards? Talent. Yeah, sure.) and a second episode of Coronation Street (Claire Peacock sure is determined that one of her sons will be hit by a car). Carole, a moany woman of 53 who looks 30 years older, Tracey a conservative raver and Shabnam a vainglorious monstrosity of mental illness, desperation and BO – waited with a mixure of hope and fear for eviction. Hope they would leave Charley behind and fear that they might not.
The day has been tense. Charley gets an official warning for masterminding a plan to plaster a sleeping Gerry with eyeliner as he lies in ignorance. The group decides she’s trouble and shun her, only they forget that in order to successfully shun someone you shouldn’t be talking to them or fixing their hair. Everyone waits for the eviction – Davina announces that four more men are to go in as Shabnam (dead cert) leaves – no doubt adding further to the air of disappointment already saturating the air.
The men enter – Housemate 15 is Billi, a 25-year-old model. He’s “bored” modelling (there is only so much pouting and scowling in sync anyone can do). He wants to become a fashion advisor, a sort of low rent, disingenuous Gok Wan. He has to straighten his mad curly hair every day, he loves to wrestle and go “women hunting” since “standards are lower at 3.30am.” It’s clear when he enters that he quite likes the triplets – Amanda, Sam and Chanelle. Billi scares me; his agency name is ‘Massimo.’ The crowd, when not indifferent, are bored. I have no hopes.
House Reaction: An oddly ‘meh’ feel. Gerry thinks he may be gay.
Housemate 16 is Jonathan. He is 49, a poor man’s East End gangster. He’s a millionaire with no taste and a dark side. He can’t be humiliated apparently (please!) and he’s “blunt and cutting” (pah) and enjoys people looking at him. I hope he lives up to it – I suspect he won’t. His money and brashness will instantly attract Charley and annoy Tracey and Seany. He is strangely camp.
House Reaction: Craziness. The twins embrace him and Shabnam immediately tries to set him up with Carole. He says something to Tracey that makes her pull a face of either horror or delight – but I never get to find out.
Housemate 17 is Liam, a 22-year-old tree surgeon from Durham. He has a fit body and a nice ish face. He also plays cricket. The girls love him, Nicky especially. He seems a canny lad, and knows more than he lets on. I like him. He’s one to watch.
Housemate 18 is Brian a 19-year-old IT man from Essex. He loves to party and thinks he looks like 50 Cent. He seems a good soul really, I get good vibes – he loves people and will always be up for a confrontation. Brian gets quite a good reception; he loves cosmic ordering and lives with his apparently formidable mum.
House Reaction: Mental. Charley and the twins go mad. Seany is delighted, Ziggy is glad of some more testosterone, but sadly, Charley knows him.
Shabnam is evicted with a massive 81.4% of the vote (out of 3?). “Please don’t boo me” she whines “ I’m fun. I love you all!” she acts crackers and the crowd inevitably revert to type, “off, off, off” they cry. “Who are you, who are you, who are you?”
The next day the new men are made to sing for their supper in an entirely cringeworthty and embarrassing rendition of YMCA, dressed as the Village People. I’m not sure I will ever eradicate the image of Jonathan as Native American chief…I’m shuddering now.
Charley has another major strop over the dreaded and hopefully-soon-to-be-binned hair straightners. Nicky asserts it must be because she managed a whole day of no arguing and something had to give. Charley thinks someone is “trying to make me look stupid? Singularly forgetting that she has a plethora of idiot skills all of her own. Billi feels the wrath considering he loves straightening himself (aint that the truth). Brian feels awkward, he tries to be wise, tries to counsel Charley but the woman is a stranger to wisdom as she is a stranger to decorum.
Only Seany remains with any patience for the increasingly isolated Charley – but then, he works with hundreds of ‘disengaged youths’ everyday and he has a touch of madness himself (Michael Jackson?). Laura is blamed for leaving the hair straightener gas on immediately re-igniting (!) her bulldog chewing a wasp face, which sets in for the duration.
Liam has everyone sussed in a heartbeat – Charley is a “lick arse” Ziggy is “canny” and Chanelle is the “most attractive” – the others need to “work hard”. Liam is like the male version of Chanelle, pretty on the outside, smart as hell on the inside. I think I might like him.
Carole gets to play mother, much to Jonathan’s pleasure. There’s no chemistry there, just a brotherly sisterly affection. Tracey suddenly relaxes, Sam and Amanda become obsessed with Brian, and Laura grumps. Business is as it ever was.
Love the new men? Prefer tuneless fat men as the representation of Britain’s talent?
Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
The day has been tense. Charley gets an official warning for masterminding a plan to plaster a sleeping Gerry with eyeliner as he lies in ignorance. The group decides she’s trouble and shun her, only they forget that in order to successfully shun someone you shouldn’t be talking to them or fixing their hair. Everyone waits for the eviction – Davina announces that four more men are to go in as Shabnam (dead cert) leaves – no doubt adding further to the air of disappointment already saturating the air.
The men enter – Housemate 15 is Billi, a 25-year-old model. He’s “bored” modelling (there is only so much pouting and scowling in sync anyone can do). He wants to become a fashion advisor, a sort of low rent, disingenuous Gok Wan. He has to straighten his mad curly hair every day, he loves to wrestle and go “women hunting” since “standards are lower at 3.30am.” It’s clear when he enters that he quite likes the triplets – Amanda, Sam and Chanelle. Billi scares me; his agency name is ‘Massimo.’ The crowd, when not indifferent, are bored. I have no hopes.
House Reaction: An oddly ‘meh’ feel. Gerry thinks he may be gay.
Housemate 16 is Jonathan. He is 49, a poor man’s East End gangster. He’s a millionaire with no taste and a dark side. He can’t be humiliated apparently (please!) and he’s “blunt and cutting” (pah) and enjoys people looking at him. I hope he lives up to it – I suspect he won’t. His money and brashness will instantly attract Charley and annoy Tracey and Seany. He is strangely camp.
House Reaction: Craziness. The twins embrace him and Shabnam immediately tries to set him up with Carole. He says something to Tracey that makes her pull a face of either horror or delight – but I never get to find out.
Housemate 17 is Liam, a 22-year-old tree surgeon from Durham. He has a fit body and a nice ish face. He also plays cricket. The girls love him, Nicky especially. He seems a canny lad, and knows more than he lets on. I like him. He’s one to watch.
Housemate 18 is Brian a 19-year-old IT man from Essex. He loves to party and thinks he looks like 50 Cent. He seems a good soul really, I get good vibes – he loves people and will always be up for a confrontation. Brian gets quite a good reception; he loves cosmic ordering and lives with his apparently formidable mum.
House Reaction: Mental. Charley and the twins go mad. Seany is delighted, Ziggy is glad of some more testosterone, but sadly, Charley knows him.
Shabnam is evicted with a massive 81.4% of the vote (out of 3?). “Please don’t boo me” she whines “ I’m fun. I love you all!” she acts crackers and the crowd inevitably revert to type, “off, off, off” they cry. “Who are you, who are you, who are you?”
The next day the new men are made to sing for their supper in an entirely cringeworthty and embarrassing rendition of YMCA, dressed as the Village People. I’m not sure I will ever eradicate the image of Jonathan as Native American chief…I’m shuddering now.
Charley has another major strop over the dreaded and hopefully-soon-to-be-binned hair straightners. Nicky asserts it must be because she managed a whole day of no arguing and something had to give. Charley thinks someone is “trying to make me look stupid? Singularly forgetting that she has a plethora of idiot skills all of her own. Billi feels the wrath considering he loves straightening himself (aint that the truth). Brian feels awkward, he tries to be wise, tries to counsel Charley but the woman is a stranger to wisdom as she is a stranger to decorum.
Only Seany remains with any patience for the increasingly isolated Charley – but then, he works with hundreds of ‘disengaged youths’ everyday and he has a touch of madness himself (Michael Jackson?). Laura is blamed for leaving the hair straightener gas on immediately re-igniting (!) her bulldog chewing a wasp face, which sets in for the duration.
Liam has everyone sussed in a heartbeat – Charley is a “lick arse” Ziggy is “canny” and Chanelle is the “most attractive” – the others need to “work hard”. Liam is like the male version of Chanelle, pretty on the outside, smart as hell on the inside. I think I might like him.
Carole gets to play mother, much to Jonathan’s pleasure. There’s no chemistry there, just a brotherly sisterly affection. Tracey suddenly relaxes, Sam and Amanda become obsessed with Brian, and Laura grumps. Business is as it ever was.
Love the new men? Prefer tuneless fat men as the representation of Britain’s talent?
Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Tuesday 12 June 2007
Big Brother - Day 13 - June 11th 2007
Charley and Shabnam sit up all night spewing venomous drivel about Chanelle. It’s not even remotely unpleasant to watch, just ever so tedious and tiresome. Aware that the cameras are on her, Charley decides she will once again be on “the front page of every paper” by having a quick contrived snog with Shab. Let it go Charley, I hardly think The Guardian will snub the G8, Darfur and Gordon Brown just to see your slavering chops attached to some other horrendous wannabe with a Care in the Community Order. Charley must be very desperate…the last person who went within a mile radius of Shabnam’s gob is now in an MRSA induced coma.
