The northlondonhippy

Archive for May 17th, 2006

It’s get­ting closer to my favourite time of the year; Big Brother sea­son is nearly upon us as series 7 starts tomor­row night on Chan­nel 4!

No, I’m not being sar­cas­tic; I really am a big fan of Big Brother. I’ve been a fan since the first series here in the UK.

Actu­ally, strike that, I knew I was going to love it even before then when I first heard about.

Big Brother started in the Nether­lands and I believe the first series was in 1999.

I was away doing some work in The Hague while it was on-air and every­one local I spoke to told me about this amaz­ing tv programme.

These peo­ple explained that the pro­duc­ers locked a group of peo­ple in a house and filmed them inten­sively 24-hours a day. They told me about stream­ing cov­er­age on the inter­net and vot­ing some­one out every week by tele­phone poll. They told me everything!

They also told me these ordi­nary peo­ple who were the house­mates had become celebri­ties already, with those evicted early on launch­ing pop music careers and other low-level media activities.

I grasped the con­cept and thought it was pure genius straight away. It is just so sim­ple and so com­pelling; I knew peo­ple would be inter­ested in it, in any coun­try it was produced.

But mainly, what really caught my atten­tion was the enthu­si­asm from every­one who men­tioned the show; it was as if they had dis­cov­ered this tele­vi­sual gem them­selves and wanted to share their find with you in a very per­sonal way.

Not long after I returned to the UK, I read that the pro­duc­tion com­pany in Hol­land (now a cash-rich global media empire!) was licens­ing the for­mat around the world. The UK’s first series aired in the sum­mer of 2000.

As some of you may know, I’m more than just an aver­age tv junkie and couch potato. I’ve worked in the indus­try for over 20 years now and have been a big viewer since I was a child. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say tele­vi­sion is my life in many ways.

I’ve always been glued to the tv screen and wher­ever I am, there’s a tv switched on, not far from me. Right now, as I write this, my tv is on in the back­ground. Tele­vi­sion has been a con­stant pres­ence in my life.

Even as a kid, I wanted to work in tele­vi­sion (or film pro­duc­tion, but that’s another story for another day). I dig tv and it digs me. I stud­ied film and tv pro­duc­tion at uni­ver­sity. I don’t know how to do much else, at least in terms of mak­ing a living.

I can smoke weed like a pro and I write a hel­luva lot, but nei­ther of these activ­i­ties turns me any profit. Yet.

So when I say I love tele­vi­sion, you can believe me.

I want to buy a new set, by the way, a Sony Bravia KDL-32V2000U if you must know, but at the moment they are still expen­sive and not read­ily available.

Our 4x3, 28 inch, CRT Sony is nearly 9 years old and over­due to replac­ing! Mrs. Hippy has finally agreed to this pur­chase and I applied for a John Lewis price match this very morn­ing in an attempt to get a great deal with a 5-year war­ranty. But this is another story as well best left for another day even though this summer’s series of Big Brother is going to be widescreen! I want one now!

See, I’m digress­ing. I hate when I do that.

Big Brother. Oh yes.

I couldn’t wait for the first series to begin. Back when it was new, it was seen as a social exper­i­ment; real cut­ting edge tele­vi­sion. It’s suc­cess sparked the explo­sion in reality-based tv shows.

I’ve always worked nights, for more years than I care to count and Big Brother is per­fect night­shift view­ing. No, I don’t mean when they are asleep, but when they are drunk and tired and emo­tional and the sparks fly!

The first series brought us “Nasty Nick” Bate­man, who tried to “cheat” on this oth­er­wise hon­ourable show. The entire nation was trans­fixed as this posh, pub­lic school­boy was taken down sev­eral pegs by Craig Philips (the even­tual win­ner) and the other con­tes­tants dur­ing a con­fronta­tional house meet­ing. It was riv­et­ing view­ing and peo­ple talked about it for ages.

And dur­ing the sec­ond series, when Paul and Helen were flirt­ing so out­ra­geously and their “will they-won’t they” love story was blos­som­ing, every­one in my office was spell­bound as they watched this unfold on their screens. Paul and Helen are still together as well as being fel­low res­i­dents of north Lon­don. Trust me, their bit is far more upmar­ket than my ghetto hell!

