Constellation prize
So a final crowbarred-in astrological reference for my final post on the uber-controversial Celebrity Big Brother 5. Just don't ask me what it's supposed to mean, I have no idea. The show ended last night with Shilpa winning, as was almost inevitable. Having milked it for all it was worth, Channel 4 have made it disappear entirely from the schedules, without even the customary final episode telling us about the last day in the house. Oh look, once the phone vote money stopped rolling in, they suddenly decided to be tactful and retire it. After all the insanity leading up to Jade's eviction there's nothing quite as big to pin the final week on so here's some stuff about the last few housemates:
- Jo will almost certainly fare the worst out of the Three Witches thanks to an interview where she displayed no real surprise or remorse, and continued appearances in the papers in the following days which didn't do anything to dispel the image of the chain-smoking, miserable, bullying fishwife. One of the reasons for this is the fact that she wasn't handled with the same kid gloves that Jade was last week - she wasn't given the obvious preparation in the house that Jade got, nor was she spared the crowds or given a pre-recorded interview with prepared soundbites. I dislike Jo the most out of the trio so it's hard to feel too sorry for her digging an ever-deeper pit for herself - but I strongly disagree with the reason she was left to fend for herself: Unlike Jade, she isn't represented by John Noel, the agent who has more than one finger in the Big Brother pie. So her continued success or failure doesn't impact on anyone on the production side. As if things didn't look bad enough for her, she will now also be saddled with the image of someone with a death on her hands - her behaviour being the alleged reason for her own agent's stress-related heart attack yesterday. The only protection she was given was a double eviction where she could be shielded from some of the boos by...
- ...Cleo who until last week was looking like a possible winner but really made a mess of it at the last hurdle. Hoping to get a Catherine Tate-style show for herself she started bringing out her "hilarious" characters more and more. The problem being, of course, that they weren't funny. Her behaviour was enough to put a lot of people off, although the Kenny Everett connection means it'd take a lot more for me to think of her as anything other than fabulous. Oddly, she opted to get in with the bullying crowd, although their picking on Dirk wasn't anything like what we'd seen before. The "make Big Brother laugh" task was a low point for her, but I have no doubt whatsoever that she was the only reason the producers set that task in the first place: Having crashed and burned trying to be funny the previous day, the producers thought it'd be funny to kick her while she was down and introduce a task she was always meant to fail. It's true, she wasn't funny; but even if she'd been hilarious I don't think they would have let her pass.
- The next eviction was another double, partly to give Danielle the same kind of human shield Jo got, and partly to spare Davina the trauma of trying to interview Jack on his own. The running joke of the series was Jack's lack of any personality - although judging from the other housemates' reaction to him after Jade left, at least some of this seemed to be down to selective editing. Not exactly an innocent in Shilpagate he's getting a predictable amount of flak - partly due to being the only one of those involved brave enough to show his face on Big Mouth and take the heat for his girlfriend and her cronies. There's a lot of discussion about his controversial bleeped word, with Channel 4 insisting he didn't call her a Paki, he called her a cunt - BECAUSE THAT'S SO MUCH BETTER ISN'T IT! For me, what made me like him least was the aggressive streak he sometimes showed. He did himself some favours when BB asked him what he'd learned in his time there, and he chose to mention his friendship with Ian, and the fact that it had made him understand that gay guys are like everyone else, and he actually could become mates with one. I've seen him crucified on some forums for this, but other gay posters seem to share my view. Quite apart from the fact that he's obviously not that bright, brains aside there's a lot of people who just need that little push to open their minds a bit. More than once I've been the person who's made a straight guy reevaluate his attitude to gay men, and these people weren't thick. I say good on him for admitting he'd been narrow-minded and had been open to change. To misquote John Waters on The Simpsons, "If only every gay man could save your life there might be hope for you yet." Seeing Jack giving Ian a friendly hug on BBBM when he didn't realise the camera was on him was a nice moment.
- She's been pretty two-faced and nasty but of the evil triad Danielle will probably come out of this the best, she's been quite good at playing the vulnerable card. I don't buy it myself because she's told barefaced lies left right and centre, but I do agree that to an extent her behaviour depends on her influences. She does seem to have a knack for gravitating towards the bad ones though.
