Last Night's TV

Big Bother

2007-06-19T11:29:00.000Z

Ziggy and Chanelle are in the bedroom lying silently on his bed, incapable of even feigning an interest in one another. Charley is arguing with Liam about the nature of the Lacanian "Real"

CHARLEY: Fing is right, Lee, what I was saying was that what is foreclosed from the symbolic order comes back to haunt it, right, and then you was like gettin all up in face, yeah, and saying fings like "the "Real" ain't closed then" and I wasn't sayin that, yeah, and you was sayin that I was...

Liam tries to interject

CHARLEY: Na, na, na, na, na. Listen to me for a minute, right? I got nuffin to say to you no more, you're dead to me, right?

CAROLE: Charley...

CAROLE: Oh fuck off right, Carole. Know what I mean though, Lee? You're lucky I don't get a stick and drop ya, yeah, d'you know what I mean though?

Nicky enters

NICKY: Does anyone want a nice meal? I'm happy to cook a nice meal if anyone wants to eat my nice meal. Charley, do you want a nice meal?

CHARLEY: Right fuck off, Nicky, right yeah? You're always up in my face about food and it's really irri...irrigravatin...can't fink of the word....irrigating me or whatever now and it's like really fucking me off, right?

Charley storms out

NICKY: Go-od, I was only asking if she wanted a nice meal. That is so rude. I mean, I'm happy to cook a nice meal but if you don't want a nice meal, then I won't cook a nice meal.

LIAM: I'll have some food if you're cooking some like, lass.

NICKY: Well, I'm happy to do that. There's some pasta left over from lunch, and I was thinking about getting a tin of tomatoes and, like, bulking it up, and doing a bit of a side salad as well? That'll be nice, won't it, Liam? That'll be a nice meal. And I'm happy to cook that for you.

LIAM: Aye, thanks like...

NICKY: Anyone else for a nice meal?

CAROLE: I'm alright thanks, Nicky, but can I just say, when you're cooking..

NICKY: Oh, fuck OFF, Carole. Everyone is so rude in this house...

CAROLE: Nicky, I was just....

NICKY: No, Carole, just NO, alright? It's really fucking me off now...God...

Nicky storms out

OK, OK, OK! Big Brother.

2007-06-11T12:11:00.000Z

You know I normally love to write about Big Brother? Well, I haven't yet felt the urge this year for some reason. What is there to say? Chanelle is vacuous and self-absorbed but has the potential to become a sentient person at some point in the future (although not over the next ten weeks) ; Emily is so arrogant she is unable to find the connection of 200 years of black oppression with her need to be seen as ironically street; Charley and Shabnam are superficial idiots; Ziggy looks like a tortoise; Lesley should have stayed. Maybe I'll talk about someone no-one else has, and I'm pretty fascinated by Carole myself. Well, intrigued by the mindboggling banality of her statements; "I think I'll have a cup of tea", "Those eggs needs to be put in the fridge", "It's cloudy but clearing from the west". Yet there is real depth underlying the seeming straightforwardness of her conversation. For instance, on the live streaming the other night I was enthralled by her description of how to remove depilation wax from glass surfaces. Apparently, because it is acetate-based, your standard Jif and Flash is as good as useless. You have to HEAT the substance from underneath until it starts to lift and then SCRAPE it off. This must be the sort of stuff you pick up at Greenham; Lesley certainly didn't contribute any domestic hints as handy after all her years with the WI. I suppose I should keep tuned for Carole's ideas on how to remove yellow sweat stains from your white summer shirts.....

The Apprentice (2/5/07), Crimewatch and How to Look Good Naked (1/5/07)

2007-05-03T10:14:00.000Z

The best series of The Apprentice EVER - fact! Ex-army lieutenant Paul got fired last night, one of the only team leaders in any Apprentice to make a loss on the task. This was largely because he was an unrelenting knobend. I don't mean to be a reverse snob, but the posh voice and inability to take criticism from any person of a lower social class meant I was gunning for him from week one. Paul said 'noozes' instead of 'noses', 'meerketing' for 'marketing'; sneery little cannon-fodder. Send him to Iraq.

Have to catch up on Tuesday night's TV too. It was gobsmacking. Channel 4 had actual minge - pubes and everything - at EIGHT O' CLOCK with their new series of How to Look Good Naked. I mean really. People do eat at that time you know, young children are still up. On the one hand, maybe it's a good thing that the kiddies are exposed to 'normal' female bodies rather than the airbrushed fantasies which dominate advertising; on the other, maybe it's going to seriously derail their nascent sexuality. Either way, the series focuses solely on how WOMEN should look good naked, so there's an inbuilt inequality in the programme itself which no amount of lopsided boobs can counter.

Crimewatch was funny, more specifically Nick Ross, who said with incredulity at one point, "Running away. In Ealing" - as if the act of fleeing in Ealing was the crime rather than the stabbing of two men on a bus. First time I've seen it in years, and I might just return for the humour.

Lastly, I don't often review films, but I must warn you to STAY WELL AWAY from Proof with Gwyneth Paltrow because it's a PIECE OF SHIT. It makes you wonder how it did so well on Broadway and in the West End and whether the average theatre-goer in the US and the UK has in fact been LOBOTOMISED. Americans CAN'T WRITE PLAYS. Both dialogue and acting were EXCRUCIATING. I can't talk about it anymore, it's making me angry.

