Ummmmmm
Ah, Celebrity Big Brother 2009: I've watched three episodes.Boring, boring, boring.
I understand the celebs have been thoroughly "briefed" in order to prevent a re-run of the 2007 Shetty/Goody/Lloyd/O'Meara racism row. This time they've put in a black rapper who nobody's going to use ignorant racist epithets against, a black Jackson who pretends never to have seen Big Brother in order to protect herself, a hardened socialist to keep the peace, a disabled actor to keep them all on their guard and a gaggle of shy pop singers, TV personalities and one model who, if a goose were let into the house, would be unlikely to say "Boo!" to it. It makes you wonder: have the housemates this year actually been chosen not to be interesting?
If it miraculously gets good, let me know.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 4:42 PM
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37 Comments:
The most interesting thing about it is watching to see if the lawyers are keeping an eye on what Tommy Sheridan says to ensure that there is nothing that will prejudice his imminent perjury trial (which was miraculously not mentioned by Davina in the hevaily edited opening sequence for Sheridan in last week's opening show).
Is it accurate to say he's disabled? Not being pithy, it's just I'm not sure myself.
I watched the first one - I always like to see who's going in even though I have no intention of following through - and I was shocked at just how Z-list the British contingent are. Okay, Ulrika is not quite on the Z-list, but she'll clearly do anything to maintain her profile so she's hurtling in that direction.
I wonder why Channel 4 bother. Ratings halved for show two because - as you say - it's not engaging.
This and the ready salted BB should be shelved after this year. We've moved on, haven't we?
Swines: Troyer said to the other housemates that he doesn't want to be considered "handicapped", but he's using a motorised scooter to get around and - although I'd never noticed this from seeing him in films - it was clear from his entrance into the house that he has a lot of trouble actually walking for any great distance.
I certainly don't use "disabled" in a pejorative sense; he just seems to have a lot of difficulty with mobility, never mind his size, and that certainly "disables" him to a degree.
Sheridan nobly and sensitively broke the ice on this issue and cleared the air by telling Troyer that nobody wants to patronise him by offering to help him but that if he needs assistance, just ask. This was well-judged, I thought. It's not something to be frightened of addressing.
Coolio, whom Troyer already knows and trusts, helped him unpack his case and he seemed happy to accept the help in this instant.
Hey, I'm making it sound more interesting than it is! Troyer seems like a nice guy. They all seem like nice guys!
Lucy Pinder said she was giving no truck to any socialists in the house on her intro VT. Funny that, I watched last night and Sheridan was wearing a top festooned with a socialist slogan, Pinder was happily conversing with him.
Now that David Cameron knows that Lucy Pinder is a self-described "Tory girl" I wonder if he'll recruit her to help win the hairy-palmed youth vote at next year's Election? (Actually, no, Nuts readers aren't old enough to vote, are they?)
I object. You are quite patently being underwhelmed by CBB. This whole website is a fraud.
I don't see Sheridan as a 'hardened socialist' who could keep the peace. I see him as someone who would stab good friends in the back to try to save his skin. I've met one of those people he accused of perjury a few times and I feel confident that they wouldn't have done it. I saw Tommy speak a couple of times in the 80s and he was a good motivational speaker then, but I feel he's been an embarassment to the left in this decade and done it a lot of damage, in Scotland at least.
What the hell is a 'Tory Girl' anyway? There's so little to distinguish the parties these days. Maybe she is someone who originally opposed the minimum wage has now decided to live with it and would prefer a tweaking of income tax bands. Or maybe she went to Eton.
Anyway give BB a chance for, it's only two days old. And I'm getting a bit tired of the Z list accusations? Yes we know. So what? I hope Tezza or Coolio wins it but presumably inoffensive Ben will. Oh and get that foul-mouthed scouse bint out please. She seemed to be doing quite well in forging a friendship with LaToya until she admitted to her that when she first clapped eyes on her she thought "Fuck me, it's a fucking Jackson". Isn't that Jacksonism anyway? Assuming they are all the same.
And whilst I'm on I'm still waiting for my apology Five Centres. You accused me of living in the 1980s earlier this year because I described those who work on the stock exchange and money markets as "pissing about with our lives". I think all our lives have been well and truly pissed about with don't you?
3 episodes ?
You're a braver man than I Andrew.
That's about 3 more than I'll be watching.
I've only seen it enough to say that:
- While Lucy Pinder is alright to look at, she has a very drab voice.
- LaToya Jackson appears to be a normal person.
- Mutya Buena looks like Ron Perlman when he was in that Beauty and the Beast TV series.
Nuts readers would cajole a passing grown-up into going in and casting a vote for them.
