Big Brother (aka The Human Zoo)
Following slurring knuckle with eyes Paddy's victory in the celebrity version, the civilian version of Big Brother is back. Everyone is good-looking and under 30, and the tapes explaining a bit about the housemates seem to have been designed to make them look as loathsome as possible, which was unnecessary, considering how genuinely arsewitted most of them appear to be anyway. I mean, look at them. JUST LOOK AT THEM.
This is Mark, your Loveable Idiot for the foreseeable future. He even describes himself as an idiot in his VT, shortly before announcing that he has a small penis. Good for you, old bean. Spends the first night burbling on about how the bath is shaped like an egg. Seems to have been given the most sympathetic editing so far, out of all the housemates. Is either genuinely the only nice person in the house, or is well-read on the subject of reality TV, and understands that, as far as the telly-watching public are concerned, thick = good person.
This is Maisy, an eyeball-blistering set of white teeth that could replace the sun when it eventually collapses in on itself. Attached to the set of teeth is a fame-hungry teenager who claims that girls don't like her because they're jealous of her. While I am envious of her never needing to carry a torch around during power cuts as long as she keeps her mouth open, I mostly just wish she was less of an archetypal bitchy head girl. You know the type.
This is Heaven Afrika, who is apparently "Heaven by name and Afrika by nature". Apparently Afrika is a... personality trait? Anyway, she's the obligatory self-proclaimed house mother, which makes sense, given that she's a holistic healer who's obsessed with her womb and wants to be "Prime Minister of the world". You know, the kind of person who tuts at you for taking a Nurofen when you have a headache, instead of simply brewing some twigs, berries and pubes into a soothing tea and making a salve out of your own tears.
Meet Aden, self-proclaimed "player", but is using the "misunderstood genius" personality type as a backup. So far, has just been relentlessly tedious and generally pretty unworthy of comment.
Aaron here apparently got lost en route to the filming of Dragon's Den, and is the token smooth, arrogant one, sort of like the result of an orgy involving every Apprentice winner ever. Oddly, in the actual house, he seems to have adopted the persona of "Only Sane Man", which is forgivable, considering who he's stuck in there with.
Every year, without fail, there is a housemate so flamboyant that they appear to have been designed by God solely to confuse, annoy, and arouse Daily Mail columnists. This year, the flamboyancy has been dialed back just a tiny bit, and the result is Tom, who entered the house in a rainbow-striped cardigan and shorts, which made him look like Tom Baker's Dr Who on holiday in Skegness.
Next up, there's Tashie, a belly dancer who can apparently speak five languages (being put on the spot by Davina's replacement Brian Dowling shows that she may be exaggerating). She also "loves quotes", particularly bite-sized morsels of inspiration such as "Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you". So basically, she's the kind of person who copies and pastes endless saccharine Facebook statuses about the importance of friendship.
Being the offspring of Chantelle Houghton and Odo from Star Trek can't be easy, but Alex is proud of who she is, dammit: a nuclear-tanned Geordie who I just knew was going to describe herself as "bubbly" before she even opened her mouth. Speaking of cliches, she was about to describe herself as "like Marmite" before realising that she hates Marmite (incidentally, people who describe themselves as "like Marmite" are usually so boring that they're incapable of inspiring feelings as strong as love or hate in anyone). Viewers will be highly unsurprised to learn that she owns a chihuahua called Tinkerbell.
It's always harder for posh people on Big Brother. For a start, posh people, typically, will be used to better living standards than the BB house can offer. Secondly, it's almost impossible to have a knee-jerk reaction to a posh person along the lines of "Oh, they seem sound!" And thirdly, they tend to say highly unsympathetic things such as: "Foxes kill for fun. We're doing a service. It's quite fun as well." Put simply: no matter how many decent arguments people put forward in defense of fox-hunting, saying that you take great enjoyment from chasing an animal for a while before having it torn asunder by hounds is not going to win you any fans, right Harry?