Hair Wars (23/4/07)

2007-04-25T14:33:00.000Z

This wasn't at all the programme I expected, having read the TV guide for Monday night, but Morgan Matthews made a fascinating documentary out of the ostensible subject matter of competitive hairdressing. Cue lots of images of ridiculous hairstyling: the men looked the funniest, particularly in the 'fashion' section of the competition, with particularly kitsch creations indescribable within mere language. It was Dawn, however, the 14-year-old step-daughter of John Phelps (a winner of the world cup of hairdressing in the 1990s) who became the focus of the programme. A troubled teen, tagged by the police and unloved by her real father, hairdressing was seen as her route out of crime and an inevitable stay at Her Majesty's Pleasure. But she just couldn't help herself from attempting to bottle winos and defying her curfew, and the documentary veered into a study of adolescent deviance which made for severely uncomfortable viewing. At one point, Matthews gave her twin sister a camera to record her own observations, aware that Dawn had become the centre of the family's attention, but Dawn stole it and that was the end of that. When you learnt that Dawn was simply desperate to see a father who had moved on with a new girlfriend and saw his first offspring as part of a forgettable previous existence, Hair Wars came to explore the effects of the dismembered modern family much more cogently than it did its premise of competitive hairdressing. Disturbing stuff.

The Apprentice (18/4/07) and Holby City (17/4/07)

2007-04-19T15:19:00.000Z

The Apprentice is the most brilliantly structured, gripping programme on television. From the moment the task gets going through to the boardroom showdown, there is not a bit of flab and absolutely no opportunity to make yourself a cup of tea. It just builds and builds until the inevitable despair of Sir Alan when he realises what a bunch of dunces he has as potential employees. Last night's laugh-out-loud moment came when Adam, team leader of Eclipse, employed a Measure for Measure style of management - explaining to Sir Alan, as he was being berated for prancing around in a lion suit instead of selling sweets, that the suit helped him to oversee what his team was doing covertly. Yes, because a FULL-LENGTH LION SUIT is as anonymous as disguise comes. I shall be sure to remember this technique if ever I need to stage the Duke in production. Genius.

Not so genius was Holby City the night before last, which unashamedly ripped off the plot of Flatliners for one of it's storylines. The thing is, Flatliners was not only a lot of balls, but also a film, and the premises of the cinema tend to be on a slightly larger and more unbelievable scale than TV. So it was just incredibly embarrassing watching a group of med students nearly kill each other on weekday telly for the purpose of finding out if there's anything on the other side. The leader was inevitably constructed as evil, laughing darkly as he injected himself with 10 mg of deathjuice. When he crossed back over the Styx and his mate asked, "What did you seeee?" with all the acting skill of a GCSE student, it was me who wanted to die. Literally eating a cushion, and my flatmate had his jumper firmly pulled over his head in the vain hope of making it stop. We won't even go into the storyline about the African doctor who nearly killed someone because, well, did the script imply it was because she was trained in Africa? It certainly seemed that way to me. Bad Holby, bad, bad Holby.

I also have to mention the most bizarre quote on TV in quite some time which came from Mr Miss Pageant - a programme about the transgendered Miss World competition and in which a Thai competitor stated, "I'm sucking a woman's cock. I'm not gay." I simply can't make head nor tail of it......

Hotel Babylon (12/4/07)

2007-04-13T10:08:00.000Z

Hotel Babylon is funny. Well it's not actually, it's really bad, but that's what makes it funny. It was the last in the series last night - I won't bother you with the details but Tamsin Outhwaite made her exit for good. It was an incredibly sentimental episode, in which Max Beesley offered voiceovers about how all the cogs are important to Hotel Babylon, how every worker helps it to run like "a well-oiled machine". The cliches and commonplaces took on the status of great profundities by the end of the programme, so that the final voiceover had Outhwaite claiming, "What is a hotel? A hotel is a place to stay." Can you hear it? Can you hear the words coming from Outhwaite's mouth like some latter-day Plato?

Funny thing, voiceovers. They're able to generate automatic gravitas just by virtue of being voice-overs - they sound as if someone is looking back on something years later with greater wisdom, or perhaps like the universal consciousness part of their brain is at work rather then the petty, day-to-day, individual bit. So when a writer expresses the banal or stupid through this device it becomes hilarious; similar to Tony Blair answering PMQs after having inhaled helium. I wondered also - disturbed by the final scene between Outhwaite and Beesley - if the workers at Hotel Babylon are like family as the voiceovers told us OVER and OVER again, does that make Tamsin's kissing of Max incest? The final V/O should have started during this - "What is incest? Incest is sex with a close relative....."