And series three was another win­ner, which brought us Jade Goody, who has sus­tained a career in the media far longer than any­one could have predicted.

Series three also marked a bit of a depar­ture, as it was a slightly meaner, more down­mar­ket ver­sion. I liked it, but pro­duc­ers clearly didn’t, because the fol­low­ing series, num­ber four, was it’s dullest.

Series four was won by a thirty-something Chris­t­ian vir­gin; need I say any more? It did fea­ture uber-geek, John Tickle though, so it wasn’t a total loss. Tickle was extremely amus­ing, even if it was largely unin­ten­tional on his part.

Big Brother five returned to form with another shot aimed at a low demo­graphic. It was note­wor­thy for fight night and for bring­ing us a real group of screaming-crazy wannabees! It also allegedly brought us the first full sex­ual encounter (unless you’re unlike Bill Clin­ton and DO count a BJ as sex, in which case please see series three).

The win­ner of series five was Nadia, a Por­tuguese trans­sex­ual, or “por­tugeezer” as she was dubbed by the tabloids. I’m a rav­ing lib­eral, more tol­er­ant than most, but I even I could see that this was becom­ing a mod­ern day freak show.

And I don’t see any­thing wrong with that either. It makes good television!

Last year’s series was quite sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous, more screaming-wannabees, more sex, more twists, more fun! I loved last years as much as the first series; pos­si­bly even more.

As our tol­er­ance for the weird and wacky grows, the pro­duc­ers have to push the bound­aries fur­ther. That’s a good thing!

For me, more than any­thing else, I just like the for­mat. Lock­ing a group of peo­ple in a small, con­fined space, for a lengthy period of time and film­ing it, is pure genius.

I’ve also enjoyed the celebrity ver­sions, espe­cially the last one a few months back, but if I am being hon­est, I do pre­fer see­ing “real peo­ple” in the house even more.

But are these “real peo­ple”? What is a “real person”?

If the leaks in the papers are true, this series promises two hot female mod­els, two cross-dressing men; one of the cross-dressers suf­fers from Tourette’s syn­drome and has an eleven-inch cock that he likes to flash. If any of them walk through the door tomor­row night, it’s going to be a fun sum­mer of view­ing but are these “real people”?

Do you know any­one who sounds like this?

If you do than your social cir­cles are obvi­ously wider and more inter­est­ing than my own!

The fact is, we won’t know for sure who is enter­ing the house until Thurs­day night and I’m count­ing the sec­onds! That’s all part of the fun!

And there’s already a twist, even before the pro­gramme has started. Per­haps you’ve read about the “golden ticket” com­pe­ti­tion already, but if not I’ll explain.

Hid­den inside ran­dom KitKat choco­late bars are one hun­dred “golden tick­ets” and each ticket gives the lucky loca­tor of said ticket a chance to become a house­mate in this series. I think the idea is they will screen the one hun­dred down to some­thing like ten peo­ple and then have a pub­lic vote to choose the one to go inside the house.

If I find a “golden ticket” I wouldn’t use it to play the game. I’m not stu­pid; I don’t want to be on Big Brother myself. You would have to be seri­ously men­tally defi­cient to want to sub­ject your­self to that ordeal! No, if I found a ticket, I would quickly flog it to a tabloid news­pa­per and I would aim to get at least ten-grand for it! And if you find one, you should do the exact same thing!
Just because I enjoy watch­ing BB, doesn’t mean I would want to be a par­tic­i­pant. I may be a crazeeee hippy, but I am not cer­ti­fi­ably insane!

Ok, that may be up for some debate, but I believe it’s true and isn’t that what really counts?

Here’s the deal: I’m aim­ing to blog about BB more for­mally this year and I’m plan­ning one entry a week ded­i­cated to the sub­ject. This series is going to run 13 weeks this sum­mer, so that means 13 more entries like just this one.

So if you’re like me and you like Big Brother, this is the place to be! And like every­thing else I write about, you’ll get a clear view of the truth, uncen­sored and unadul­ter­ated with that patented hippyspin!

Betcha just can’t wait for more!