Rebeckah here apparently lives in a feel-good 80s movie, in that she runs a dance school for underprivileged kids, who I like to hope are all sassy-mouthed sproglets who wear sideways baseball caps and rally together when a local tycoon threatens to turn their dance centre into a shopping centre or something. Rebeckah's regular job, however, is as a club hostess at Spearmint Rhino, making it understandable when she says that men make her angry.
Speaking of personalities ripped directly from feel-good movies, Anton is the archetypal "bad-boy-who-turned-his-life-around". He calls himself The People's Champion, because he's apparently "There for the people", although he can also "chat to someone like Stephen Fry". Comes across a bit like an embarrassing youth worker trying to bond with kids from the rough side of the tracks.
After the indentikit Nuts-bait brigade known as The Females So Far, you'd kind of hope for someone a bit less... well, embarrassing to the gender. A wrestler, you say? Fantastic! She'll be ballsy, and straight-talking, and will leave men quaking with fear. No, wait. Like the others, she says she hates anyone with a better figure than her and is an extremely jealous person. Jealousy + insane levels of physical fitness = a potentially worrying combo in a house filled with equally self-obsessed types.
You'd think that a (barely) sentient hulk of tattooed muscle mass who happens to be a barber, plumber AND fitness instructor would basically be the manliest specimen ever seen on TV. As it goes, he's also the proud owner of a pair of UV tweezers, which would account for his astoundingly precise eyebrows.
Can we have someone normal now? Please? Anyone? At least someone capable of walking and breathing at the same time? Thanks. And Louise is very normal. I watched her VT, and it all blurred into an endless reel of "I'm normal, me, I don't get people what do fancy stuff, give me a plate of chips and a vat of gravy and I'm happy, I'm incredibly normal, just your bog-standard Mancunian....er..... model and former beauty queen". Well, close enough.
And that's pretty much it, except for Pamela Anderson, for some reason. Rather than putting her in the celebrity version (you know, the sensible option), the BB bosses have plonked her in the house for the first few days seemingly for the sole purpose of seeing how far into her bowels the civilian housemates will bury in hope of winning some pointless exercise in sycophancy. The look on her face throughout thus far has pretty much screamed "I don't know who these people are, just that I wish nothing short of a painful death on each and every one of them".
So that's our lot for this year. My money's on Lovable Idiot Mark to win, that or Sweet And Dippy Alex. Thoughts?
This is Mark, your Loveable Idiot for the foreseeable future. He even describes himself as an idiot in his VT, shortly before announcing that he has a small penis. Good for you, old bean. Spends the first night burbling on about how the bath is shaped like an egg. Seems to have been given the most sympathetic editing so far, out of all the housemates. Is either genuinely the only nice person in the house, or is well-read on the subject of reality TV, and understands that, as far as the telly-watching public are concerned, thick = good person.
This is Maisy, an eyeball-blistering set of white teeth that could replace the sun when it eventually collapses in on itself. Attached to the set of teeth is a fame-hungry teenager who claims that girls don't like her because they're jealous of her. While I am envious of her never needing to carry a torch around during power cuts as long as she keeps her mouth open, I mostly just wish she was less of an archetypal bitchy head girl. You know the type.
This is Heaven Afrika, who is apparently "Heaven by name and Afrika by nature". Apparently Afrika is a... personality trait? Anyway, she's the obligatory self-proclaimed house mother, which makes sense, given that she's a holistic healer who's obsessed with her womb and wants to be "Prime Minister of the world". You know, the kind of person who tuts at you for taking a Nurofen when you have a headache, instead of simply brewing some twigs, berries and pubes into a soothing tea and making a salve out of your own tears.
Meet Aden, self-proclaimed "player", but is using the "misunderstood genius" personality type as a backup. So far, has just been relentlessly tedious and generally pretty unworthy of comment.
Aaron here apparently got lost en route to the filming of Dragon's Den, and is the token smooth, arrogant one, sort of like the result of an orgy involving every Apprentice winner ever. Oddly, in the actual house, he seems to have adopted the persona of "Only Sane Man", which is forgivable, considering who he's stuck in there with.
