Big Brother – Day 47 In Hell’s Waiting Room

By Jo Last edited 224 months ago
Big Brother – Day 47 In Hell’s Waiting Room
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Londonist's hunt for a dedicated TV reviewer has taken us across the city and back again, but (by jove!) we think we might have finally cracked it.

Please be upstanding then for 'Jo' the latest addition to the Londonist team who will be surveying the televisual landscape for us each week and risking permanent square-eyedness to report back to you, our faithful readers.

Her first task? To delve into the messy cess pool that is the latest series of Big Brother, so without further ado:

This Londonist admits to having turned her nose up at the show in the past, before getting irretrievably sucked into the swirling vortex of desire, envy, loathing and deception that is this year’s series (thanks to an addicted flatmate). And boy, have this year’s lot provided some compelling attention-whoring and dramabombs of the highest order.

Ant-knee, the poison dwarf, seems to have accepted finally and fully his position as Craig’s love/lust-object. Perhaps he feels that his aquaerobics session with Makosi sufficiently established his heterosexual credentials. Enough to allow him to rib Craig yesterday about what an irritating boyfriend he’d be, at least. Today he was squirting suncream over Craig’s face like a one-man bukkake machine. The look of longing in Craig’s eyes ought to have been enough to make even the most jaded viewer feel a twinge of sympathetic heartache. Everyone’s experienced unrequited love, right?

Luckily, the dregs of Team Britney/Saskia/Bullyoaks are safe due to this week’s lying shenanigans (in a nutshell: BB told the housemates they would be lied to twice; they were then told nominations were optional; this was a lie; everyone who didn’t nominate is now up for eviction; BB has told the housemates that everyone who nominated was up when in fact this was the second lie and … oh it’s just too confusing); there’s still the possibility that Ant-knee will give in to his repressed gayness and shag Craig on national TV. Just imagine what Mary Whitehouse would have said.

In other news, the housemates went on a treasure hunt, and won some Pimm’s. Yawn. Frankly, it’s becoming harder to care who stays and who goes, as even the fans over at www.bigbro6.com [requires registration] think the series has reached the ‘boring bit’. Say what you like about Saskia – and this Londonist did, frequently, shrill-ly, and VERY LOUDLY – she made for compelling television, in her own sweet, sweet way. Have we seen the worst of the fighting? Say it ain’t so!

Barbara Ellen’s excellent article on the fluidity of gender identification among this year’s housemates ought to be required reading for every Queer Theory course in the country:

There appears to be a psychosexual opportunism verging on incontinence among the BB housemates this year, to the point where I wonder whether I should be donning a dirty old raincoat and feeding coins into a slot.

Well, quite – that’s what makes it so compelling. A BB slot machine would have to be fed by alcohol rather than cash, though – actually, what a genius idea. Hook the housemates up to IV drips full of booze and text in to increase their level of wastedness. It’s the logical next step. They’d make a mint. Endemol, are you listening?

Last Updated 13 July 2005