The morning comes and it takes all of two seconds after the alarm for Charley to start up again. It’s as if she has a Bitch Switch at the back of her head and someone unseen turns her off at around 4am before she automatically reinstalls it at alarm time. Nicky is on the receiving end because she had too many cigs, or too few. I can’t tell, Charley’s trap is in full throttle, like a rollercoaster with a turbo engine “not been funny yea, but me of all people yea, and anyway yea, I aint even saying that, but you see I dunt even know yea, because” Shut. Up. Idiot.
Seany sports a hat that makes him look like a Smurf, only more hairy and sinister. He’s recovered from his day long perv sessions, I mean Interview Task to help Nicky calm down a rearrange the fridge. Carole sits and eats a banana quietly. I’m quite convinced Carole has laced all of her fruit with some mind altering drug that she managed, allegedly, to get from Tracey on opening night. How else can she stand to watch and listen to the endless, repetitive and not even slightly interesting goings on in the house? She must be off her tits.
Since nominations are due Shabnam decides to wash her clothes, which must be the first time in about seventeen years. Once she has managed to chisel them from their rotting position on the floor, carpet melting slowly beneath, she leaves them stagnating in the bath until Carole declares they are “disgusting” and need sorting.
Gerry decides to indulge in a bit of his own sniffing and lays on Ziggy’s bed, inhaling deeply. I hope to all that is holy and decent that this will not be a repeat of the Anthony-Craig-Anthony lust triangle we endured in BB6. I’m not sure my fingertips could stand another all night gnawing as Gerry coos “I’ll look after you” like a serial killer picking up a drunken hitchhiker.
Ziggy lays under the sun lounger trying to sleep without the constant whirring of Charley’s mouth and Sam and Amanda’s “woo”. The camera zooms in. I’m sorry but no way is Ziggy 26. His skin is leathery. Hard to believe he and I popped out of our mamas in 1981. Not unless his mother got pregnant in 1968 and delayed his birth through hard work and gin.
The twins have been selected to nominate alongside Seany and Gerry. Clearly this was an easy choice, a cop out. Sam and Amanda are so bland, so indecipherable and impenetrable it is impossible to tell who they do and don’t like and if they are capable of independent thought. Will Amanda transmit her scary telepathic twinnish thoughts to Sam when it comes to her turn? Will they nominate one another? Will they both do everyone a favour and nominate Charley? The excitement is sure to kill me.
Chanelle and Ziggy spoon in bed. Again. There is so much slurpage I have to hit mute. How boring are these two? They never have a conversation except for Ziggy speaking very fast and mumbly about nothing and Chanelle saying, “oh, I know”. Even more shocking is the sudden Gerry and Seany flirtation, grins and ear strokes and general burgeoning lust. I honestly thought Gerry would have better taste and I’m still not convinced Seany is gay, not the way his eyes appraise Amanda’s breasts at every opportunity. For the 180th time today, Nicky whines “I’m not going to get stressed about food” before she gets stressed about food.
Carole dances to the alarm, a mass of wobbling flesh and wild hair. She’s the only one so far today holding my interest. Shabnam fishes for nomination news but Amanda and Gerry buffer her annoying talk and discuss Laura’s future career in undertaking instead.
Anyone else bored?
Fascinated by recent events? Worry that Seany is not quite “there”? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
The morning comes and it takes all of two seconds after the alarm for Charley to start up again. It’s as if she has a Bitch Switch at the back of her head and someone unseen turns her off at around 4am before she automatically reinstalls it at alarm time. Nicky is on the receiving end because she had too many cigs, or too few. I can’t tell, Charley’s trap is in full throttle, like a rollercoaster with a turbo engine “not been funny yea, but me of all people yea, and anyway yea, I aint even saying that, but you see I dunt even know yea, because” Shut. Up. Idiot.
Seany sports a hat that makes him look like a Smurf, only more hairy and sinister. He’s recovered from his day long perv sessions, I mean Interview Task to help Nicky calm down a rearrange the fridge. Carole sits and eats a banana quietly. I’m quite convinced Carole has laced all of her fruit with some mind altering drug that she managed, allegedly, to get from Tracey on opening night. How else can she stand to watch and listen to the endless, repetitive and not even slightly interesting goings on in the house? She must be off her tits.
Since nominations are due Shabnam decides to wash her clothes, which must be the first time in about seventeen years. Once she has managed to chisel them from their rotting position on the floor, carpet melting slowly beneath, she leaves them stagnating in the bath until Carole declares they are “disgusting” and need sorting.
Gerry decides to indulge in a bit of his own sniffing and lays on Ziggy’s bed, inhaling deeply. I hope to all that is holy and decent that this will not be a repeat of the Anthony-Craig-Anthony lust triangle we endured in BB6. I’m not sure my fingertips could stand another all night gnawing as Gerry coos “I’ll look after you” like a serial killer picking up a drunken hitchhiker.
Ziggy lays under the sun lounger trying to sleep without the constant whirring of Charley’s mouth and Sam and Amanda’s “woo”. The camera zooms in. I’m sorry but no way is Ziggy 26. His skin is leathery. Hard to believe he and I popped out of our mamas in 1981. Not unless his mother got pregnant in 1968 and delayed his birth through hard work and gin.
The twins have been selected to nominate alongside Seany and Gerry. Clearly this was an easy choice, a cop out. Sam and Amanda are so bland, so indecipherable and impenetrable it is impossible to tell who they do and don’t like and if they are capable of independent thought. Will Amanda transmit her scary telepathic twinnish thoughts to Sam when it comes to her turn? Will they nominate one another? Will they both do everyone a favour and nominate Charley? The excitement is sure to kill me.
Chanelle and Ziggy spoon in bed. Again. There is so much slurpage I have to hit mute. How boring are these two? They never have a conversation except for Ziggy speaking very fast and mumbly about nothing and Chanelle saying, “oh, I know”. Even more shocking is the sudden Gerry and Seany flirtation, grins and ear strokes and general burgeoning lust. I honestly thought Gerry would have better taste and I’m still not convinced Seany is gay, not the way his eyes appraise Amanda’s breasts at every opportunity. For the 180th time today, Nicky whines “I’m not going to get stressed about food” before she gets stressed about food.
Carole dances to the alarm, a mass of wobbling flesh and wild hair. She’s the only one so far today holding my interest. Shabnam fishes for nomination news but Amanda and Gerry buffer her annoying talk and discuss Laura’s future career in undertaking instead.
Anyone else bored?
Fascinated by recent events? Worry that Seany is not quite “there”? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Monday 11 June 2007
Big Brother 8 - Day 12 - June 10th 2007
Someone crapped on the floor. Tracey suggests it could be a “small mammal.” Yes, Trace, my money is on Shabnam. Charley thinks she can see a footprint in it. She’s lucky her face didn’t end up in after she spent the night Ziggy baiting, stealing Nicky’s alcohol and allowing the increasingly stressed young old man to deal with the brunt of Nicky’s depression inducing temper. The next day, Nicky and Lesley discuss men. Lesley wants passion. A strange hungry look creeps over her face, the sort of look that could frighten the horses. She knows two men will enter on Friday…she can almost smell them. “What can a man give you?” She asks Nicky. Think about it Lesley. Arrange these words into a well know sentence To Seeing Good Right A!
Carole attempts to occupy the dullards by prizing them away from sunbathing and encouraging them to take part in a sack race. Big Brother scuppers any effort at fun and confines everyone to the house. Ziggy pines for some testosterone company…he finds himself bitching and arguing and talking about emotions, he practically a girl. He worries for Chanelle’s “innocence” fearing she may be “corrupted” although his fears soon die away when a scantily clad Chanelle invites him into bed. Turns out Ziggy is the only one allowed to do any corrupting.
By Friday night two more men are desperately shoved into the house…I’m worried that some over auditioned London himbo who knows Charley from the party scene is about to descend. First in is Gerry a 31-year-old “Greek poof academic”. He’s a gay man who is fed up with boys, over qualified and unemployable. His hobby is basically sex. I sense he is almost a kindred spirit with good old Nicky…I can see them bonding over sugar puffs and ancient civilisation.
Seany, the missing Irish member of Goldie Lookin' Chain is next. He’s a 25-year-old Michael Jackson fan…he even supported him at his trial. A gay man who was “once straight” Seany is a 25-year-old youth worker who hates camp guys and elderly people and dresses like Shabnam's smellier male alter ego. He milks the crowd so much they go from cheers to boos in four and half seconds. Fat legged girls with over bleached hair chant, “Get Charley Out” something duly noted in Seany’s mind. He waits nervously by the door until Sam and Amanda wrestle him to the ground in a rush of oestrogen.
My spidey sense tingles with Seany. I do not like the man…he’s too consciously ‘wacky’ where it comes naturally to Tracey. He’s got narrow eyes and a very cold face…although having said that I’ll probably end up loving him in a few weeks and joining some crazed internet forum of love just for him. I prefer Gerry; he at least has a sense of gratitude, humour and intelligence. I feel bad for slagging Ziggy off now, he aint so bad in comparison.