The Worst Sex Change Surgeon in the World (10/4/07) and The Apprentice (11/4/07)

2007-04-12T15:20:00.000Z

I wasn't going to mention this, but Channel 4, oh my god. Having spared us wank week, they then put on this 'documentary' which was really an opportunity to see some psychopath botch up people's genitals. Who watches this stuff? Well, admittedly, I did try, but I was defeated THREE TIMES. It was horrific. They showed a video of Dr Brown preparing for one sex-change operation, holding up his sketches of the procedure for the camera which seriously looked like my 5 year old half-sister had drawn them. The there was a knife, a cock, and a lot of blood. Turned over. Tried again 15 mins later, this time there was a fanny and lots of blood. Turned over. Third time, Butcher Brown had managed to chop off someone's leg, thereby killing him (he must have thought it was an awfully big penis). But they showed the pictures of the corpse. I mean, that's practically snuff, isn't it? I repeat, who watches it? Who is able to watch it? OK, so the murder(s) did occur and may be of interest to some people, but Channel 4's documentaries are getting increasingly gratuitous while masquerading as objective docujournalism. I'd say I'm pretty hardcore when it comes to operations, but that's TV for the mentally ill. And whoever produced it needs help too, with their mortal soul.

The Apprentice was fairly depressing last night in that the women's team decided to sell kisses - ie. themselves - to make money for the task. I commented on this last year, women in business acting as if feminism never happened. There is a sort of business in which women sell kisses - the oldest profession - but we can do without that it the millennial workplace, I feel. Jadene was against it, and has gone up in my estimation as a result. And Gerri got the boot last night; I was glad despite commenting on her promise previously. I'm afraid I mistook her severely elevated left eyebrow for shrewdness. It appears it was just a lucky trick of the face.

Nada (10/4/07)

2007-04-11T14:54:00.000Z

Apprentice tonight, Apprentice tonight, Apprentice tonight. Sooo excited.....

Telly was rubbish last night. I tried Get Your Act Together With Harvey Goldsmith but didn't know who Saxon were in the first place, so it seemed pointless rooting for their comeback. That show needs bigger names. And Goldsmith is such an unrelenting cock, I found myself engrossed in finding pictures of Vanessa Feltz for a collage I'm planning instead of watching his bloated mug. Maybe I'll watch nothing except The Apprentice until Big Brother comes back. (Unlikely). Speaking of which, I faced the terrible truth with a fellow BB fanatic this weekend that, if it goes down the same contrived root as it did last year, I won't be watching. We looked at each other with genuine horror as the words came out of my mouth, but it's out there now, so I may as well share it with you. (Though Endemol are so clever, we probably won't realise we've been manipulated until week 10, by which point it will be August and I'll be pasty for another year. We did also phone each other last week and say, "It's April now, that means it's May next, and you know what that means....?" I'm not as free of the obsession as I'm claiming).

Now you must go to disappointed kid's blog and see the latest video he's posted. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

The Apprentice episode 2 and Deadline (4/4/07)

2007-04-05T11:36:00.000Z

The Apprentice kicked up a gear last night and showed that it may even compete with the first series after a disappointing second. There were good quantities of incompetence, bad pitching and jargon ("ideation" anyone?). Ifti got fired because he didn't "bring it to the table" - a product design specialist who failed to suggest any product design in the challenge. But then, THEN, Sir Alan said he was firing another member of Eclipse. Who would it be? Rory - the bumbling poshboy and ineffectual leader - or Trey - the most irritating, loudmouthed, insubordinate apprentice of them all? If Rory had defended himself by saying, "I spent so long arguing with this little twerp I couldn't focus on the task" he would have been saved, but instead he said "Erm...errr....Sir Alan...it was er... horrible...erm", and the bigwig had no choice but to get rid of him. Or did he? Did Sir Alan keep on someone who will definitely get the boot later because the series thrives on the Sairas and Syeds who make the thing (un)watchable? I rather think the second. Trey is so annoying, so confrontational, so very punchable, he's what The Apprentice is all about.

Then I watched Deadline which held much promise. A bunch of celebs (if you can include Chris Parker and Imogen Lloyd-Webber in such a description) have to produce a 12 page celeb insert for 'Closer' each week, under the terrifying eye of Janet Street-Porter. Now I know JSP is responsible for the downfall of Snub TV in the 80s, one of the best things ever on British television, which she replaced with her boyfriend's derisory Normski's House Party, but it was a long time ago, and I do admire her strong will, intelligence and ginormous teeth. And I also appreciate Lisa I'Anson being dressed down by anyone because she's thick, superficial and arrogant, a particularly hateful combination in my book. She's also a starfucker. Every time a name came up, Naomi Campbell being the most notable instance, I'Anson would say in her affected drawl, "Oh, ya, Naomi, I know her, I'll give her a call". Yeah, right, you once got coked off your tits in The Metro and chewed her ear off about how great you both were more like it. Hilarious to see her trying to back track once it has slipped out her gob. One to watch.

Celebrity Wife Swap (1/4/07)

2007-04-04T10:45:00.000Z

Exchanging Vanessa Feltz with Debbie McGee was obviously a stroke of genius for the Wife Swap team. Is there a man you would want less as a husband than Paul Daniels? And the programme bore out that he's the old, self-centred fart we know him to be; no surprises here. My favourite aspect of the programme was Feltz's partner, Ben Ofoedu. You know Ben Ofoedu? No? Well he sung, 'Got to turn aro-ooun-nnd' a few years ago, as he insisted on telling everyone and anyone who questioned his contribution to society. You'd have thought he'd figureheaded a cultural revolution the way he went on about it. At one point McGee pointed out "You're not Robbie Williams. I haven't even heard of you." "What?" he replied, almost dumbstruck but not enough to stop him from singing for the fifth time, "You haven't heard of 'Got to turn aro-ooun-nnd'?" Well, why should she? She's been stuck at home with Daniels and an alsation for the last twenty years. It just made you feel rather sorry for poor deluded Feltz who I quite like these days. Despite her lively intelligence, she's so blinded by graititude that she can't see Ofoedu for the no-mark he is.

