Tuning into the live launch show on Thursday, then, I was sad to see that I didn’t recognise any of the ‘crazy’ characters filling the house this year. Who’s in instead? Well, we have the first bona fide lesbian to appear on the show for a number of years, a lesbian SO stereotypically manly and dungaree clad that she will singlehandedly destroy all the work done by programmes such as the L-Word and, shockingly, Hollyoaks, in making feminine women who happen to also like other women visible in mainstream culture. There’s also a page 3 model with breasts SO large you worry she’s going to topple over, a curly haired Mancunian guy who has the generic indie boy band look and flicked his hair more times in the first show than I ever have in my entire life, and I’m quite a hair flicker, the yearly posh person, who this time has a pile in the country, an Oxbridge degree, a fetching deerstalker cap, and a severe delusion that he’s some sort of spiritual guru, and a man dressed in a bright blue suit who is apparently a club promoter who knows all the best spots and all the best people in London, which I find hard to believe as I’ve never met him and would probably run a mile if I did thanks to the stench of obnoxiousness and pretension which seemed to be coming off him with visible stench lines, the likes of which I’ve only ever seen before in the beano.
Add a few foreigners with limited grasp of the English language, a man who looks like Wolverine, and some attractive girls who got boo-ed on entering purely because they’re much better looking than the ladies standing outside the house waiting for the new contestants, and you have your housemates. Although wait a minute! There’s a twist! Of course there’s a twist, the producers of the programme aren’t idiots, and have realised that the public is so bored of the BB concept that they had to introduce something a bit different to shake things up. I wonder how long it took them to come up with this one: in order to be accepted into the house, the contestants have to do ‘crazy’ stuff like, erm, shave off each other’s eyebrows and walk around with a curly moustache and glasses drawn on their faces with permanent marker. I can just imagine THAT concept meeting now; the head of production tells their team they need something to jazz up the show and ensure they get a portion of the audience, everyone sits and scratches their head for a few minutes, then one bright spark pipes up with ‘I KNOW! Get them to perform the sort of acts normally reserved for bachelor parties and drunken blokes nights out on each other!’. Everyone cheers. I’m guessing the next person allowed to become a housemate will be the one who puts everyone else’s fingers in glasses of water while they sleep, leading to the house turning into a sea of piss. I’d quite enjoy that one actually.
Of course I was always told by my parents not to judge a book by its cover, so I’m grudgingly going to actually watch the show on a reasonably regular basis for the first time since season one, which was actually quite enjoyable viewing, although I WAS 13 at the time so whether this was actually the case is debatable. I’ll keep tabs on what’s going on in the house and- assuming I haven’t gouged out my eyes in distress, making it impossible for me to utilise blogging facilities- will report back here on a semi-regular basis. Joy.