If a goose was let into the house, would anyone hope to be kissed by it? No, the fools.
I think most Nuts readers probably are old enough to vote. It's their basic comprehension and ability to keep an "X" inside the box that I'd question. Unless ballot forms are changed so that each candidate is identified by a two page photo spread that the Nuts reader can then "mark" in their hairy-palmed way, I don't think the Nuts demographic is going to be much of a factor.
lol! christ oldnathan you dont half bear a grudge eh? jesus!
oldnathan's mum
Big Brother is always going to go one of two ways with the majority of the public:
A) A load of loud obnoxious idiots enter the house. They fight all the time. Everyone starts complaining that they do not represent 'normal' society, therefore the show is rubbish.
B) They bring in a bunch of nice people who all seem to get along together and make the best of the confined situation they find themselves in. They are seen as being boring, and people wonder why they can't have anyone 'interesting' in. Which they then put in and we go back to A.
I've never hated Big Brother, in fact I've mostly enjoyed it despite laughed at by TV snobs (including my dad) that it's a load of rubbish. The one thing it does have going for it is the fact that it's unashamedly a personality contest, whereas the others (XFactor, Strictly etc) are personality contests pretending to be something else. I like the way Big Brother is simply about personality rather than trying to cater to a more middle class audience by pretending it's something it isn't. Apologies for length!
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This post has been removed by the author.
Sorry! Nothing sinister, I just made a right pig's ear of the previous comment and tried to add a correction and then realised I'd made another error. This is what I meant to say (and I haven't had a drink since 2008):
I'm confident you weren't lumping me in with the "TV snobs" there, Adam. I've watched the regular BB three times, the first two series and the last but one, with Ziggy and Chantelle. I've watched all the Celeb versions, as I find those far more interesting. But this one is, I think, suffering from the racism row that beleagured the 2007 one. (Or made it better, depending on your viewpoint.)
Actually, I had a look at tonight's and it's clear that the narrative is going to be Tina versus Coolio - without any racism. It's really not interesting enough to hold my attention.
I don't like X Factor, or any of the talent shows, partly because I really hate the R&B singing style which seems to be the industry standard, but mainly because I hate the way it has colonised pop music and only Simon Cowell can win. Oh, and the way it encourages us to laugh at the mentally ill and the deluded in the early stages.
I have no cultural problem with reality formats, I just find many of them dull and predictable. It's certainly nothing to do with class.
I've caught bits of the current BB but haven't quite been sucked in yet. However it looms there like a televisual black hole and I'm sure I'll cross its event horizon one of these evenings when there's nothing better to watch at 9pm.....
You're correct, Andrew, I wasn't suggesting you are a snob at all. I was merely pointing out my annoyance at some people who don't even give some TV a chance. I've taken lots of stick over the years for watching Big Brother - and this is from people who watch other reality shows. I apologise for using this little comment box as a way of venting, it's a big white box just asking to be filled without much thought. On the other hand I do agree that this series is a little more boring than the others. Possibly because Channel 4 are being extra careful and anything slightly off the mark is likely to be thrown.
I surfed over to it this evening and actually enjoyed that they all seemed relatively normal. Terry and Tina especially. (Tina may be a bit too normal for the middle class readers of this esteemed blog. Having moved to the chav end of my hood, I can vouch for her being very working class normal). It was what I liked about the first series - that it was about watching people sociologically, not for the titillation of rows and scandal. When I say normal, I mean as normal as anyone who wants to be very much in the public eye can be. Because frankly, that's not a normal desire. And Sheridan and Coolio seem to be the worst culprits for that. Coolio is a dick. It's like watching a cross between a four year-old and Donkey from Shrek, watching him. And Sheridan is a weasel, but we knew that. And he's coming across as an amiable weasel, like the best weasels. Tonight's 'talent' show was interesting. LaToya, Coolio, the Liberty X girl and Verne Troyer were all hopeless, beaten to true hopelessness only by the tit model, whose talent wasn't entirely displayable in a talent show. Well, it possibly was, but it's bad enough watching Coolio panting over the Liberty X girl's PVC-clad routine, without him going nuclear over a pair of baps. Apparently he now lives in Hertfordshire. Gangster's Paradise my arse. And watching him perform that (did he have any other hits or was that it?) was like watching a karaoke boyband PA in a working men's club. Mutya however, despite looking permanently stroppily bored can really sing. And Ulrika isn't coming over as either nuts or overtly 'as a mother' like she does in her columns. Yet. What's not to like as fun, brainless fodder?