Watched a good programme about haute couture on BBC2 late last night. Ever wondered what happens to those ridiculous dresses that we see on the catwalks? Well, I have. Turns out they get brought up by wives of very, very rich men or descendants of the aristocracy. Only about 200 women have access to them. A woman called a 'premiere' follows the dresses around the world to fit them on their new owners after the catwalk shows, removing the more theatrical elements to make them more wearable for philanthropic functions. What an incredible waste it all seemed, creating the carbon footprint of Goliath just for the sake of three or four dresses. But, my god, did I want to have a go in some of those clothes. Lucky bloody loaded cows. Anyone know of a spare oil tycoon?

Dr Who (31/3/07)

2007-04-02T14:09:00.000Z

Sometimes I like to imagine I'm a time traveller. Especially when I realise three years have passed and I can't remember what happened during them. Perhaps I've been surfing the space-time continuum all the while with an alien cunningly disguised as Richard Hammond, saving the world from calamity and being dropped back in Blighty several years later. Or perhaps I've just been sitting about smoking weed and watching the tellybox. Who's to tell? (Not you).

People seem to have a problem with David Tennant as Dr Who - they don't appear to like his wide-eyed, gurning portrayal of a fictional national treasure. I think he's ok. In fact, I think the revival of Dr Who on BBC1 has been more than ok, at least 50% of the time it's been good, perhaps even better than the original (not counting the Baker or Davison years). It's certainly better produced, with better effects, good plots, and genuinely scary moments which, after all, define the series. And it's definitely one of the best things on TV on a Saturday evening.

I just hope with the return of the new series, the writers aren't tempted to try and make the Doctor all sexy with his new assistant, as they did with Who and Rose. It's surely not the point of Dr Who to get the horn, and if there is a sexy subtext, it shouldn't be accessible to the kids. In retrospect, one of the best things about watching Dr Who as a little girl was the complete lack of sexual tension. The tone of the programme made it possible to imagine that I could join the Doctor on his travels, and be perceived as his mate and an equal whilst doing so. In other words, that I could be just as adventurous and daring and valid as the boys. How liberating is that? - and what a missed opportunity not to send the same message to young girls today. They're not going to extract it from The Pussycat Dolls.

Another slight moan about the revival of Dr Who. Why do they keep on setting it in Cardiff or London or Stoke? The writers could take the story anywhere within our known galaxy, or the entire universe, and they won't even go to Prague. More creativity and scope in the narratives wouldn't go amiss. After all, I don't think anyone would really care or even notice if Cardiff disappeared into a hole in the fabric of space. I'm not entirely convinced it hasn't already.

Mummy's War (29/3/07)

2007-03-30T11:47:00.000Z

Friends and I harbour such a deep desire for Thatcher to pop her clogs, that if she happens to pop up on the TV screen whilst the sound is turned down, we all look at each other with an almost hysterical glee. "Is she dead? Is she dead?", we exclaim, not even trying to conceal the laughter in our voices. But no, usually she's just been down to Portsmouth to open a Tescos or something, and we have to dampen down the excitement again, keep a lid on it till another time. I should feel bad; I know that the image which comes from the screen is of an old frail lady. And then I remember growing up in the '80s. I remember the Brixton riots, the Miners' strike, the Falklands war. I remember her systematic economic disenfranchisement of single mothers and her criminalisation of the least privileged members of society. I remember the latent violence, ennui and ill-will that undersored British life, and then I don't feel so bad. Then I know that there will probably be spontaneous street parties when the happy news is announced. Down my street at any rate.

Any feeling I have must be intensified a thousand fold - it is almost idiotic to say - by those mothers who lost their sons on the Belgrano. In C4's Mummy's War, Carol Thatcher faced off with these women last night. It was repugnant to watch, as if she had summoned the ghost of her mother's wilfully blind statesmanship to ward off their pain and misery. "It was a war, we shot at you, you shot at us," she explained, as if to the subnormal. "But what about the 200 mile exclusion zone?", they asked, desperate to find something on which to hang the meaningless loss of their children. But there were no answers here; no reasoning profound enough to illuminate how a fellow mother could become the feminine face of destruction; just a retreat into the middle-class values of common-sense and fair-play. "Well, you started it," said C-Thatch. Gone were the almost manic facial expressions of the boarding-school girl whose exeat has been cancelled because her gym slip was dirty; they were replaced by the anonymous, timeless mask of self-righteous stupidity. And yet the language was the same - you started it, whoever smelt it dealt it. Funny how politicians and their ilk (in which I include Maggie's daughter) are reduced to the language of the playground to express something as huge, as horrific, as grown-up, as war. War for goodness sake - violation, rape, murder, trauma, displacement. "You started it". Well, I hope we're all very happy in Great Britain, knowing that the Malvinas are safely under our sovereignty. It certainly helped me to sleep a little easier last night.