Tragedy strikes on Saturday when fabulous Lesley Brain decides to leave. She’s too bored to cope and she has smelt the very same bad smell I get with Seany. It’s a pity…she was the only reason I was watching. I blame Seany…he should never have lifted Lesley’s duvet (thank God that’s not a euphemism).
Laura whines and bitches. I had high hopes for Laura but her personality consists entirely of having those “hilarious” big wangers. I’m bored of her twittering on about Ziggy and Chanelle. Her face is so sour she could put herself off food – and that’s saying something. Charley worries about the “Get Charley Out” chants but Nicky tells her to “turn it around”. Nicky dear, Charley would have to save an orphanage of blind one-limbed children from the ravages of fire for that crowd to like her.
My live feed broke down. I really didn’t care. That’s not a good omen.
Love the new housemates? Worry that BO is pungent in the air? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Carole attempts to occupy the dullards by prizing them away from sunbathing and encouraging them to take part in a sack race. Big Brother scuppers any effort at fun and confines everyone to the house. Ziggy pines for some testosterone company…he finds himself bitching and arguing and talking about emotions, he practically a girl. He worries for Chanelle’s “innocence” fearing she may be “corrupted” although his fears soon die away when a scantily clad Chanelle invites him into bed. Turns out Ziggy is the only one allowed to do any corrupting.
By Friday night two more men are desperately shoved into the house…I’m worried that some over auditioned London himbo who knows Charley from the party scene is about to descend. First in is Gerry a 31-year-old “Greek poof academic”. He’s a gay man who is fed up with boys, over qualified and unemployable. His hobby is basically sex. I sense he is almost a kindred spirit with good old Nicky…I can see them bonding over sugar puffs and ancient civilisation.
Seany, the missing Irish member of Goldie Lookin' Chain is next. He’s a 25-year-old Michael Jackson fan…he even supported him at his trial. A gay man who was “once straight” Seany is a 25-year-old youth worker who hates camp guys and elderly people and dresses like Shabnam's smellier male alter ego. He milks the crowd so much they go from cheers to boos in four and half seconds. Fat legged girls with over bleached hair chant, “Get Charley Out” something duly noted in Seany’s mind. He waits nervously by the door until Sam and Amanda wrestle him to the ground in a rush of oestrogen.
My spidey sense tingles with Seany. I do not like the man…he’s too consciously ‘wacky’ where it comes naturally to Tracey. He’s got narrow eyes and a very cold face…although having said that I’ll probably end up loving him in a few weeks and joining some crazed internet forum of love just for him. I prefer Gerry; he at least has a sense of gratitude, humour and intelligence. I feel bad for slagging Ziggy off now, he aint so bad in comparison.
Tragedy strikes on Saturday when fabulous Lesley Brain decides to leave. She’s too bored to cope and she has smelt the very same bad smell I get with Seany. It’s a pity…she was the only reason I was watching. I blame Seany…he should never have lifted Lesley’s duvet (thank God that’s not a euphemism).
Laura whines and bitches. I had high hopes for Laura but her personality consists entirely of having those “hilarious” big wangers. I’m bored of her twittering on about Ziggy and Chanelle. Her face is so sour she could put herself off food – and that’s saying something. Charley worries about the “Get Charley Out” chants but Nicky tells her to “turn it around”. Nicky dear, Charley would have to save an orphanage of blind one-limbed children from the ravages of fire for that crowd to like her.
My live feed broke down. I really didn’t care. That’s not a good omen.
Love the new housemates? Worry that BO is pungent in the air? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Friday 8 June 2007
Big Brother 8: Day 10 8th June 2007
The trouble with hastily enforced OfCom dictated new rules is that you have to stick to them.
Emily, the blonde empty eyed Hollyoaks clone with the voice like a posh Orville the Duck, postponed her tedious rows with Chanelle to dance in her pants in the garden with Charley and Nicky. She tried to be hip, she tried to be jive…she somehow ended up calling Charley a n***er. Heck! Emily retired to bed and hoped no one saw. Charley and Nicky twittered on about how nothing had happened, immediately piquing the interest of the entire house who guessed exactly what was said. Fifteen worn out Channel 4 Executives sat with their heads in their hands, a vision of Shilpa Shetty’s wholesome tears rushing through their minds. Emily is dragged knickerless out of bed at 3.30am and instantly ejected from the house for her racist remarks.
Lesley is unperturbed. Emily’s “stirring” had met a buffer in Lesley. She reads Big Brother’s laminate explanation with no emotion save a twinkle of superciliousness. Ziggy/Zac, a 26-year-old man of 44 nods knowingly, stating that what Emily said was “not cool” before comforting Charley and rubbing Chanelle’s neck. The mood is one of deflation.
Shabnam Soap Dodger, a woman so mucky Channel 4 already employed her in a series about mucky people, is spared her eviction. Still, in Shabnam Land everything is always “great” and everyone “gorgeous.” “I’m just here for exposure” she opines several times a minute. Shabnam dear, please stop exposing it…I for one don’t want to see it. Big Brother cannot be bothered to continue with Shabnam’s punishment now Emily has gone. They relent meekly and the shower room is opened and skanky Shab finally gets a wash. The colour of her bath water! Ugh.
Vapid Twin 1 straightens Chanelle’s hair whilst Vapid Twin 2 looks on. Charley plays the racially abused victim, “Emily wasn’t offensive yeah, but you know, yeah, she so shouldn’t have said it yeah?” I’m sure Charley thinks this will win it for her, after all it worked for Shilpa. Charley my love, Shilpa had decorum and a career you have a size zero arse and a gob like a rip in the space time continuum.
Carole discovers something dangerously close to a personality, something she has successfully hidden since her entrance VT. She decides to play a trick on Lesley which I somehow doubt will go down well. Tracey flops around the house “‘aving it” and “dealing wiv it” extending her annoying repertoire of adding “age” to absolutely bloody everything; Ruleage was broken, Boobage was on display. Someone had a cup of tea-age. Tracey – piss offage and have a washage!
Laura the woman who apprently needs more food than anyone else (you don’t get fat through need my dear, just greed. And thyroid.) lollops on the sofa in her dressing gown contributing nothing, not even a jolly Myfanwyism. She’s a bit like Jo O’Meara but lacking the reckless edge. Since she was prized away from the fridge by Nicky the Fringe, Laura has offered nothing, not even a small undercurrent of wit. Thank goodness for Lesley, a grumpy bossy old woman who I think I shall model myself on.
With the moronic but strangely compulsive Emily gone, Big Brother really needs some men. I’m a free thinking, future loving feminist and all that balls but please…a couple of Alpha males and a miserable old sod would do the house a world of good, plus Ziggy/Zac, the lipless, leather-faced sh*t stirrer needs someone to call him out. Lesley needs someone who might, just might, get her asides and her jokes. Charley needs another excuse to talk about herself and complain, “I’m not being funny yeah? But…” etc etc etc. Thankfully, two men are to enter tonight.
God rest Emily, long live a man of distinction.
Think Charley is a victim? Trust Ziggy with your life? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Emily, the blonde empty eyed Hollyoaks clone with the voice like a posh Orville the Duck, postponed her tedious rows with Chanelle to dance in her pants in the garden with Charley and Nicky. She tried to be hip, she tried to be jive…she somehow ended up calling Charley a n***er. Heck! Emily retired to bed and hoped no one saw. Charley and Nicky twittered on about how nothing had happened, immediately piquing the interest of the entire house who guessed exactly what was said. Fifteen worn out Channel 4 Executives sat with their heads in their hands, a vision of Shilpa Shetty’s wholesome tears rushing through their minds. Emily is dragged knickerless out of bed at 3.30am and instantly ejected from the house for her racist remarks.
Lesley is unperturbed. Emily’s “stirring” had met a buffer in Lesley. She reads Big Brother’s laminate explanation with no emotion save a twinkle of superciliousness. Ziggy/Zac, a 26-year-old man of 44 nods knowingly, stating that what Emily said was “not cool” before comforting Charley and rubbing Chanelle’s neck. The mood is one of deflation.
Shabnam Soap Dodger, a woman so mucky Channel 4 already employed her in a series about mucky people, is spared her eviction. Still, in Shabnam Land everything is always “great” and everyone “gorgeous.” “I’m just here for exposure” she opines several times a minute. Shabnam dear, please stop exposing it…I for one don’t want to see it. Big Brother cannot be bothered to continue with Shabnam’s punishment now Emily has gone. They relent meekly and the shower room is opened and skanky Shab finally gets a wash. The colour of her bath water! Ugh.
Vapid Twin 1 straightens Chanelle’s hair whilst Vapid Twin 2 looks on. Charley plays the racially abused victim, “Emily wasn’t offensive yeah, but you know, yeah, she so shouldn’t have said it yeah?” I’m sure Charley thinks this will win it for her, after all it worked for Shilpa. Charley my love, Shilpa had decorum and a career you have a size zero arse and a gob like a rip in the space time continuum.
Carole discovers something dangerously close to a personality, something she has successfully hidden since her entrance VT. She decides to play a trick on Lesley which I somehow doubt will go down well. Tracey flops around the house “‘aving it” and “dealing wiv it” extending her annoying repertoire of adding “age” to absolutely bloody everything; Ruleage was broken, Boobage was on display. Someone had a cup of tea-age. Tracey – piss offage and have a washage!