Every year, without fail, there is a housemate so flamboyant that they appear to have been designed by God solely to confuse, annoy, and arouse Daily Mail columnists. This year, the flamboyancy has been dialed back just a tiny bit, and the result is Tom, who entered the house in a rainbow-striped cardigan and shorts, which made him look like Tom Baker's Dr Who on holiday in Skegness.
Next up, there's Tashie, a belly dancer who can apparently speak five languages (being put on the spot by Davina's replacement Brian Dowling shows that she may be exaggerating). She also "loves quotes", particularly bite-sized morsels of inspiration such as "Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you". So basically, she's the kind of person who copies and pastes endless saccharine Facebook statuses about the importance of friendship.
Being the offspring of Chantelle Houghton and Odo from Star Trek can't be easy, but Alex is proud of who she is, dammit: a nuclear-tanned Geordie who I just knew was going to describe herself as "bubbly" before she even opened her mouth. Speaking of cliches, she was about to describe herself as "like Marmite" before realising that she hates Marmite (incidentally, people who describe themselves as "like Marmite" are usually so boring that they're incapable of inspiring feelings as strong as love or hate in anyone). Viewers will be highly unsurprised to learn that she owns a chihuahua called Tinkerbell.
It's always harder for posh people on Big Brother. For a start, posh people, typically, will be used to better living standards than the BB house can offer. Secondly, it's almost impossible to have a knee-jerk reaction to a posh person along the lines of "Oh, they seem sound!" And thirdly, they tend to say highly unsympathetic things such as: "Foxes kill for fun. We're doing a service. It's quite fun as well." Put simply: no matter how many decent arguments people put forward in defense of fox-hunting, saying that you take great enjoyment from chasing an animal for a while before having it torn asunder by hounds is not going to win you any fans, right Harry?
Rebeckah here apparently lives in a feel-good 80s movie, in that she runs a dance school for underprivileged kids, who I like to hope are all sassy-mouthed sproglets who wear sideways baseball caps and rally together when a local tycoon threatens to turn their dance centre into a shopping centre or something. Rebeckah's regular job, however, is as a club hostess at Spearmint Rhino, making it understandable when she says that men make her angry.
Speaking of personalities ripped directly from feel-good movies, Anton is the archetypal "bad-boy-who-turned-his-life-around". He calls himself The People's Champion, because he's apparently "There for the people", although he can also "chat to someone like Stephen Fry". Comes across a bit like an embarrassing youth worker trying to bond with kids from the rough side of the tracks.
After the indentikit Nuts-bait brigade known as The Females So Far, you'd kind of hope for someone a bit less... well, embarrassing to the gender. A wrestler, you say? Fantastic! She'll be ballsy, and straight-talking, and will leave men quaking with fear. No, wait. Like the others, she says she hates anyone with a better figure than her and is an extremely jealous person. Jealousy + insane levels of physical fitness = a potentially worrying combo in a house filled with equally self-obsessed types.
You'd think that a (barely) sentient hulk of tattooed muscle mass who happens to be a barber, plumber AND fitness instructor would basically be the manliest specimen ever seen on TV. As it goes, he's also the proud owner of a pair of UV tweezers, which would account for his astoundingly precise eyebrows.
Can we have someone normal now? Please? Anyone? At least someone capable of walking and breathing at the same time? Thanks. And Louise is very normal. I watched her VT, and it all blurred into an endless reel of "I'm normal, me, I don't get people what do fancy stuff, give me a plate of chips and a vat of gravy and I'm happy, I'm incredibly normal, just your bog-standard Mancunian....er..... model and former beauty queen". Well, close enough.And that's pretty much it, except for Pamela Anderson, for some reason. Rather than putting her in the celebrity version (you know, the sensible option), the BB bosses have plonked her in the house for the first few days seemingly for the sole purpose of seeing how far into her bowels the civilian housemates will bury in hope of winning some pointless exercise in sycophancy. The look on her face throughout thus far has pretty much screamed "I don't know who these people are, just that I wish nothing short of a painful death on each and every one of them".
So that's our lot for this year. My money's on Lovable Idiot Mark to win, that or Sweet And Dippy Alex. Thoughts?
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