Celebrity Big Brother 11 Wednesday 9th January

It was the first live eviction. Which meant a first sighting for me (I missed the launch show) of Brian Dowling. Now it could be my imagination but I don’t remember him being quite so smooth. To clarify here I’m not referring to his delivery but to his forehead. He looked as though my grandmother had ironed him.

Ironed Brian welcomed us all with an off-putting mixture of hyper-exaggerated vocal intonation and minimalist facial expression  - it was as if Arnold Schwarzzenger’s Terminator had opened his mouth and spoken with the voice of Janet Street Porter. But however he said it and however he didn’t show it, the moment of truth for Frankie, Paula and Speidi had arrived.

Or nearly arrived. First we had some highlights of previous  day’s activity. The seemingly interminable food task was still ongoing now featuring Heidi and Paula guessing what other housemates had said about each other and then them being dumped in a gunge tank if they got it wrong. I’m old enough to remember when gunge tanks were confined to children’s television. (Actually I can remember when gunge tanks were confined solely to ITV children’s television  like  Tiswas - that august institution, the BBC never allowed gunge to feature on their more cerebral shows e.g. Swap Shop. The wackiest thing we got there was the sight of John Craven not wearing a tie.) Doubtless in twenty years Question Time will be conducted above a gunge tank with David Dimbleby poised to condemn any politicians whose answers fail to pass muster with the studio audience to a thorough dunking in gooey custard.

The gunge tank task did allow Paula to discover Gillian thought Paula had to have a better story/experience/nose for rotten chicken than anybody else – she is rumoured to have once gone to church in order to inform God  she had thought of eleven commandments.  Amazingly, Paula was the only person not to know about this character trait of hers and responded by prowling up and down the garden practicing her karate kicks. Not that she needed karate because as she told Lacey her eyes alone were enough to stop a deadly Spanish knife fight. It must simply be an oversight on her part not to have so far resolved the whole Israel/Palestine impasse.

 As the camera’s focus on Paula intensified it was becoming obvious who those on the gantry had decided had to go. The Confuse People into Voting Frankie Out Strategy had obviously failed. So the producers had to choose between Paula and Speidi (if it is coming as a shock to you that the producers have way more influence on who goes than the voting public then I should probably additionally reveal that neither Santa Claus nor The Tooth Fairy exist and that, whatever George Osborne says ,we are not all in it together). Back to the producer’s dilemma. As I mentioned on my Saturday blog, women over 35 on reality TV shows are the equivalent of the guy in the red uniform who beamed down next to Kirk, Spock and Bones on Star Trek. Set phasers to doomed.

While I’m congratulating myself for my ability to predict the reality TV future (and oh what a proud boast that is) I should like to point out that Rylan did have his first cry last night (as his role requires) when he found out that Frankie didn’t like him on The X Factor. With a wonderful mix of self-pity and arrogance Rylan informed his comforters that such was the mistaken image of him out there he felt the need to visit every person in the UK to let them see he was really a nice guy. That’s right. Every person in the UK has an opinion about Rylan. And they’ve all got it wrong. No wonder he’s sniveling.

Back to the main show.  The votes were totalled and Paula was out. And so we were once again lucky enough to witness the spectacle of a baying crowd who had waited for hours in the cold just for the opportunity to jeer at a middle-aged woman. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?

Ironed Brian then conducted an “interview” with Paula - (he just robotically spouted questions and seemed almost entirely unaware of the answers). It was so inept it came close to making you hanker for the harsh banshee screech of Davina McCall. Not close enough though. How people watch her exercise videos, God Only Knows. I’d rather be fat.

There was one final twist. Spencer and Heidi were called into the diary room and told they were going to be required to shock their remaining housemates by pretending to walk out of the show. Spencer’s face lit up with pleasure. Finally, you could see him thinking, someone is giving me a storyline ; finally someone is telling me what to do. This, you could see he wanted to shout, this is reality.      

Celebrity Big Brother 11 Tuesday 8th January

There is an inherent irresolvable dilemma in the Big Brother format. It is this. The producers fill the house with people who they hope will be “entertaining” (entertaining in this context loosely means unpleasant, argumentative, overly emotional and if the producers are really lucky sexually promiscuous). Some of the housemates live up to this billing and some don’t. Those who live up to the billing cause the most controversy, get the most screen time, generate the tabloid headlines and draw in the audience. Unfortunately they then get nominated by the housemates who have to live with their “entertaining” personalities and then the public vote them out and everybody has a nice cathartic boo (thank you, Aristotle) on eviction night.

This must drive the producers potty. Because as the “entertaining” people are gradually whittled down the show becomes populated by the nice people. The TV audience having enjoyed their brief catharsis now finds the nice people left behind dull and stops watching. And the producers get berated for falling ratings.