Laura the woman who apprently needs more food than anyone else (you don’t get fat through need my dear, just greed. And thyroid.) lollops on the sofa in her dressing gown contributing nothing, not even a jolly Myfanwyism. She’s a bit like Jo O’Meara but lacking the reckless edge. Since she was prized away from the fridge by Nicky the Fringe, Laura has offered nothing, not even a small undercurrent of wit. Thank goodness for Lesley, a grumpy bossy old woman who I think I shall model myself on.
With the moronic but strangely compulsive Emily gone, Big Brother really needs some men. I’m a free thinking, future loving feminist and all that balls but please…a couple of Alpha males and a miserable old sod would do the house a world of good, plus Ziggy/Zac, the lipless, leather-faced sh*t stirrer needs someone to call him out. Lesley needs someone who might, just might, get her asides and her jokes. Charley needs another excuse to talk about herself and complain, “I’m not being funny yeah? But…” etc etc etc. Thankfully, two men are to enter tonight.
God rest Emily, long live a man of distinction.
Think Charley is a victim? Trust Ziggy with your life? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Thursday 31 May 2007
Big Brother 8: Opening Night: 30th May 2007
So, Big Brother returned, rumours abound of an all-female house, major twists, shocks etc. I idly tuned in, mainly to satiate a rush of self loathing.
The show began with an OfCom enforced apology. Somewhere in Channel 4 Towers I imagine the poor continuity announcer, bound by the hands, tied to a wheel-able armless office chair, shoved at a desk where he was made to read out the ever-so-sincere apology – a grimace audible down the microphone. I searched for subliminal ‘F*ck you OfCom – Jade Goody rules!’ but saw none. I hoped for grovelling, I didn’t get any. I get a feeling the whole summer will be as disappointing.
Davina shimmered into view, all sallow cheeks and leather clad – no more mention of the horror of Celebrity Big Brother. It’s like it never happened! A rudimentary tour of the house got underway, gaudy Perspex, giant beds that promises to “sleep six” and a bath in the living room (tit and arse shots guaranteed). With a panic strewn heart I looked for another House Next Door and I’m sure (hoping) there wasn’t one.
The parade of God awful, brain dead, over bleached and cellulite free morons commenced – almost all as the Daily Star predicted (god, they’re good!) – all women…after a fashion.
First in: 18-year-old twins Sam and Amanda, ‘social work students’ (Gawd help us all) who love pink, shopping, clothes and Barbies. It’s as though someone has trapped the soul of my three-year-old niece into the adult bodies of two berks…and then removed the brain. Cute, like two Bratz dolls left out in the sun too long, the pair jiggled and wobbled, said “luv it, luv it” and “woo” a lot very unconvincingly and finished each other’s sentences. They played the Thick Card, hated ‘chavs’ (the irony!) and proclaimed “everyone loves us!” I highly doubt even their parents are all that keen.
Crowd Reaction: Boos. Of course. Hell, I nearly booed and I was 200 miles away with half an eye on The Apprentice.
Prediction: Out soon. Friday I hope. I’m praying they are one entity and they won’t be forced to be separated, one pining wide eyed at the door as Bozo Twin 2 parties large at China Whites with Nikki Grahame and Calum Best.
Second in: Lesley, a 60-year-old retired head hunter who looks like my Auntie Janet but with a better speaking voice. The VT showed her manicured kitchen. She stood only feet away from a book so she is clearly what passes as the ‘intelligent’ quota and she will, therefore, come to her senses within 72 hours as soon as she spots young Pedro’s* erection in the pool one morning when the twins jiggle in tandem. (* Pedro is stereotypical boy who I’m sure is only hours away from our screens.) Lesley is “unpredictable” and hates to be “messed about.” Er, this is Big Brother. Idiot! I for one an immensely looking forward to one of Lesley’s “temper tantrums.” That might even be worth the live streaming fee. Lesley thinks she’ll win. Get a grip woman!
Crowd Reaction: Boos and a half hearted murmur of disinterest.
Prediction: Will walk, run, flee, escape, take flight, disappear, abscond….you get it.
Third in: 21-year-old Charley, an unemployed and unemployable London “It Gewl” with a boob job that couldn’t be more obvious if she'd had them sellotaped to her arse cheeks. Charley writhed her tiny bum in denim shorts and spouted inane crap about “gahin’ aaahhtt” and “baaayyyin’ cloaves” even though she had no job. She financed her cliché ridden existence through her cousin Kieran Richardson, seemingly the only member of her gene pool with any discernible talent, a Man Utd star who bought her a Mini Cooper. Oh Kieran, if only BMW developed brains, then your cash would have been better invested. You have to question the credentials of anyone who has their own name as a tattoo – are you ever likely to forget?
Crowd Reaction: Boos beyond belief…well, no. Not really I expected them. “Get her out!” before she even went in. Marvellous.
Prediction: She’ll be a grower. I think she’ll become a firm favourite soon. That, or a complete cow. These women, eh? No middle ground.
Fourth in: Tracey, a 36-year-old cleaner trapped in 1991 with her Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Shitcoat, pink hair and love of “getting it in a field” (that meant something so different in 2001.) She ‘danced’ on to the stage and talked about how she liked to get “f*cked and bolloxed” and how much she loves her job. She likes the buzz, hates liars and is a happy person because she’s a “nice person.” She sets off good vibes in me even though I have spent the night worrying she may descend into a Tourettes-lite Pete Bennett ‘worthy’ winner who is ever so, ever so, ever so whacky.
Crowd Reaction: Fairly good. None sexually attractive women always do well.
Prediction: If she doesn’t go crackers and at the prospect of no all night, Acid House raves and no glow-in-the-dark babies dummies on a string, she’ll do well.
Fifth in: Chanelle, a 19-year-old from Wakefield who is a prettier version of Victoria Beckham but with none of the charm or ability to bag a millionaire husband, thus forgoing this reality TV shite. She’s clearly smarter than she likes people to think – a terrible indictment of the 21st century is the perpetual, shameful hiding of intellect under a bushel most media hungry women indulge in. Chanelle wants to “give Yorkshire a good name” - well considering she is following in the footsteps of Justine (Who? Exactly!) and ‘Lesleh’ (dumpy gobshite with a heart of stone) it won’t be too difficult.
Crowd Reaction: Pretty girl? Half a working brain? They hate her. Of course. One man bravely cheers.
Prediction: If she is, in fact, not a plant, I think I might like her. I’ll swim against the tide.
Sixth in: Shabnam, a 22-year-old jobless Londoner (Blimey, is there no other city in the entire UK in which to find an unemployed bint?). Shabs is crazy. We know this because she tells us so thirty six times a minute and describes how everyone thinks she’s “nutty” and “mad”. She wears pink gloves, a yellow scarf and shakes her hips like a Nan at a disco. Yeah man! Wild! Her personality is “larger than life” apparently and she loves make up. (Good. Lord.) She likes food and thinks she talks sense. Why do I see her at the centre of a lot of rows?
Crowd Reaction: A relative cheer, hardcore boos. She acts like a knob and gets many more boos.
Prediction: I somehow sense antipathy.
Seventh in: Emily is a 19-year-old drama student and is exactly how you would imagine a 19-year-old drama student. The possessor of misplaced self worth, arrogance and an immediately irritating voice, she seems the sort of girl men will love and girls will hate. She’s one of those well- off types you encounter at university who can’t understand why your daddy hasn’t bought you a brand new car yet despite the fact that a) daddy ran off with a teenage neighbour when you were six or b) he’s still into “manual work” and can’t even afford his own teeth. She looks like Peaches Geldof but with a face you don’t want to punch quite as much. She wants to meet a Pete Doherty type in the house. Don’t be stupid woman! After bullies, racists and trans-gendered anorexics do you really think Endemol would stoop so low as to recruit skanky smack heads as entertainment? What am I saying? Yes. Yes they would. (Kidney? Anyone?)
Crowd Reaction: Half boos, half-hearted claps. Silence, mainly.
Prediction: Errrr? Nowt really. Nowt.
Eighth in: Laura, a 23-year-old nanny is basically a chubby Emo who has forgotten that smiling and pink are banned by the Emo MySpace Massive. Laura is instantly nice but then, so was Grace last year (gulp). Laura is fattish so women like her. She also has a caring job, a cute accent and a sense of self-deprecation (last spotted in 2002 with Alison…only five years in the waiting. Good grief). She wants the dead to look “nice” and she talks quickly like a Welsh Vicky Pollard. She’s fiercely anti-smoking and pro-cooking and has embraced a long lost little known concept called fun.
Crowd Reaction: Good. Cheers, mainly.
Prediction: Difficult. Mid ranging, I think.
Ninth in: Nicky, a 27-year-old admin worker. She has a big fringe and a small frame. Adopted from India into an Irish Catholic family, she loves to smoke (oh now I see the conflict aspect...racism was so last year, smokingism is the key). She’s “sick” of men and seems quite grumpy. I like that. As someone of a similar age and job role as Nicky, I can smell an affinity but I think the best (worst) is yet to come.