The Apprentice (28/3/07)

2007-03-29T12:27:00.000Z

Alan Sugar returned to our screens yesterday, looking a little less like "Mrs Tiggywinkle" (as Charlie Brooker noted in Screenburn last year) after alleged plastic surgery to make him more telegenic. Difficult to make judgments on the contestants yet because no-one was as obviously selected for their personality disorders as series 2; no-one as insane as Jo or as contemptible as Syed. Slightly intrigued by Gerri, or perhaps more accurately, mildly frightened of her. She has that quality of shrewdness which would no doubt lead her to sell her own ovaries to please Sir Alan.

With the personalities of the current contestants on standby, I mourned the fact that the Celebrity Comic Relief version wasn't a full series. I was so looking forward to seeing the despicable Alistair Campbell get his comeuppance, or Cheryl Tweedy exposing what a nasty little turd she really is. Also found myself comparing the UK version to the US Apprentice with Donald Trump. Trump trumps Sugar every time. For a start, there's an actual bona fide job for the 'apprentice' at the end of the series; they aren't likely to get offloaded just because they got up the duff a la Michelle Dewberry, or be reduced to selling anti-wrinkle cream on the internet under the aegis of Amstrad, like Tim Campbell (who, as of 21/3/2007, has left the company). And then there's the 'boardrooms': Trump's all dark oak and gentlemen's club, Sugar's - as a friend noted last night - looking as if it's "filmed round the back of Sainsburys". Sugar has all the bluster of the wide-boy-made-good but this masks his latter-day failure as a businessman. He pales next to Trump; could never be as iconic, could never have a comb-over so unrelentingly bouffant. And no amount of plastic surgery is going to make up that difference.

Show me the burger (27/3/07)

2007-03-27T16:45:00.000Z

Sorry about long absence...life fell apart and had to reconstitute it, so sorry about that. Back now though! And what a long winter it has been in the land of telly. I was going to make a come-back with a critique of CBB5 but seeing as every two-bit hack under the sun had their say after the whole Anglo-Indian international incident, I didn't bother. For the record though, despite the recuperation of the whole debacle at the moment, it WAS racism. And seemingly no-one except DK and I saw the utter stupidity which motivates Jade's existence in her demonstration of her range of accents to H a couple of days after entering the house*. One of these being her "African" accent - you know, that well known nation in which everyone has the same accent, and 'they' say things like, "Keep your evil eye away from me"? Twat. The others? Jamaican and Irish. Quick, someone get her in the West-End, quick!

The thing that's yanking my chain at the moment is not so much the casual racism as the casual misogyny on telly; the main purveyors, of course, being those hellbound advertisers. It's too obvious to mention Carlsberg and Lynx; those ads are just a hangover from laddism. But laddism is coming back with full force even as we speak. Consider the ad for 'Rustlers' - a burger microwaveable in 60 seconds, which, as a result, could only only be marketed at men. 'If only women were that easy to prepare' - imagines the ad - showing the viewers a bespectacled, covered-up, nervous female entering a bloke's flat (prissy bitch). As the burger revolves inside the microwave, the action is mirrored by the sofa which turns to reveal....wait a minute, what's that?...the same woman with no glasses and sexy black lingerie on! 'YES!!!' screams the advert, 'Let's cut through the crap, lady. The talking, the bonding, the terrifying spectre of emotional attachment. Get your facking kit off, bird!'. Nice, huh? I'm going to keep my eye on this one. The return of the lad in the ad. Very annoying INDEED.

*Ignorance doesn't excuse racism, by the way, it just explains it.

George - the greatest housemate that never was.

2006-08-22T13:14:00.000Z

For my feelings on the end of BB, please see my sister column - 'Lucky Blue Suit' - whose author puts it better than I ever could. In fact, I didn't even watch the finale. Why mock up a sense of faux-anticipation when it was clear that the slightly tawdry Brighton crustie was bound to walk away with the title? What an interesting BB though. All the way from Shahbaz to shambles. Jesus. I can hardly recall all the twists and the turns, the deceptions and the disappointments, which have suffused my life for the past three months. I have a feeling that this is a BB from which there is no going back. Another landmark series in which another layer of innocence was peeled away, in much the same way as Jade Goody got her kebab out three years ago. Weirdly, the only person who I cared to see again during the reunion barbaeque on Sunday was old Harry's chum, George. I spied him twitching and ticcing away behind Dermot, desperate in equal measures to avoid the cameras whilst fulfilling the terms of the contract he had signed in order to receive payment. 'How different would this year have been', I thought, 'if George HAD wanted to be famous?' What effect would his outrageous poshness have had on that idiot Glyn - whose mindless patriotism and hatred of anyone who doesn't speak in a regional accent would have been thrown into relief if George had remained. What about Grace? Would we have had another version of the love story if George had stayed to stimulate her inner gold-digger? What about Nikki? If she had hooked up with the aristo, would Pete have ever bought her story about learning to love people from the inside rather than the outside? Who knows? But still a George-shaped ghost haunts BB7. I feel he may have been the catalyst that made the housemates reveal themselves, and that because he wasn't there, we got played as an audience by the likes of Nikki. Pete and Glyn. Maybe, in another dimension, George stayed in BB, and Nikki is already signed up to the Fantasy Channel. But I suppose we'll never really know.