The flaw lies with the sub-section of the TV audience who are the voters.  And there really isn’t much that can be done about them. Let’s face it. If you’re dumb enough to voluntarily give Richard Desmond money when you don’t have to then you are unlikely to be persuaded  by an argument as complex as one that states that by voting out the people you dislike you are actually destroying the vital dynamic which made  the programme watchable for you in the first place. You don’t see the makers of Doctor Who letting people vote off the daleks.

So with nominations done and dusted there are three housemates up for the public vote - Frankie, Paula and Speidi. It doesn’t take a genius to know who the production team would like to be doing a Devon Lock or falling at Bechers Brook or being sent to the glue factory come eviction day.

Yep, it’s the jockey.

But Frankie having proved a fairly reliable “solid bloke” (see Saturday’s blog) is never going to be voted out. So the producers have gone for that sly twist. The “Save” instead of “Evict” vote.  I assume the hope is that with Paula and Speidi having attracted all the interest so far the voters will vote for the one of those two they prefer and forget Frankie believing him to be already safe. Or that the voters are so dumb they’ll get muddled between the two concepts (remember these are people voluntarily giving Richard Desmond money) and Frankie will get voted out by mistake. It’s a long shot but when you’re presiding over the most harmonious house in reality history you’ve got to try something.

It got even worse for the producers last night when Speidi previously the most reliable source of tension and rancour bonded with their housemates over their refusal to do a task. This must have had them tearing their hair out on the gantry.  One of the few cast iron certainties of Big Brother is that those housemates who refuse to participate in the task will earn the lasting hostility of the others. But not this time…

Citing their marital vows. their deep religious faith and their strong moral compass, Spencer and Heidi refused to take part in a task which might lead them to inadvertently touching lips with a human being who was not their spouse. Now as far as I understand it even the most puritan reading of the sixth commandment (adultery) doesn’t punish unintentional lip contact. But Spencer and Heidi may have a different pastor than I do. Alright, I admit the closest I actually come to having a pastor is having a pasty (normally with a steak filling though I am partial to the occasional cheese and onion).  But all the other housemates believed it Ryan even allowing himself a stern admonishment of Big Brother for crossing a line.

That Big Brother later shutting a middle aged woman in a garishly painted room and subjecting her to potentially endless looped plays of pop music in order to obtain food did not cross the same line shows what a skewed world we live in. When the American military do this stuff in Guantanamo Bay it’s called torture. Oh alright, I admit Claire from Steps had an escape button.

Now to be fair to the housemates, they may not all know that Spencer and Heidi take their vows so seriously that they have already thought it necessary to make them three times (the renewing of vows stuff - for everybody not just Spencer and Heidi  - is amazing to me. Everybody who ever considers renewing their vows should be given a dictionary and told to look up the word vow. The definition will not say they’re broadly the same thing as overdue library books). Nor may they know that, according to Wikipedia, their marriage meant so much to them that they considered divorcing in order to help Heidi’s career.  Nor may they know that Heidi’s objection seemed to stem not from potential contact with any lips but rather potential contact with specific lips namely Spencer’s with Lacey’s.

But what the housemates do know is that Speidi are now part of the team. Spencer even admitted to liking them back. Big Brother is getting so out of control I’m half expecting come Thursday that the production team will evict themselves.

Celebrity Big Brother 11 Monday 7th January

And so the friendliest Celebrity Big Brother in history finally reached its first nominations. The relief up on the gantry must have been palpable. At least on nomination day they can be guaranteed some kind of highlights to put on the show. And anything was better than sending a bumper supply of baked beans into the house to see if Razor Ruddock could breach the ozone layer.

But even the nominations (normally so reliable) were dispatched with clinical efficiency. There were no protests to Big Brother about how unfair it all was, no long drawn out pauses as the oh so reluctant nominator searched their conscience to see whether they could summon the mental fortitude to perform this terrible action which they’d known all along they were going to have to do and virtually no tears (Claire did manage a sniffle). Well at least as far as I saw - I have to admit that I got a phone call towards the end of the nominations so didn’t see them all (don’t be raising your eyebrows to heaven – it’s not like anybody is paying me). If Razor Ruddock broke into a blubbering mess and said he just couldn’t do it then I apologise. But I doubt it. He never burst into tears and said he couldn’t do it when he was asked to play centre half for Liverpool even though many on the Kop wished he would have. Incidentally watching Razor puffing away on his ciggies explains a lot to those of us who remember speedy strikers zipping effortlessly by him.

Back to the nominations. No tension  because they were already a foregone conclusion and everybody in the house knew it. Frankie was already up for the public vote so there was only one spot left.

Step forward Speidi.

Once in the diary room it turned out that all the housemates shared an almost pathological dislike of bad manners. The shook their heads with disappointment at Speidi’s decision not to make the effort to say hello to them. The housemates concern for common courtesy and their promotion of propriety brought a tear to my eye almost as genuine as the one’s Clare squeezed out earlier. Everybody nominated the Americans.