- I've already mentioned that I've ended up fancying Ian despite myself. Personality-wise I think he had a spot-on combination of playing a really good game, while also coming across as a genuinely decent person. His game-plan was more focused towards his ultimate goal of increasing his profile so he could get more work on the stage, and reinventing himself as a sexier figure than the childlike HFromOutOfStepsTM was the way he went about it. In retrospect, coming out as gay on the day he entered the house was an excellent first step in his game plan, because once you make a point of discussing who you have sex with, it's harder for people to see you as asexual. His face seeming to have aged prematurely, he realised that his unexpectedly buff torso was his best feature and spent much of his time half-naked. When Davina complimented him on it he pretended to be embarassed, although considering his shirt was so open at the time that his nipple was peeping out, he can hardly claim he wasn't aware of it.
It was the right game-plan because trying to win would have been disastrous - by his own admission he hates confrontation so while being ineffectual and fence-sitting was endearing (to me, anyway) it was never going to make him a winner. At 4th place though, he was the highest-ranking British housemate and the first in a long time not to get booed on exit. Hopefully the new, more mature image will lead to more theatre work as he intended - the only worry on that score is that he might get brushed under the carpet with all the other big characters and events. But since he's the only one from the house going for that particular kind of work, he should get some decent offers.
- I've already mentioned the conflict between Cleo and Dirk and while she was hardly blameless and definitely not funny, I don't think either of them came out of the whole thing well in my eyes. But I have a real dislike for people who joke at other people's expense but can't take it (daddy issues alert!) and Dirk was definitely guilty of this. With all the people using "nervous laughter" as an excuse for bad behaviour this year, I think there was some of that in evidence when Dirk made some of his lewder comments to the younger girls. His complete inability to humour Cleo when she turned the tables didn't do him any favours. No matter that she dragged the joke on far too long - he was like that from the start. How hot is his son George though!
- Jermaine really looked like he was creeping up on Shilpa's lead in the last couple of days, but in the end it was only fair that he didn't win. Calming element he may have been but he really didn't do enough to deserve winning. And he did shitstir more than people liked to admit, as well.
- So somewhat inevitably, Shilpa won, which'll annoy Kelly who didn't like her. I think her interview proved her to be a worthy winner - different series demand a different kind of winner, and no matter how annoying she may have been at times, Shilpa had dignity, something which was lacking from most of the people involved in this year's show - and I definitely don't just mean the people in front of the cameras.
- Jo will almost certainly fare the worst out of the Three Witches thanks to an interview where she displayed no real surprise or remorse, and continued appearances in the papers in the following days which didn't do anything to dispel the image of the chain-smoking, miserable, bullying fishwife. One of the reasons for this is the fact that she wasn't handled with the same kid gloves that Jade was last week - she wasn't given the obvious preparation in the house that Jade got, nor was she spared the crowds or given a pre-recorded interview with prepared soundbites. I dislike Jo the most out of the trio so it's hard to feel too sorry for her digging an ever-deeper pit for herself - but I strongly disagree with the reason she was left to fend for herself: Unlike Jade, she isn't represented by John Noel, the agent who has more than one finger in the Big Brother pie. So her continued success or failure doesn't impact on anyone on the production side. As if things didn't look bad enough for her, she will now also be saddled with the image of someone with a death on her hands - her behaviour being the alleged reason for her own agent's stress-related heart attack yesterday. The only protection she was given was a double eviction where she could be shielded from some of the boos by...
- ...Cleo who until last week was looking like a possible winner but really made a mess of it at the last hurdle. Hoping to get a Catherine Tate-style show for herself she started bringing out her "hilarious" characters more and more. The problem being, of course, that they weren't funny. Her behaviour was enough to put a lot of people off, although the Kenny Everett connection means it'd take a lot more for me to think of her as anything other than fabulous. Oddly, she opted to get in with the bullying crowd, although their picking on Dirk wasn't anything like what we'd seen before. The "make Big Brother laugh" task was a low point for her, but I have no doubt whatsoever that she was the only reason the producers set that task in the first place: Having crashed and burned trying to be funny the previous day, the producers thought it'd be funny to kick her while she was down and introduce a task she was always meant to fail. It's true, she wasn't funny; but even if she'd been hilarious I don't think they would have let her pass.
