awww, a little squirrel

Big Brother's watching me...

...But i'm not watching Big Brother.

I could write about Big Brother. This seventh series is currently almost three weeks old, with another ten weeks left.

Yes I could write about the events in the BB house, but it helps to have watched some of it. So unenthusiastic was I about the show before the launch show on Thursday 18th May that I decided to watch a repeat of Strange on the Sci-Fi channel rather than the start of Big Brother 2006. I saw the middle 20 minutes of the launch show. I’m one of those rare people that is put off watching programmes by seeing trailers and publicity about them.

The News of the Screws
The News of the World and the rest of Fleet Street all knew who was going into the house many days, or even weeks before the start, and what they said didn’t sound too appealing. It sounded like another batch of the usual BB housemates. Every year I’ve watched Big Brother I have had the vain hope that maybe this year it will be worth watching with people who are actually likeable. Forever an optimist I shall be. To be honest I didn’t really read anything in the papers before the start. I like to wait for the launch show. Half of the excitement of the launch show is waiting to see what dozen or more complete strangers will be thrust on to your television screen and remain there for 13 weeks. To know beforehand kills most of the enthusiasm for me, even though I hardly saw anything before the night. Rather than read the papers I read the online forum at Digital Spy instead and got a good impression from there about the freaks that were chosen for the house this year. I love that forum! I read it most days even though I don’t watch one minute of Big Brother a week. It amuses me that posters on DS:BB say the same things every year. Any of the last few years’ posts could be recycled with different housemate names inserted and no one would be the wiser. Like all previous years you have people responding to the pre-BB revelations in the papers about who is going in and they say things like “if those lot are going in I’m not going to bother watching it!” Weeks later after that very same poster who has since posted 1384 messages is reminded of their earlier message by someone who disagrees with them on some minor point.

I like the Big Brother format; I just don’t like the people who are selected.
I watched a ridiculous programme on E4 or Channel 4 a couple of years ago in the run-up to that year’s series and BB producers talked about the kind of people they wanted in the house, and the kind they didn’t want. Believe it or not they had the cheek to say they didn’t want the kind of people who see Big Brother as a way of getting into television and the media in general to gain fame and fortune. Maybe my memory is failing me here, but I’m certain they said something like that. It seems an odd thing to say considering almost all of their housemate selections since then.

In the first couple of years BB had something going for it. It was new and completely unlike anything we had seen before, and the term “social experiment” was mentioned once or twice. Since then it has gone downhill considerably. Anybody using the term “social experiment” when talking about its later years would be laughed at, and rightly so.

It’s become a cross between a crappy, ill-conceived game show and Jerry Springer.

Who will win this year?
God knows.
In BB2 I actually predicted the last two housemates (Kate and Johnny) right at the beginning of the series. Since then my hit rate hasn’t been so good. I blame BB producers and all their manipulation of editing. They have a habit of also editing the highlight shows against housemates who at first aren’t too popular with the others in the house, or with the public, but then suddenly the mood changes and that same housemate starts to attract a cult following and becomes more popular. Then they get voted out due to the negative editing of them earlier in the week. Two prime examples being Jon Tickle from BB4 and the mad witch from BB6. What was her name? Oh yeah, Mary.

Where was i? Who will win this year. From the few minutes I saw of the launch show I thought Mikey stood a fair chance of going far. That doesn’t mean I like him. It’s just the fact his face looks right. He should make it to the last four. My gut instinct from seeing that show and the next night’s highlights was that Nikki could do well too. I haven’t got a clue about their personalities; I can only go by initial impressions.

Lisa. I do not like her. As soon as she said something, that was it. I decided I would want her out should I have been a viewer. She has to be the most common housemate ever, and very vulgar if quotes attributed to her are true.

Lea. What a tart. She is one of the oldest housemates. She claims to be 35, but I think she looks more like 55; and an ugly 55 yr old too. She has apparently done hardcore porn, and that this porn is circulating on the net. I read on the DS forum that she has a child and says she would do everything to protect him. It seems her desire for brief fame on a tacky game show outweighs the risk of her sordid past being revealed and harm being done to her child. What a good mother she is. Lea: an ugly person in every way.

Shahbaz. He’s gay, he’s a Pakistani, and a Muslim, and he has a Scottish accent. He ticks all the minority boxes and he was oh so popular immediately after the launch show. Shahbaz lost the plot apparently and was removed from the show after a few days. I think officially he “walked”. No doubt he was pushed. If Shahbaz was “unstable” why was he chosen? Have we been lied to all these years about the psychological tests that all housemates go through before being chosen? BB must employ some sub-standard Psychologists. That might explain why they stopped being used on the Saturday show; none of them want to show their faces. The psychologists opinions on the Saturday show was one of the more interesting aspects of BB in the early years.

Richard. Another gay. He wears a cowboy hat, well at least all the time I’ve seen him, he may have set fire to it after 24 hours for all I know. No doubt BB producers gave him the hat to wear. Just like Mary and her witch costume last year. It’s all a bloody pantomime! Boooo! Hisssss!! He’s behind you! (If you’re male you’ll be hoping its not Richard or Shahbaz who’s behind you)

Mikey. He looks like your typical last four BB housemate.

That girl who was thrown out in the first eviction. I can’t remember her name. I didn’t like her. I decided that simply on the basis of her official BB picture.

Who else is there?

Dawn. The one who was thrown out for breaking the “communication with the outside world is forbidden” rule. It would be nice if BB were consistent and started being stricter with the rules. Throw the whole lot of ’em out if necessary.

Pete. I almost forgot Pete; how is that possible? Pete’s Tourettes and physical ticks could well win BB7. Dear God. What have we come to? Every time I read some patronising post about Pete it reminds me of Knowing me Knowing you with Alan Partridge and the part with Joe Beasley and Cheeky Monkey with Alan saying “what a triumph of the human spirit!”. The Joe Beasley/Cheeky Monkey part of the show is one of those rare bits of comedy where I’ve laughed so much I thought I was going to die.

Bonnie. Just seeing her BB picture made me decide she should be evicted at the earliest opportunity. And she was.

George. The token “toff”. If I’d watched BB I would probably have liked George more than most other HMs. I think I saw one or two posts saying he was boring (but then again, most HMs get called boring by someone) Great! He’s boring. In BB terms that is a compliment. It means he has a brain and can string words together, doesn't need to sprinkle F words in every sentence, and might talk about subjects with some substance to them rather than the usual diet of emptiness and bitchiness of most BB conversations.

I can’t think of anyone else in the house. Not surprising considering I don’t watch it.

Normal people don’t win BB anymore. The most normal winner was Craig in BB1. It all went downhill from there.

After several years of deciding to not watch BB and ending up watching it all; this year I have managed to go three weeks without it. I think I can manage the next ten weeks too.

I feel sorry for all those poor people being drip-fed E4 and web feeds and typing frantically on the “What’s happening at the moment “(WHATM) threads on DS:BB.

Those poor lost souls.

My blog has broken!

Anybody got a hammer and a screwdriver i can borrow?