Tuesday Night's TV (15/8/06 - Birthday of Jaxsta, pbuh)

2006-08-16T12:26:00.000Z

Bit of a 360 on the last post. I expected Nikki to re-enter the house and heighten the tantrums. I expected her to wrap herself around 'Petey' and giggle like a love-struck teenager. She is permanently frozen at age 13 after all. Yet I didn't expect her to re-enter the house and pull a Grace; taking the opportunity to settle old scores, and making Aisleyne feel incredibly uncomfortable in last night's episode. There's been a lot of talk of bullying this year what with Grace and her army. Nikki's behaviour towards Ais last night reminded me that she was often the malevolent earpiece Grace would test her poison out upon. I attributed this towards a social malleability in the little princess but discovered last night that it was an equal ability to torment others. For this reason, and this reason alone, Ais deserves to win. In a BB year in which backstabbing, snide comments, cruel laughter and downright malevolence have become de riguer, I am supporting the one housemate who refrained from slagging others off as far as she could. The one time Ais had a problem with Nikki she told her straight away - no diary room impressions, no bitchy interviews in Now - just a straightforward 'why don't you shut up? You're boring'. That's what Nikki can't handle, the truth.
The reemergence of the divide since Nikki went back in the house has also made me nostalgic for Imogen. She got a bad rap but I think I managed to look beyond the void in the end and find just a really nice, sweet girl. She's not going to discover the cure for cancer, but at least she acts her age and sticks up for others when they're being taunted (Imogen was the only HM to support Shahbaz when Richard - he truly is a Dick - had it in for him). Imogen and Ais, the true winners of BB because they kept their integrity. Nikki and Dickie, in the words of Bjork, can sod off.

Tuesday Night's TV (8/8/06 - Birthday of Princess Beatrice, May God Save Her Soul)

2006-08-09T15:37:00.000Z

Right. Where was I? Oh, I stopped writing about BB because Nikki left and it became boring. Now it looks like she's going back in on Friday, and it's become exciting again. Clever old Endemol. Except everyone's furious at them for stealing the quids they spent getting rid of people, and the perceived breach of the contract of trust between BB viewer and producer. I don't care as long as Nikki gets back in the main house pronto, and ousts that scally Jen from her relationship with Pete (Can't stand Jennie. She claims to be "like a lad", and then spends the whole time asking Glyn and Pete if they think she's pretty). I do have reservations about Nikkie's re-entry though - she knows that the public favour her childish tantrums, and if she heightens them, she truly will become the "fake" housemate that viewers and HMs alike have obsessed about for the entire series. She could seriously mess up her opportunity to walk away with the 100k. If so, it's a straight two-horse race between Pete and Glyn for the final. We're supposed to like Glyn because he's been "on a journey". All the way from Butthead to Beavis ("Huh. 69. Uh-huh-huh-huh. Yeah. 69. Uh-huh-huh-huh"). Petey it is then I suppose. And, as much as I adore Nikki, he really does deserve it. There's so much less scope for him to get his baps out in Nuts and Zoo following his departure, that he actually needs the prize money. Yeah, let Pete have it, and keep him in children's entertainer clothes and ketamin for life.

Last week's TV

2006-07-27T08:20:00.000Z

This harks back to last week but has been preying on my mind, so I hope to get some relief by sharing. Last Tuesday's ''Bad Lad's Army' featured such heartwarming vignettes as the "recruits" examining their tackle for pubic lice, and a skidmark inspection charmingly performed by the Sergeant Major, who shone a torch into the pants round their ankles in order to show up any dubious markings. And people say 'Big Brother' is low-brow. This sort of telly humiliation is seemingly okay because the participants are all criminals and have been sent into the "army" for self-improvement. Yet when any of the 'bad lads' speak on-screen, they always have the same description appear beneath them - "Danny Walker, 26. Thief", "Andy Pearce, 21. Shoplifter", "Tyrone Tyrell, 23. Flasher and pirate". Have the programme makers not heard of Becker's labelling theory? The deviants are attempting to move on with their lives via a vigorous regime of knob-watching and full arse-wipage, and ITV continually reiterates the identities they're trying to leave behind. It did elicit a few giggles though. Cruel, unkarmically friendly giggles. Don't watch the show if you expect great feats of heroism. Do if you like watching spotty/fat/nefarious proles being forced to do one-armed pressups for insubordination.