- The next eviction was another double, partly to give Danielle the same kind of human shield Jo got, and partly to spare Davina the trauma of trying to interview Jack on his own. The running joke of the series was Jack's lack of any personality - although judging from the other housemates' reaction to him after Jade left, at least some of this seemed to be down to selective editing. Not exactly an innocent in Shilpagate he's getting a predictable amount of flak - partly due to being the only one of those involved brave enough to show his face on Big Mouth and take the heat for his girlfriend and her cronies. There's a lot of discussion about his controversial bleeped word, with Channel 4 insisting he didn't call her a Paki, he called her a cunt - BECAUSE THAT'S SO MUCH BETTER ISN'T IT! For me, what made me like him least was the aggressive streak he sometimes showed. He did himself some favours when BB asked him what he'd learned in his time there, and he chose to mention his friendship with Ian, and the fact that it had made him understand that gay guys are like everyone else, and he actually could become mates with one. I've seen him crucified on some forums for this, but other gay posters seem to share my view. Quite apart from the fact that he's obviously not that bright, brains aside there's a lot of people who just need that little push to open their minds a bit. More than once I've been the person who's made a straight guy reevaluate his attitude to gay men, and these people weren't thick. I say good on him for admitting he'd been narrow-minded and had been open to change. To misquote John Waters on The Simpsons, "If only every gay man could save your life there might be hope for you yet." Seeing Jack giving Ian a friendly hug on BBBM when he didn't realise the camera was on him was a nice moment.
- She's been pretty two-faced and nasty but of the evil triad Danielle will probably come out of this the best, she's been quite good at playing the vulnerable card. I don't buy it myself because she's told barefaced lies left right and centre, but I do agree that to an extent her behaviour depends on her influences. She does seem to have a knack for gravitating towards the bad ones though.
- I've already mentioned that I've ended up fancying Ian despite myself. Personality-wise I think he had a spot-on combination of playing a really good game, while also coming across as a genuinely decent person. His game-plan was more focused towards his ultimate goal of increasing his profile so he could get more work on the stage, and reinventing himself as a sexier figure than the childlike HFromOutOfStepsTM was the way he went about it. In retrospect, coming out as gay on the day he entered the house was an excellent first step in his game plan, because once you make a point of discussing who you have sex with, it's harder for people to see you as asexual. His face seeming to have aged prematurely, he realised that his unexpectedly buff torso was his best feature and spent much of his time half-naked. When Davina complimented him on it he pretended to be embarassed, although considering his shirt was so open at the time that his nipple was peeping out, he can hardly claim he wasn't aware of it.
It was the right game-plan because trying to win would have been disastrous - by his own admission he hates confrontation so while being ineffectual and fence-sitting was endearing (to me, anyway) it was never going to make him a winner. At 4th place though, he was the highest-ranking British housemate and the first in a long time not to get booed on exit. Hopefully the new, more mature image will lead to more theatre work as he intended - the only worry on that score is that he might get brushed under the carpet with all the other big characters and events. But since he's the only one from the house going for that particular kind of work, he should get some decent offers.
- I've already mentioned the conflict between Cleo and Dirk and while she was hardly blameless and definitely not funny, I don't think either of them came out of the whole thing well in my eyes. But I have a real dislike for people who joke at other people's expense but can't take it (daddy issues alert!) and Dirk was definitely guilty of this. With all the people using "nervous laughter" as an excuse for bad behaviour this year, I think there was some of that in evidence when Dirk made some of his lewder comments to the younger girls. His complete inability to humour Cleo when she turned the tables didn't do him any favours. No matter that she dragged the joke on far too long - he was like that from the start. How hot is his son George though!
- Jermaine really looked like he was creeping up on Shilpa's lead in the last couple of days, but in the end it was only fair that he didn't win. Calming element he may have been but he really didn't do enough to deserve winning. And he did shitstir more than people liked to admit, as well.
- So somewhat inevitably, Shilpa won, which'll annoy Kelly who didn't like her. I think her interview proved her to be a worthy winner - different series demand a different kind of winner, and no matter how annoying she may have been at times, Shilpa had dignity, something which was lacking from most of the people involved in this year's show - and I definitely don't just mean the people in front of the cameras.