Crowd Reaction: Silentish, one boo, two claps and a cheer.
Prediction: Difficult. Last two weeks. I think.
Tenth in: Carol, a 53-year-old Londoner (yawn) who’s the obligatory bisexual. I met a podiatry assistant one called Beverly who wore cat emblazoned jumpers, no make up and a beard and was a passionately fervent “equal rights for caravaners” campaigner. Carol could be her sister. She shakes her fists limply, is also unemployed and used to be a ‘health worker’ (how very generic). She says “facking” a lot just so we know exactly how passionate she is. She does look like a woman who prefers the company of cats but she is, in fact, a campaigner to save local hospitals, stop nuclear testing and end all wars. Carol is a novelty; an opinionated cause caring female who worries not a jot about her appearance. I don’t know what to do with my face. She’s so rare; Bill Oddy should be studying her.
Crowd Reaction: Good. They love her. She still acts like a tit, like your mum on drugs.
Prediction: Dunno why, but I suspect an early eviction.
A man is going in on Friday, just the one. I pity the poor penis-less fool. It’s not only the (previous) women who were stereotyped. I can somehow already see Pedro the Prick gazing absently at Twins in Pants. Meanwhile over on BBC1 Sir Alan Sugar fires the largely blameless Naomi in favour of the chinful, frog like gimp Simon – a man who, though amusing, is summed up in one simple word: Tosser.
Think Big Brother is on to a winner? Would you want to be the only man in that house? Worried that Simon is guaranteed the job? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
The show began with an OfCom enforced apology. Somewhere in Channel 4 Towers I imagine the poor continuity announcer, bound by the hands, tied to a wheel-able armless office chair, shoved at a desk where he was made to read out the ever-so-sincere apology – a grimace audible down the microphone. I searched for subliminal ‘F*ck you OfCom – Jade Goody rules!’ but saw none. I hoped for grovelling, I didn’t get any. I get a feeling the whole summer will be as disappointing.
Davina shimmered into view, all sallow cheeks and leather clad – no more mention of the horror of Celebrity Big Brother. It’s like it never happened! A rudimentary tour of the house got underway, gaudy Perspex, giant beds that promises to “sleep six” and a bath in the living room (tit and arse shots guaranteed). With a panic strewn heart I looked for another House Next Door and I’m sure (hoping) there wasn’t one.
The parade of God awful, brain dead, over bleached and cellulite free morons commenced – almost all as the Daily Star predicted (god, they’re good!) – all women…after a fashion.
First in: 18-year-old twins Sam and Amanda, ‘social work students’ (Gawd help us all) who love pink, shopping, clothes and Barbies. It’s as though someone has trapped the soul of my three-year-old niece into the adult bodies of two berks…and then removed the brain. Cute, like two Bratz dolls left out in the sun too long, the pair jiggled and wobbled, said “luv it, luv it” and “woo” a lot very unconvincingly and finished each other’s sentences. They played the Thick Card, hated ‘chavs’ (the irony!) and proclaimed “everyone loves us!” I highly doubt even their parents are all that keen.
Crowd Reaction: Boos. Of course. Hell, I nearly booed and I was 200 miles away with half an eye on The Apprentice.
Prediction: Out soon. Friday I hope. I’m praying they are one entity and they won’t be forced to be separated, one pining wide eyed at the door as Bozo Twin 2 parties large at China Whites with Nikki Grahame and Calum Best.
Second in: Lesley, a 60-year-old retired head hunter who looks like my Auntie Janet but with a better speaking voice. The VT showed her manicured kitchen. She stood only feet away from a book so she is clearly what passes as the ‘intelligent’ quota and she will, therefore, come to her senses within 72 hours as soon as she spots young Pedro’s* erection in the pool one morning when the twins jiggle in tandem. (* Pedro is stereotypical boy who I’m sure is only hours away from our screens.) Lesley is “unpredictable” and hates to be “messed about.” Er, this is Big Brother. Idiot! I for one an immensely looking forward to one of Lesley’s “temper tantrums.” That might even be worth the live streaming fee. Lesley thinks she’ll win. Get a grip woman!
Crowd Reaction: Boos and a half hearted murmur of disinterest.
Prediction: Will walk, run, flee, escape, take flight, disappear, abscond….you get it.
Third in: 21-year-old Charley, an unemployed and unemployable London “It Gewl” with a boob job that couldn’t be more obvious if she'd had them sellotaped to her arse cheeks. Charley writhed her tiny bum in denim shorts and spouted inane crap about “gahin’ aaahhtt” and “baaayyyin’ cloaves” even though she had no job. She financed her cliché ridden existence through her cousin Kieran Richardson, seemingly the only member of her gene pool with any discernible talent, a Man Utd star who bought her a Mini Cooper. Oh Kieran, if only BMW developed brains, then your cash would have been better invested. You have to question the credentials of anyone who has their own name as a tattoo – are you ever likely to forget?
Crowd Reaction: Boos beyond belief…well, no. Not really I expected them. “Get her out!” before she even went in. Marvellous.
Prediction: She’ll be a grower. I think she’ll become a firm favourite soon. That, or a complete cow. These women, eh? No middle ground.
Fourth in: Tracey, a 36-year-old cleaner trapped in 1991 with her Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Shitcoat, pink hair and love of “getting it in a field” (that meant something so different in 2001.) She ‘danced’ on to the stage and talked about how she liked to get “f*cked and bolloxed” and how much she loves her job. She likes the buzz, hates liars and is a happy person because she’s a “nice person.” She sets off good vibes in me even though I have spent the night worrying she may descend into a Tourettes-lite Pete Bennett ‘worthy’ winner who is ever so, ever so, ever so whacky.
Crowd Reaction: Fairly good. None sexually attractive women always do well.
Prediction: If she doesn’t go crackers and at the prospect of no all night, Acid House raves and no glow-in-the-dark babies dummies on a string, she’ll do well.
Fifth in: Chanelle, a 19-year-old from Wakefield who is a prettier version of Victoria Beckham but with none of the charm or ability to bag a millionaire husband, thus forgoing this reality TV shite. She’s clearly smarter than she likes people to think – a terrible indictment of the 21st century is the perpetual, shameful hiding of intellect under a bushel most media hungry women indulge in. Chanelle wants to “give Yorkshire a good name” - well considering she is following in the footsteps of Justine (Who? Exactly!) and ‘Lesleh’ (dumpy gobshite with a heart of stone) it won’t be too difficult.
Crowd Reaction: Pretty girl? Half a working brain? They hate her. Of course. One man bravely cheers.
Prediction: If she is, in fact, not a plant, I think I might like her. I’ll swim against the tide.
Sixth in: Shabnam, a 22-year-old jobless Londoner (Blimey, is there no other city in the entire UK in which to find an unemployed bint?). Shabs is crazy. We know this because she tells us so thirty six times a minute and describes how everyone thinks she’s “nutty” and “mad”. She wears pink gloves, a yellow scarf and shakes her hips like a Nan at a disco. Yeah man! Wild! Her personality is “larger than life” apparently and she loves make up. (Good. Lord.) She likes food and thinks she talks sense. Why do I see her at the centre of a lot of rows?
Crowd Reaction: A relative cheer, hardcore boos. She acts like a knob and gets many more boos.
Prediction: I somehow sense antipathy.
Seventh in: Emily is a 19-year-old drama student and is exactly how you would imagine a 19-year-old drama student. The possessor of misplaced self worth, arrogance and an immediately irritating voice, she seems the sort of girl men will love and girls will hate. She’s one of those well- off types you encounter at university who can’t understand why your daddy hasn’t bought you a brand new car yet despite the fact that a) daddy ran off with a teenage neighbour when you were six or b) he’s still into “manual work” and can’t even afford his own teeth. She looks like Peaches Geldof but with a face you don’t want to punch quite as much. She wants to meet a Pete Doherty type in the house. Don’t be stupid woman! After bullies, racists and trans-gendered anorexics do you really think Endemol would stoop so low as to recruit skanky smack heads as entertainment? What am I saying? Yes. Yes they would. (Kidney? Anyone?)
Crowd Reaction: Half boos, half-hearted claps. Silence, mainly.
Prediction: Errrr? Nowt really. Nowt.
Eighth in: Laura, a 23-year-old nanny is basically a chubby Emo who has forgotten that smiling and pink are banned by the Emo MySpace Massive. Laura is instantly nice but then, so was Grace last year (gulp). Laura is fattish so women like her. She also has a caring job, a cute accent and a sense of self-deprecation (last spotted in 2002 with Alison…only five years in the waiting. Good grief). She wants the dead to look “nice” and she talks quickly like a Welsh Vicky Pollard. She’s fiercely anti-smoking and pro-cooking and has embraced a long lost little known concept called fun.
Crowd Reaction: Good. Cheers, mainly.
Prediction: Difficult. Mid ranging, I think.
Ninth in: Nicky, a 27-year-old admin worker. She has a big fringe and a small frame. Adopted from India into an Irish Catholic family, she loves to smoke (oh now I see the conflict aspect...racism was so last year, smokingism is the key). She’s “sick” of men and seems quite grumpy. I like that. As someone of a similar age and job role as Nicky, I can smell an affinity but I think the best (worst) is yet to come.