Friday Night's TV (21/7/06)

2006-07-22T12:04:00.000Z

As BB seemingly moves into phase II, initiated by the arrival of a whole new bunch of housemates who bring into question whether Bonnie and Sezer in fact ever existed, it is time to take a moment to reflect. Why is it I feel so disappointed this year? Why do I feel only marginally more entertained than when I watched BB4? Why, indeed, have I virtually stopped blogging when BB is one of the raison d'etres of my messages to you? I suppose sometimes that the personalities chucked into the BB house just don't work, and sometimes they just do. Imagine how awful Jason would have been without Emma and Victor to show him up, Craig without Anthony and Makosi? In BB7 there aren't many interesting interrelationships between people, and very few interesting people at all. It's not even - as people have already started to claim - because we have taken out the so-called "big personalities". There was nothing charismatic about Lea looking like a depressed tortoise, or Grace's uberbitching. Nikki's tantrums were a highlight of the series for me, but even those started to pall after time. But don't listen to people when they say BB is over. Of course it's not. The right chemistry might always be six months or a year round the corner, and any fan of Big Brother has to learn to take the rough with the smooth. With this in mind, I have compiled my favourite moments from the series so far, which all happen to come from the diary room.....

Moment number 3:- [Imogen on Lea's conversational style] It's always COCK and TITS and SPUNK
(sounds so much better when said in a Welsh accent, and when followed up with "I am SOOOO OOOver it")

Moment number 2:- [Nikki on Aisleyne] Who is she? Who IS she? Where did you FIND her? Who IS SHE??
(Nikki should be sent into schools to teach spoken English and contemporary rhetoric. I marvel at her apposite, economic use of language)

All-time favourite moment of BB7 Phase I:- [Glyn on Susie's excessive tea-drinking, and the general lack of partying and snogging] This isn't Big Brother, this is Crapland
(I couldn't have said it better myself, Glyn)

Thursday Night's TV (13/7/06)

2006-07-14T14:29:00.000Z

Is Love Island the most offensive programme on TV? It seems deliberately designed to humiliate the female "celebs" as much as humanly possible. Not only have they matched them up with some of the ropiest men on the planet (Lee Otway? He's just a chav with an eating disorder), but they've done so unevenly in order that one woman will always be a 'gooseberry'. While the women aren't exactly 'top spec bitches' (Has Alicia Duvall been in a horrific fire??), I do think this is slightly unfair. What puzzles me is that the "celebs" genuinely seem to be going on the island to find love. I thought the embarrassment of Middlemiss/Titmuss/Sharpe last year was just a spot of luck for the producers, but Sophie Anderton seems to be heading for exactly the same pitfall this time around, obsessing over Boyzone's Shane Lynch who is probably wary of her past drug addiction and promiscuity and understandably wants to distance himself from the adenoidal idiot. Sophie, however, has no idea and is gushing about him to anyone who will listen; interpreting his awkwardness as a strong, silent manliness and going all girly when Patrick Kielty and Fearne Cotton urge her to "tell him!tell him!" how she feels so that she makes a total arse of herself. It should be called Pimp Island. It leaves me feeling all sordid. It might just get good though, I'm going to give it another week.
PLEASE DON'T EVICT NIKKI FROM BB. She may have her problems but the show is going to be dire without her. Evict one of the 'voids' instead - Mikey, Imogen, preferably SUSIE. I think I'm going to have to vote for the first time. It's so wrong that she's the bookies favourite to go, when there are peasants like Spiral and Jennie in the house. DON'T RUIN THE END OF BB. KEEP NIKKI IN!!!!

This weekend's TV (7-8/7/06)

2006-07-10T10:20:00.000Z

Look it's been while. I've been technologically moved back to the last century over the past few weeks - DIAL-UP???? So while I've got a broadband chance, just wanted to register some views on the BB housemates.
Glyn (aka Beavis) and his new blonde hair. Wonderful. Normally such a teenage fashion mistake would only be caught on photos, but unfortunately the whole nation can see this one. In a way it makes him an even more suitable companion for......
Mikey (aka Butthead). Put the goon back in a majorette costume someone PLEASE. I haven't seen anything as funny all BB ias his galumphing around in lycra like a latter-day village idiot. More fancy dress for Mikey full stop.
Spiral - "Oim Spoiral. Oim a total steretoipe. Listen to how I say terty tree" - Spiral may make out like he's all pre-colonial Irish hospitality but rub him up the wrong way and his face darkens to reveal one of the strange locals from Craggy Island. Somehow Spiral has put the phrase 'Bog Irish' back in my head.....
Right gotta go, more soon.

This week's TV (19-22/6/06)

2006-06-24T11:47:00.000Z

Richard is doing my nut in. If the cadet-cap-leather-arm-thong-and-one-glove-with-pearl-bracelet outfit wasn't offensive enough a parody of homosexality for every BB viewer regardless of their sexual orientation, he also fulfils all other requirements of the gay from hell. Throw in a dash of misogyny ("Oh, all girls are like that. Don't you know what girls are like, Mikey?") and at least six litres of lifestyle-choice smugness ("I wait tables because the flexible work allows me to concentrate of my writing"; "Monogamy is so boring. I like to have sex with my harem of men"), and you get closer to what a deluded and essentially lonely person Richard must be. And because he obviously has a much better life than all those sad heterosexuals who knuckle down and get on with their uncreative work during the day, returning home to their long-term partners and missionary-position sex in the evening, the man thinks he has a right to tell EVERYONE how to live their lives. The poor housemates can't turn without finding Richard saying, "You don't want to turn like that. You want to bend your knees much more and find the fulcrum point from within your torso". Later on you'll see him bitching under his breath, "I can't believe Imogen turned without bending her knees. I think you and I are going to have to have a word with her about that. Ya, I think we are all going to have to, we just can't go on like this." Oh, do SHUT UP you bloody KNOW-ALL!
While I'm in 'annoyed mode', can I also just say that I'll be very very thankful when Grace's time in the spotlight is finally over and I don't have to see her stupid, grinning mug all over my tellybox anymore. Her professional smile has become so fixed to her face, and to such cartoon-like proportions, that the evictee, to my mind, now looks criminally insane. I'll just be glad when that vile little pro is back where she belongs, starting fights in the bogs of Chinawhites and Boujis with Davinia Taylor.