Anna
A thorough and thoughtful assessment of the current CBB housemates there, Anna, although on a side note, I'm not sure it's helpful to make sweeping value judgments on the readership of a blog - "esteemed" or otherwise - based on class. Do "middle class" people, whoever they are, really need someone "working class" to vouch for another "working class" person's actions? Unless these "middle class" people were born in a gated community and had never ventured outside.
Hoi Collins you were fairly hosed in Word letters this month , great "bonnet opera" article though.
Hoops McCann
Hoops, you clearly haven't visited the Word forum, where "Squirrelgate" is currently running at 273 comments. (I wouldn't advise you do visit this thread, as it goes on and on and on and on, and at times descends into one man fending off a cannonball attack using only a table tennis bat.) Suggesting that grey squirrels shouldn't be culled is fast becoming the most controversial thing I have ever written! It's a funny old world.
And don't call me "Collins", if you'd be so kind. It's not Tom Brown's Schooldays.
If things get really boring they can always bring in Vanilla Ice to spice it up! I'm sure Terry Christian would be thrilled! Committed "reality" tv fans must remember with misty-eyed affection the good old days when Vanilla Ice and Terry Christian almost came to blows on Channel 5's "The Farm", and the Ice Man had to be physically restrained by Stan Cullimore (of all people) from pounding the visibly quaking Manc presenter into oblivion! Later in the series Cullimore (the football fella, not the ex Housemartin) himself demanded that he and Ice should get their "mikes off" and go outside into the yard and settle their differences like ... the twats they truly were! (He didn't put it quite like that.)
Oh, those were the days! When you could make an utterly irredeemable arse of yourself by threatening physical violence towards fellow housemates ... and it had absolutely no consequences in the outside media whatsoever (Vanilla even came second in the end)! Luckily for them, this being an early C5 show, I think I was about the only person watching this woeful but extremely entertaining nonsense.
Still I'd like to see how they handled Round Two in the current hypersensitive climate. C'mon C4, have you got the guts? Put 'em up!
Black Gloves
Which to be fair is a film that scared the b'jesus out of me when I was a young whipper snapper.
Aplogies that should have read Young Master Collins as I am in full costume drama mode don't you know.
Lord Hoopster of McCann
I think I'm the only person to slag off Tina (is that what it's called) so far, so I do hope Anna's accusation of being middle class was aimed at me. That would be a first. I might have to have both my flat-cap and clog wearing chips removed from both my shoulders! Working class and proud and have the pigeons to prove it (actaully I don't but my neighbours used to).
I don't care if Tina is normal. She's also horrible.
Nice to have a comment from my Mum included above. I thought she died, almost to the day, 13 years ago. Maybe it was just a faked canoeing accident after all. Not a grudge Mum... just need an acknowledgement of some kind.
I watched last night, just to see whether anything of any note was going on. Everyone was sitting on the sofas, listening to Coolio drone on and on about women and titties and titties on women, and sex, and titties. I was unimpressed and they all looked unimpressed too.
The highlight? Someone said the large woman who had been in Shameless looked like the princess in Shrek. Well, that was about as good as it got.
Bring back Leo Sayer, he might have been utterly repellent, but at least he was interesting with it.
I hadn't heard anything of this squirrel quarrel till just now, but for what it's worth my missus (a vegan animal lover) agrees, for the sake of red squirrels.
One of my comments didn't post, despite saying it had posted. Is this because I was libelous regarding
David Cameroon?
Sorry, if so.
I haven't disallowed any post with your name on it, Swines. Don't know what happened. I've checked my "junk" file - nothing there.
For the record, it's not through my vegetarianism that I object to the culling of the greys to protect the red - since I am a carnivore - but through a broader distaste for the arrogance and bloodlust of those who are doing the culling. See the original Guardian article that got my goat and led to the "controversial" Word column here. And let that be an end to it.
I'm keeping out of it.
I think it would be fair to say that a lot of "interesting" things that used to go on on BB will not be going on any more.
From my point of view it's the series that everyone says are boring that usually turn out to be the better ones. That's because it usually means the politics of the house are being left to develop naturally rather than being artificially created by a series of stupid "twists". Regardless, I'm too pissed off with Endemol for the whole Princess Nikki farrago to watch BB anymore.
Black Gloves ..I think you mean Stan Collymore.
Collings..give it time. Things will get nasty just you wait and see.
I haven't disallowed any post with your name on it, Swines. Don't know what happened.
Andrew, I noticed that a comment I had posted under your No, really, happy new year! thread doesnt show if I go to that page, but does appear in the popup window when I click on the "post a comment" link. Hope that's come across as clearly in writing as it sounds in my head.
Have you ever been asked to go on sleb bb, Andrew? If you were asked, would you go?
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