Crowd Reaction: Silentish, one boo, two claps and a cheer.
Prediction: Difficult. Last two weeks. I think.
Tenth in: Carol, a 53-year-old Londoner (yawn) who’s the obligatory bisexual. I met a podiatry assistant one called Beverly who wore cat emblazoned jumpers, no make up and a beard and was a passionately fervent “equal rights for caravaners” campaigner. Carol could be her sister. She shakes her fists limply, is also unemployed and used to be a ‘health worker’ (how very generic). She says “facking” a lot just so we know exactly how passionate she is. She does look like a woman who prefers the company of cats but she is, in fact, a campaigner to save local hospitals, stop nuclear testing and end all wars. Carol is a novelty; an opinionated cause caring female who worries not a jot about her appearance. I don’t know what to do with my face. She’s so rare; Bill Oddy should be studying her.
Crowd Reaction: Good. They love her. She still acts like a tit, like your mum on drugs.
Prediction: Dunno why, but I suspect an early eviction.
A man is going in on Friday, just the one. I pity the poor penis-less fool. It’s not only the (previous) women who were stereotyped. I can somehow already see Pedro the Prick gazing absently at Twins in Pants. Meanwhile over on BBC1 Sir Alan Sugar fires the largely blameless Naomi in favour of the chinful, frog like gimp Simon – a man who, though amusing, is summed up in one simple word: Tosser.
Think Big Brother is on to a winner? Would you want to be the only man in that house? Worried that Simon is guaranteed the job? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Thursday 19 April 2007
Property Ladder and The Apprentice - 18th April 2007
Property Ladder, a show guaranteed to get the blood pressure rising in sheer annoyance saw Simon and Dave convert an old medical centre in Bristol and Mark and Kate convert an old massage parlour in Northampton.
Mark and Kate were two self satisfied smugly annoying bozos, over quaffed and toe-curlingly accented (“oh yah, the propeeerrrtyyyy will be a challenge”). Naturally I despised them due to envy, who on earth has £192,000 as a budget? How do I find one of these multi-millionaire backers with a distinct lack of interest and wholehearted trust? Moronic Mark, a small minded man with an inferiority complex refused to listen to the near billionaire property developer Sarah Beeney when she advised against knocking down the existing build just to throw up some other God awful construction. Even gimlet-eyed Kate began to despair.
Mark, who displayed the personality of a dead gnat, twittered about the “difficulties” of property development (Hey, go work in Tesco, idiot!) yet steadfastly refused to follow any advice from the Beeney and her property minions. No, Mark, why would you need a qualified project manager to run your crappy little empire for you? Not when you can wander around in a hard hat looking like a bulldog licking a thistle. Chinless gimp.
Simon and Dave, who decided that even the council planning department would not get in their way, began work in earnest. Despite the planners insisting on some changes, Simon and Dave’s apartments were stunning, beautifully finished and sold with ease. I was almost glad for them except I was consumed by jealousy.
Karma sought out Mark and Kate and they failed. I was even more glad at this.
The Apprentice stumbled to the screen with an underwhelming whimper. The heavily scripted, over dramatised, media graduate produced show saw Ghazal and Adam head up their teams with the brief to design, make and sell sweets at London Zoo. Jadine, the fire breathing, nostril flared loudmouth found herself on the same team as Tre, the lizard like arsehole with a superiority complex. I waited for the predictable fireworks. Thankfully, they did not come.
Adam, a little ray of sunshine if ever there was one, was overwhelmed by posh Katie and simple Simon who dominated the plans. Ghazal, a doe-eyed fawn like woman with an incredibly fast voice, fared not much better, pulling worried faces and uttering the tedious “I’m not here to make friends” catchphrase pontificated at least every three minutes on this show.
Adam wanted organic sweets until he heard the price, and quickly opted for the most unnatural ‘natural’ orange lollies known to man – essentially a solid sugar blob on a stick that sells for £2. The bespectacled manipulator extraordinaire Natalie, ignored Adam’s orders to name the lolly “Tiger” and she instead opted for “Natural” which only caused Trading Standards and a million yummy mummies to have a nervous breakdown when they contemplated the E numbers within.
Ghazal and Jadine attempted to make chocolate with pathetic consequences after sending Tre and Christina out to look for lolly sticks in London that came in batches of less than 1000. Things were tense but Ghazal stuck her head in the ground. “There are no problems. Everything is fine” with a surly curl of the lip and throbbing veins in her neck began to protrude. Their lollies sold for a sickening £2.50 each and sold quickly, especially when Tre targeted fat people and Christina force fed the kiddies.
After informing all parents that the lollies were basically toxic, Adam’s team sank further when, dressed as a lion, he scared several small children to death and Sophie the physicist became consumed with bizarre morality and simply couldn’t sell the crap on a stick to worn out, financially strapped parents. People are not Sophie’s forte; she’d rather consider dark matter and the concepts of time travel.
Adam’s team eventually lost by a measly £10 and the increasingly loathsome Ghazal gloated away. I was convinced that Adam was a goner, his bickering with Natalie and his inability to answer a question was beginning to look like curtains. Sophie however got the boot. Sir Alan, it seems, despises morality and scruples – whether you miss your family or hate to harass parents for the umpteenth time, it's not good enough "in the business world". Tre and Christina, on that basis, will go far.
Would you ignore Sarah Beeney? Are you here to make money, not friends? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Mark and Kate were two self satisfied smugly annoying bozos, over quaffed and toe-curlingly accented (“oh yah, the propeeerrrtyyyy will be a challenge”). Naturally I despised them due to envy, who on earth has £192,000 as a budget? How do I find one of these multi-millionaire backers with a distinct lack of interest and wholehearted trust? Moronic Mark, a small minded man with an inferiority complex refused to listen to the near billionaire property developer Sarah Beeney when she advised against knocking down the existing build just to throw up some other God awful construction. Even gimlet-eyed Kate began to despair.
Mark, who displayed the personality of a dead gnat, twittered about the “difficulties” of property development (Hey, go work in Tesco, idiot!) yet steadfastly refused to follow any advice from the Beeney and her property minions. No, Mark, why would you need a qualified project manager to run your crappy little empire for you? Not when you can wander around in a hard hat looking like a bulldog licking a thistle. Chinless gimp.
Simon and Dave, who decided that even the council planning department would not get in their way, began work in earnest. Despite the planners insisting on some changes, Simon and Dave’s apartments were stunning, beautifully finished and sold with ease. I was almost glad for them except I was consumed by jealousy.
Karma sought out Mark and Kate and they failed. I was even more glad at this.
The Apprentice stumbled to the screen with an underwhelming whimper. The heavily scripted, over dramatised, media graduate produced show saw Ghazal and Adam head up their teams with the brief to design, make and sell sweets at London Zoo. Jadine, the fire breathing, nostril flared loudmouth found herself on the same team as Tre, the lizard like arsehole with a superiority complex. I waited for the predictable fireworks. Thankfully, they did not come.
Adam, a little ray of sunshine if ever there was one, was overwhelmed by posh Katie and simple Simon who dominated the plans. Ghazal, a doe-eyed fawn like woman with an incredibly fast voice, fared not much better, pulling worried faces and uttering the tedious “I’m not here to make friends” catchphrase pontificated at least every three minutes on this show.
Adam wanted organic sweets until he heard the price, and quickly opted for the most unnatural ‘natural’ orange lollies known to man – essentially a solid sugar blob on a stick that sells for £2. The bespectacled manipulator extraordinaire Natalie, ignored Adam’s orders to name the lolly “Tiger” and she instead opted for “Natural” which only caused Trading Standards and a million yummy mummies to have a nervous breakdown when they contemplated the E numbers within.
Ghazal and Jadine attempted to make chocolate with pathetic consequences after sending Tre and Christina out to look for lolly sticks in London that came in batches of less than 1000. Things were tense but Ghazal stuck her head in the ground. “There are no problems. Everything is fine” with a surly curl of the lip and throbbing veins in her neck began to protrude. Their lollies sold for a sickening £2.50 each and sold quickly, especially when Tre targeted fat people and Christina force fed the kiddies.
After informing all parents that the lollies were basically toxic, Adam’s team sank further when, dressed as a lion, he scared several small children to death and Sophie the physicist became consumed with bizarre morality and simply couldn’t sell the crap on a stick to worn out, financially strapped parents. People are not Sophie’s forte; she’d rather consider dark matter and the concepts of time travel.
Adam’s team eventually lost by a measly £10 and the increasingly loathsome Ghazal gloated away. I was convinced that Adam was a goner, his bickering with Natalie and his inability to answer a question was beginning to look like curtains. Sophie however got the boot. Sir Alan, it seems, despises morality and scruples – whether you miss your family or hate to harass parents for the umpteenth time, it's not good enough "in the business world". Tre and Christina, on that basis, will go far.