Bitty?

2006-06-19T08:58:00.000Z

I'd just like to write a few lines about the very strange breasts going down in Big Brother. Or should that be up, given the ubiquity of implants in the house? When Grace was evicted on Friday, she also affected the ratio of real-fakies so that now 66.6% of the female housemates in BB are cosmetically enhanced. Not that I have a particular problem with fake boobs but it's just that these are an especially rum bunch. Lea is obviously the Queen of Tits with M-cups which she insists on covering up with only the teeny-tiniest triangles of fabric (or maybe they're not teeny-tiny, maybe they're as big as ground sheets - but her breasts are SO massive that she's skewed my sense of perspective). The thing I find particular disturbing about Lea's boobs is the way they escape from her half-arsed attempts to cover them. I'd find it very offputting if involved in a conversation with a bikinied Lea to ignore the bottoms of the beachballs protruding from underneath her nipple patches. Maybe it's because it's possible to gain an idea of just how big her boobs are when you can see the underside of them. I'm just astounded that the woman can stand upright.
I find something about Suzie completely obscene. I don't buy this upper-class act, and read her hugely inflated assets as the evidence. It is impossible to have a boob job over a D cup and to remain classy anyway, perhaps even to have a boob job at all. Extreme boob jobs betray a certain desperation to be viewed as sexually attractive which belie class in a female. Which brings me onto Nikki; the woman with a body of a child and the face of Old Man Steptoe. Having found topless pictures of Nikki on the Digital Spy forums, I can confirm that she has the strangest breasts in Christendom, and got some really bad advice from her surgeon when he said implants would work on her little boy body. Her fellas look like tennis balls inserted below the most superficial layer of the dermis, and yet are still invasive enough on her tiny frame to push her nipples skywards. It looks like she's trying to locate a radio station with 'em.

p.s. While I do not think it is right to view women as sexual objects, the multitude of fake breasts in the house is worthy of comment. I also wonder why the producers have started trying to develop a boob signature for each series of BB? Last year was like an episode of Benny Hill what with Lesley, Saskia and Makosi's mammoth melons, while this year is like watching any programme after 9pm on channel 5. Is someone at Endemol a tad fixated?

Monday Night's TV (12/6/06)

2006-06-13T11:38:00.000Z

So, Nikki and Grace up for eviction this week then. Obviously Grace is going to be the one to leave, despite the fact that she's actually no more appalling than Nikki, who is four years older than her and also says completely awful things - but in a funnier voice. The real point of contrast between the two is their relations with men. From the first night Grace slid into bed with someone with whom she had very little in common other than the fact that they're both young and cute, while Nikki had to survive on her own terms in the BB house (not through choice, admittedly, but through her perception of a lack of available men). Her reward has been the gradual development of a relationship with Pete - a person who I am sure does not fulfill her pre-BB criteria for romance - resulting in a kiss during a game of 'spin the bottle' last week which contained real magic. Since then the pair have been magnetically drawn to each other, and - like Chantelle and Preston initially - are completely unaware of what is happening between them. Like two 'real' people in the first flush of love and attraction, this is simply gorgeous to watch; life-affirming, heart-warming and entirely natural. Grace and Mikey, meanwhile, formed an artificial bond almost immediately and - because nothing really links their spirits besides circumstance - have run the whole gamut of a relationship in a month. From hanging out and going to bed, they began to make demands of each other and now the arguments have started. Why? Because there is no profound base to their friendship. It is for this reason that Nikki should stay in BB. Not because she is nicer than Grace - she's not - but because something is really happening between her and Pete, the start of something exciting and new and delightful. A smile doesn't creep onto my face if I see Grace and Mikey holding hands as it does with Pete and Nikki. Their compromise already feels tired, sordid, and increasingly uncomfortable to watch.

This weekend's TV (9-11/6/06)

2006-06-12T10:41:00.000Z

My goodness, I'm glad Samuel's gone from BB. I have rarely been more disturbed than when they showed him/her masturbating last week. With her/his eyes wide open. A really very frightening sight to behold. And then there were the embarrassing, ignorant gaffes which any 18- year-old would make, but which aren't usually recorded for posterity, for instance her definition of eclectic (apparently keeping a book after you've finished it, rather than throwing it away). So now we've got Suzie, the "Golden Housemate", a random member of the public who has auditioned for BB several times and spent £4000 on chocolate to find her ticket. Random indeed. Verdict: singularly unexciting, unrepentently bourgeois, drippy drippy drip.
Watched the football on Saturday. Funny to observe the same old World Cup pattern emerging - loads of hype, people tattooing England flags on their faces, then the inevitable realism setting in as we collectively realise we're shit at football. How many TIMES?