 It’s a shame they’re going to be going because I’m beginning to warm to Spencer. His undisguised contempt for everything going on around him is rather wonderful. This isn’t real reality TV, his sneer seems to suggest. Where are the storylines? Where are the scripts? Where are the retakes? Where's the realness?

He obviously feels British reality television is amateurish hokum. He can’t even be bothered to “villainise” himself  because if nobody else is going to try then why should he. He just sits round looking disbelieving and waiting to get voted off so he can pick up his cheque and hop on the first plane back to California where they know how to make reality TV properly. Properly artificial that is.

Celebrity Big Brother 11 Sunday 6th January

The Stanford experiment pitted Haves against Have-Nots and resulted frighteningly high levels of abuse and confrontation. Frighteningly high levels of abuse and confrontation are exactly what reality TV shows need. So Celebrity Big Brother created an arbitrary and unfair divide and sat back and waited. What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything. Instead of abuse and confrontation the Big Brother producers have somehow instituted fellowship and team-bonding. Where there might have been discord they have created harmony. Basement-dwelling Have-Nots cast aside personal well-being and selflessly powered their more fortunate neighbours’ electricity and hot water despite receiving no obvious benefit themselves. The Main house inhabiting Haves responded by sacrificing their own luxury foodstuffs to their more unfortunate fellows. It was enough to bring a tear to the eye. Especially if you were a member of the Big Brother production team when you saw the ratings.

Desperately the poor dears up on the gantry tried to drag some ugly discord out of the whole happy mess by forcing the basement dwelling Have-Nots to put one of their fellows up for a public vote. Surely this would bring some kind of animosity? But no! Razor, Sam, Ryan and Frankie all bravely volunteered to face televisual annihilation. It was like Scott in the Antarctic with four Captain Oates’. They chose Frankie after all saying how popular and loved he was. It was the nicest eviction vote I have ever seen.

It may well have  been the nicest eviction vote they’d seen up in the Control Room too. And nice evictions aren’t getting anybody backstage a performance bonus.  The production crew threw up their hands in despair and abruptly ended the basement/main house divide story line before the housemates started getting matching tattoos and swearing to be best friends forever. I suspect this wasn’t the idea three days ago.

In truth the poor Programme Makers have been outmaneuvered from the start. First, Paula who was the housemate most likely to get grumpy in the cellar suffered a wonderfully timed mystery illness and was released into the land of milk and honey (or at least hot water and a working toaster) and then Speidi…

Oops! That reminds me that I was going to write about how Speidi are different from all the other contestants.  But first a digression into history. Not real history obviously – wattle and daub huts, Vikings, Mary Queen of Scots and all that, but reality history which is different. Reality TV history officially began the moment “Nasty” Nick Bateman broke the rules in Big Brother 1 and changed the course of the future forever (all reality time before this moment is known as BC – Before Crap and all after it is known as AD – Advertising Deluge). Reality TV discovered the power of evil on ratings and things have never been the same since. Unfortunately Nick Batemans cannot be guaranteed to turn up whenever you want them. You can obviously do your best by screening out anybody who appears well-balanced, mature and self-contained and screening in anybody who appears weak, needy and open to being manipulated. But even this lacks certainty. The alternative is to hire a professional. Or professionals.

Which brings me back to Speidi and their differences from everybody else.  Most obviously they are two people, Spencer and Heidi – a married couple (even though they did come close to divorcing, stating, according to Wikipedia,  that they believed it would further Heidi’s career – a cheery reflection on modern society if ever there was one). Spencer and Heidi are reality TV professionals who have been brought in knowing they will be “villainised” – a fantastic word which they used in a previous episode revealing just how au fait they are with what’s going on. They remind me a bit of the pacemakers who feature in athletic events hired to keep things exciting in the opening laps while knowing they have absolutely no chance of winning the race.

But being Reality TV professionals Spencer and Heidi have learnt the key relationship is with the producers rather than their housemates. They signed on to be disliked and they signed on to be voted off but they did not sign on to do this while being hungry and cold. Once placed in the basement they responded simply by going on strike disappearing under sleeping bags and bedrolls and doing nothing. They even refused to meet the other housemates. It was a masterstroke. The poor production team must have been having kittens. Having lost their ace in the hole (Jim Davidson) to the police at Heathrow Airport, they now had their expensive imported vapid American couple going invisible on them.  The clock was ticking. They had to get them out before they could be voted off. It was no surprise to see Spencer and Heidi rapidly promoted to the main house.

Now they’re there as well as everybody else they just look confused. Spencer knows he’s supposed to quarrel with someone but surrounded by a bubble of love and positivity he’s got nowhere to start, poor lamb.  I bet things are a lot more poisonous at production crew meetings as the increasingly desperate programme makers have been forced into trying to attract ratings with extended video sequences of Razor Ruddock farting. In Celebrity Big Brother 11 the lunatics are threatening to take over the asylum.