Would you ignore Sarah Beeney? Are you here to make money, not friends? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Monday 2 April 2007
Coronation Street - 2nd April 2007
The day of Tracy’s trial verdict (and the shock had all but diminished thanks to Les Battersby’s alleged drunken outpourings to the press last week). The biggest shock I got was how Claire and Ashley Peacock’s stairs managed to move from the middle of the living room to the front door. Now, Jason Grimshaw might have been able to handle Charlie’s client list single handed as well as his baby daughter, but even he couldn’t move a flight of stairs in half an episode with no mention or mess.
While we anxiously (frustratingly) waited for la Barlow’s demise, we were treated to more of Liam and Leanne’s flirting which really consists of Leanne gurning and contorting her voice into the sort of high pitched squeal only dogs can hear, and Liam’s incoherent slack jawed rambling through his hair. I still can’t decide if Liam Connor is really, really annoying or quite attractive and really, really annoying.
Tracy, glossy haired and revenge oriented, fluttered into court after barely acknowledging her young daughter, grimacing and scowling – determined to punish her long suffering parents. “Miss Barlow is an accomplished liar,” the prosecution counsel declared in her summing up. She’s not that accomplished! Every time she tells a lie she smiles and giggles with a theatrical glance to the side – it’s a wonder the jury was ever needed – she might as well have walked into court in a T-Shirt featuring Charlie Stubbs’s smashed-in skull and the words “It Was Me” emblazoned across her chest.
The aforementioned jury was a veritable public sector wet dream…men, women, young, old, Sikh, Muslim, Chinese, White – I couldn’t see a one-armed pension aged bespectacled lady or a mixed race blind man with a white stick but that’s nearly every other box ticked.
Les was right (allegedly) and a very predictable guilty verdict was reached (there has to be a moral majority somewhere – this isn’t EastEnders you know!) and Tracy got life with fifteen years minimum. Heck, she’ll be 45 when she gets out, maybe even older. Jim McDonald went to nick for mere, justifiable manslaughter and has never been seen since. So much for Kate Ford’s ‘open door’ contract. I doubt we’ll see her anytime soon, not with her current head, at least.
Think Tracy should have got off? Amazed by Deirdre’s tearless crying? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
While we anxiously (frustratingly) waited for la Barlow’s demise, we were treated to more of Liam and Leanne’s flirting which really consists of Leanne gurning and contorting her voice into the sort of high pitched squeal only dogs can hear, and Liam’s incoherent slack jawed rambling through his hair. I still can’t decide if Liam Connor is really, really annoying or quite attractive and really, really annoying.
Tracy, glossy haired and revenge oriented, fluttered into court after barely acknowledging her young daughter, grimacing and scowling – determined to punish her long suffering parents. “Miss Barlow is an accomplished liar,” the prosecution counsel declared in her summing up. She’s not that accomplished! Every time she tells a lie she smiles and giggles with a theatrical glance to the side – it’s a wonder the jury was ever needed – she might as well have walked into court in a T-Shirt featuring Charlie Stubbs’s smashed-in skull and the words “It Was Me” emblazoned across her chest.
The aforementioned jury was a veritable public sector wet dream…men, women, young, old, Sikh, Muslim, Chinese, White – I couldn’t see a one-armed pension aged bespectacled lady or a mixed race blind man with a white stick but that’s nearly every other box ticked.
Les was right (allegedly) and a very predictable guilty verdict was reached (there has to be a moral majority somewhere – this isn’t EastEnders you know!) and Tracy got life with fifteen years minimum. Heck, she’ll be 45 when she gets out, maybe even older. Jim McDonald went to nick for mere, justifiable manslaughter and has never been seen since. So much for Kate Ford’s ‘open door’ contract. I doubt we’ll see her anytime soon, not with her current head, at least.
Think Tracy should have got off? Amazed by Deirdre’s tearless crying? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Saturday 31 March 2007
Doctor Who & Any Dream Will Do - 31st March 2007
Doctor Who returned after being endlessly trailed for the last few weeks. I had my excitement levels ratcheted up earlier by scuttling over to YouTube to watch the full series trailer, just to get a squealy fan girl look at The Master. The first episode was always going to be a foundation laying enterprise where the audience were introduced to The Doctor’s new sidekick, junior medical doctor Martha Jones. Martha’s hospital was the setting, mainly because a backwards black cloud sucked the building up to the moon.
Martha was remarkably unfazed, although she has lived through the Cyberman invasion and some weird spaceship over the Thames so it was understandable. The moon was overrun with the Judoon, rhino type monsters in fetching contoured body armour, who isolated the hospital to try and screen out a human looking blood thirsty Plasmavore hiding amongst the Earthlings.
Being of alien stock himself, The Doctor was in danger but the Judoon tracked down the Plasmavore, in an old lady guise, before abandoning the humans to a booby trapped MRI and diminishing oxygen levels.
It all ended well, naturally. Martha went back to her younger brother’s birthday party, and a predictable family row. The Doctor however was smitten and couldn’t keep away from young Martha – not after he managed to plant a crisis kiss on her back on the moon. The unflappable Martha gladly stepped aboard The Tardis and flew (according to the sneak peek) into the past with The Doctor.
In all, it was a good episode, tightly plotted with nice knowing nods to past episodes (for the army of Geeks who’d be happily emailing Russell T Davis the flaws otherwise). There were some cute one liners too – the usual David Tennant charm and Martha’s quip regarding the Plasmavore’s Stig like henchmen (‘aliens? Where from, planet Zovirax?’)
Freema Agyeman was more than competent, a charming and marginally less annoying companion for The Doctor than Rose, and with much more chemistry which I will look forward to watching develop. I’ll return to the series I imagine – just to see how much better it can get.
Any Dream Will Do repeated last year’s How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? (Where they found Connie “I-can-do-eight-shows-a-week-oh-no-I-can’t-I-have-a-sore-throat-again” Fisher.) Here they auditioned several nubile young men for the part of Joseph in a revival of Rice and Lloyd-Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Lloyd-Webber ‘scoured the regions’ for raw talent. When I say scoured I do, of course, mean he was chauffer driven. When I say regions, I do, of course, mean he ventured all the way to Camden, London. (And I still labour under the illusion that the UK is made up of so much more than the grubby capital.)
Toothsome twinsomes John Barrowman and Denise Van Outen helped chair the panel with pudding faced vocal coach Zoë Tyler and doddery Everton chairman Bill Kenwright. Every candidate sounded the same and seemed to look one of two ways – scruffily handsome and rugged or fresh skinned pasty faced pretty boys.
It was almost entertaining in a laboriously repetitive way. Thankfully it is something I’m sure I can dip and out of. If I can be arsed.
Can’t understand the fuss over Doctor Who? Love West End Musical more than life itself? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Martha was remarkably unfazed, although she has lived through the Cyberman invasion and some weird spaceship over the Thames so it was understandable. The moon was overrun with the Judoon, rhino type monsters in fetching contoured body armour, who isolated the hospital to try and screen out a human looking blood thirsty Plasmavore hiding amongst the Earthlings.
Being of alien stock himself, The Doctor was in danger but the Judoon tracked down the Plasmavore, in an old lady guise, before abandoning the humans to a booby trapped MRI and diminishing oxygen levels.
It all ended well, naturally. Martha went back to her younger brother’s birthday party, and a predictable family row. The Doctor however was smitten and couldn’t keep away from young Martha – not after he managed to plant a crisis kiss on her back on the moon. The unflappable Martha gladly stepped aboard The Tardis and flew (according to the sneak peek) into the past with The Doctor.
In all, it was a good episode, tightly plotted with nice knowing nods to past episodes (for the army of Geeks who’d be happily emailing Russell T Davis the flaws otherwise). There were some cute one liners too – the usual David Tennant charm and Martha’s quip regarding the Plasmavore’s Stig like henchmen (‘aliens? Where from, planet Zovirax?’)
Freema Agyeman was more than competent, a charming and marginally less annoying companion for The Doctor than Rose, and with much more chemistry which I will look forward to watching develop. I’ll return to the series I imagine – just to see how much better it can get.
Any Dream Will Do repeated last year’s How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? (Where they found Connie “I-can-do-eight-shows-a-week-oh-no-I-can’t-I-have-a-sore-throat-again” Fisher.) Here they auditioned several nubile young men for the part of Joseph in a revival of Rice and Lloyd-Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Lloyd-Webber ‘scoured the regions’ for raw talent. When I say scoured I do, of course, mean he was chauffer driven. When I say regions, I do, of course, mean he ventured all the way to Camden, London. (And I still labour under the illusion that the UK is made up of so much more than the grubby capital.)
Toothsome twinsomes John Barrowman and Denise Van Outen helped chair the panel with pudding faced vocal coach Zoë Tyler and doddery Everton chairman Bill Kenwright. Every candidate sounded the same and seemed to look one of two ways – scruffily handsome and rugged or fresh skinned pasty faced pretty boys.
It was almost entertaining in a laboriously repetitive way. Thankfully it is something I’m sure I can dip and out of. If I can be arsed.
Can’t understand the fuss over Doctor Who? Love West End Musical more than life itself? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Wednesday 7 March 2007
Life on Mars/Interview With a Poltergeist - 6th March 2007
Sam Tyler had to endure yet another episode of Life on Mars where he was right (‘it’s not the IRA!’) but his belligerent colleagues refused to believe him until he had irrefutable proof. Surely by now even his misanthropic, racist boss Gene Hunt would have stopped in his tracks – just for a moment – to wonder, ‘why is this guy always right?’
Hunt was determined to thwart on IRA campaign by arresting anyone whose surname began with an “O” – before indulging in a bit of ‘Paddy’ bashing. Now, I don’t remember the 1970s – mainly because I wasn’t born (the parents were only nippers) but I always imagine it to be brown and dingy yellow and the Life on Mars set certainly seems steeped in these grim tones. Maybe on the first day of 1980 people had to be treated for shock because they saw the colour red for the first time.
Already half way through what is the last ever series, it is difficult to know where this will go – will we ever find out why Sam Tyler is in the 1973 coma – if that’s what it is? And if he suddenly wakes up, won’t it be ever-so-slightly contrived? Still, I can only trust in the excellent writing so far, even if Sam’s coma trauma tends to manifest in sinister TV characters and an irritatingly smug mystery caller on a brown bakelite phone. The best line of the night was in the pub when Sam tried to explain why a traumatised Ray was behaving oddly, “He’s got PTSD” he said. Hunt was appalled. “He’s a bloody hero, and you’re saying he’s got the clap!”
Interview with a Poltergeist, followed up on the story of the ‘poltergeist’ found in North London in 1977 where furniture, fireplaces and children alike were thrown across various rooms. Seeing the original police interview of the time only served to make Life on Mars seem like a biting piece of 1970s realism – “W”PCs with flicked hair and clipped accents and scruffy looking men with bushy unkempt collar length mops and beige tank tops.
The scariest thing about the whole show was not the undoubtedly weird ‘paranormal’ activity but the state of one the girls, Janet Hodgson, now – skeletal, pale with long witch-like hair, she spoke through sallow cheeks with all the clarity and articulation of Pete Doherty after a heavy night in China Whites. I’m hoping this is less a result of heroin and more a result of long standing physic trauma from being dragged out of bed of a night by an irate dead pensioner.
The fabulous looking paranormal investigator, complete with crazy moustache and bottle-bottom glasses, had sadly died by the time the programme was aired. Hopefully for him, the riddle of that house has now been solved since the show left the viewer with no answers at all and a frustratingly balanced perspective.
Love the 1970s? Believe in ghosts? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Hunt was determined to thwart on IRA campaign by arresting anyone whose surname began with an “O” – before indulging in a bit of ‘Paddy’ bashing. Now, I don’t remember the 1970s – mainly because I wasn’t born (the parents were only nippers) but I always imagine it to be brown and dingy yellow and the Life on Mars set certainly seems steeped in these grim tones. Maybe on the first day of 1980 people had to be treated for shock because they saw the colour red for the first time.
Already half way through what is the last ever series, it is difficult to know where this will go – will we ever find out why Sam Tyler is in the 1973 coma – if that’s what it is? And if he suddenly wakes up, won’t it be ever-so-slightly contrived? Still, I can only trust in the excellent writing so far, even if Sam’s coma trauma tends to manifest in sinister TV characters and an irritatingly smug mystery caller on a brown bakelite phone. The best line of the night was in the pub when Sam tried to explain why a traumatised Ray was behaving oddly, “He’s got PTSD” he said. Hunt was appalled. “He’s a bloody hero, and you’re saying he’s got the clap!”
Interview with a Poltergeist, followed up on the story of the ‘poltergeist’ found in North London in 1977 where furniture, fireplaces and children alike were thrown across various rooms. Seeing the original police interview of the time only served to make Life on Mars seem like a biting piece of 1970s realism – “W”PCs with flicked hair and clipped accents and scruffy looking men with bushy unkempt collar length mops and beige tank tops.
The scariest thing about the whole show was not the undoubtedly weird ‘paranormal’ activity but the state of one the girls, Janet Hodgson, now – skeletal, pale with long witch-like hair, she spoke through sallow cheeks with all the clarity and articulation of Pete Doherty after a heavy night in China Whites. I’m hoping this is less a result of heroin and more a result of long standing physic trauma from being dragged out of bed of a night by an irate dead pensioner.
The fabulous looking paranormal investigator, complete with crazy moustache and bottle-bottom glasses, had sadly died by the time the programme was aired. Hopefully for him, the riddle of that house has now been solved since the show left the viewer with no answers at all and a frustratingly balanced perspective.
Love the 1970s? Believe in ghosts? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Sunday 25 February 2007
Most Haunted Live - 24th February 2007
Saturday’s unhealthy dose of post-Victoriana tosh began with a recap of the ‘creepy’ events of Friday in Transylvania where Karl (husband of Yvette) and Stuart (cousin of Yvette) saw an apparition that spooked them so intensely they were forced to flail, flap, wobble and squeal. The camera, and indeed the levelheaded viewer, saw nothing. “I’ve an overwhelming urge to throw myself over the balcony" Stuart opined. Don’t let us stop you, Stu. Kath (hairdresser of Yvette) was ‘terrified’ although the Manc-voiced, turtle mouthed make-up girl is often terrified even by an innocuous sneeze and a mouse taking a pee.
Saturday had a buffoon-like Paul Ross gurning crazily as the Nosferatu-like Julian Clegg gabbled nonsense about a “massive response” from the public which I can only imagine is the 300 drunk folk who text in of an evening to claim that they have seen “a little girl” (why is it always a little girl?).
Someone, incredulously unnamed, catches two girls in a large room walking followed by a shadow of a marching man who emerges from the floor to follow the girls. The para-psychologist cannot explain it – Yvette gets excited…to me it’s a deeply unsubstantiated mobile phone video clip that needs a lot more cross referencing that old ‘historian’ Lesley seems incapable of performing without Google and Wikipedia.
Conveniently a séance in the very same room produced a barrage of orbs (or, as I like to call them, dust) and Karl being semi-possessed by an evil entity who hated David Wells (they always hate poor David, these spirits. How can anyone hate the camp, sweet smelling, overweight Scottish psychic/medium?) Stuart's legs, just as conveniently, stop working…the same Stuart who was beaten, strangled, assaulted, possessed and laughed at by ghosts on previous series. Time to call it a day and apply to Coronation Street again, Stu?
Sadly for me and the other 506 viewers, Vlad the Impailer does not make an appearance. He may have been a Romanian speaking, child hating, pensioner stabbing maniac who loved a bit of black pudding of an afternoon, but even he can remember the horror of Yvette Fielding on Blue Peter circa 1992 and decided an eternity in Hell was preferable to a live broadcast in front of a load of drunken sceptics, excited believers and a bored-looking Paul Ross.
I cannot, despite my best intentions, tear myself away from Most Haunted. Yes, its looks fake, yes its melodramatic, yes Yvette is a pain in the backside, yet the show is frighteningly compelling...as though David Wells has cast some scary psychic mind control spell over me and I cannot switch over until an actual ghost shows its face. There’s an old museum near me more haunted than a Harry Potter chapter…I might email Yvette and Karl and see if they’ll pop by – I may even volunteer my services as a spoon-thrower…I mean, enthusiastic sceptical reporter.
Think Yvette and Karl are honest? Can you fake more convincingly? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
Saturday had a buffoon-like Paul Ross gurning crazily as the Nosferatu-like Julian Clegg gabbled nonsense about a “massive response” from the public which I can only imagine is the 300 drunk folk who text in of an evening to claim that they have seen “a little girl” (why is it always a little girl?).
Someone, incredulously unnamed, catches two girls in a large room walking followed by a shadow of a marching man who emerges from the floor to follow the girls. The para-psychologist cannot explain it – Yvette gets excited…to me it’s a deeply unsubstantiated mobile phone video clip that needs a lot more cross referencing that old ‘historian’ Lesley seems incapable of performing without Google and Wikipedia.
Conveniently a séance in the very same room produced a barrage of orbs (or, as I like to call them, dust) and Karl being semi-possessed by an evil entity who hated David Wells (they always hate poor David, these spirits. How can anyone hate the camp, sweet smelling, overweight Scottish psychic/medium?) Stuart's legs, just as conveniently, stop working…the same Stuart who was beaten, strangled, assaulted, possessed and laughed at by ghosts on previous series. Time to call it a day and apply to Coronation Street again, Stu?
Sadly for me and the other 506 viewers, Vlad the Impailer does not make an appearance. He may have been a Romanian speaking, child hating, pensioner stabbing maniac who loved a bit of black pudding of an afternoon, but even he can remember the horror of Yvette Fielding on Blue Peter circa 1992 and decided an eternity in Hell was preferable to a live broadcast in front of a load of drunken sceptics, excited believers and a bored-looking Paul Ross.
I cannot, despite my best intentions, tear myself away from Most Haunted. Yes, its looks fake, yes its melodramatic, yes Yvette is a pain in the backside, yet the show is frighteningly compelling...as though David Wells has cast some scary psychic mind control spell over me and I cannot switch over until an actual ghost shows its face. There’s an old museum near me more haunted than a Harry Potter chapter…I might email Yvette and Karl and see if they’ll pop by – I may even volunteer my services as a spoon-thrower…I mean, enthusiastic sceptical reporter.
Think Yvette and Karl are honest? Can you fake more convincingly? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
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