The northlondonhippy

Archive for May 23rd, 2006

The prob­lem with the begin­ning of Big Brother is this:

The strongest char­ac­ters get the most screen time and “strongest” in this con­text trans­lates into…

Obnox­ious, annoy­ing, aggres­sive, igno­rant, self-centred and stupid.

This isn’t always a bad thing. Except this time.

If you’ve even so much as glanced in the direc­tion of BB7, you will no doubt be aware of one par­tic­u­lar house­mate by the name of Shahbaz.

Or as he is known in the house She­bang, Shezam and any other bas­tardi­s­a­tion of his name you can think of and prob­a­bly a few that you can’t.

I’m strug­gling to describe Shah­baz because of my lefty, lib­eral, uber-PC lean­ings; I don’t wish to offend any­one. Per­haps it’s best if I use the descrip­tion he applies to him­self; he’s “Scot­tish Paki poof”, which I know is offen­sive on so many lev­els, to so many people.

Shah­baz is very gay, I believe in some cir­cles it’s referred to as “flam­ing”. He’s an inferno; he’s the hell­fire of gay.

He’s also Asian and a Muslim.

He’s a pro­po­nent of pos­i­tive discrimination’s dream.

Shah­baz says he’s been on the dole for 21 years, he’s claimed to have done time in prison, he’s been home­less and he pros­ti­tuted him­self out of sheer desperation.

As view­ers, we should have tremen­dous amounts of sym­pa­thy for this obvi­ously trou­bled 37-year-old man.

Before the series started, the tabloids dubbed Shah­baz the “house­mate from hell”. On rare occa­sions, even they can get it right.

Shah­baz is by far the most obnox­ious, over-the-top, out of con­trol, prob­a­bly clin­i­cally men­tally ill (I’ll come back to that) per­son to ever make it through the screen­ing process and onto a real­ity tv programme.

He is loud, aggres­sive, nasty, mean, cruel and self-destructive. He has prac­ti­cally threat­ened to kill him­self, say­ing on sev­eral occa­sions that he came into the house to die or he was already dead. He believes 50 mil­lion Mus­lims around the world want to kill him.

I think he is gen­uinely men­tally ill. I’m not jok­ing. I wish I were.

But here’s the twisted part, as I don’t have to live with him, I’m find­ing watch­ing his jaw-dropping behav­iour com­pelling view­ing and I’m secretly glad he’s immune from evic­tion this week.

I don’t think he will last that long any­way; he’ll walk or be dragged out by secu­rity. I think he may be hav­ing some sort of break­down. Maybe he’s always hav­ing one, just not live on my television.

How did he get through the screen­ing process? Shouldn’t the shrinks have picked up on his insta­bil­ity? And if they didn’t, then maybe BB needs some new ones.

Shah­baz is not the only men­tally unsta­ble house­mate; it seems like the major­ity of this year’s crop have a screw or two loose.

Nikki, the young girl who aspires to being a footballer’s wife who shops full time, had men­tal fits the other day because they wouldn’t sup­ply her with bot­tled water because she just can’t drink from the tap. Her tantrum was remark­able for it’s feroc­ity and intensity.

She scared the shit out of me and I’m a grown man, twice her age and 5 times her size! I was again riv­eted to my screen, but the fire depart­ment were able to free me with the “jaws of life”.

I could go on, but I’m not going to do one of those listy entries that talks about every house­mate. The fact is, the rest of them haven’t made as much as an impres­sion on me. There’s a cou­ple of sleazy geezers, a cou­ple of very young, imma­ture boys, a cou­ple of posh girls, a geezer­bird, a thick girl, a mus­cle mary, a porn star, a beauty queen and rav­ing queen.

And they are all my new best friends.

Am I that sadis­tic? Do I really take plea­sure in the pain of others?

I don’t think so, but I do find inter­per­sonal inter­ac­tions fascinating.

Ok, I’m sadis­tic. Are you satisified?

So are you, if you are enjoy­ing this year’s BB as much as I am!

I don’t rel­ish the pain I’m see­ing; I’m not rev­el­ling in it. I just can’t look away. I know these peo­ple all have deep-seated emo­tional prob­lems. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t want to be on tele­vi­sion 24/7 for three entire months!

Fun­da­men­tally, Big Brother has always been for head-cases that want to be on tele­vi­sion. What has changed over the years are two things: Our expec­ta­tions of what we con­sider out­ra­geous and the lengths that Ende­mol will go to exceed those expectations.

With every series, both of those vari­ables increase expo­nen­tially until we find our­selves watch­ing peo­ple self-destruct live on tele­vi­sion. The present series is going to be the mostly highly rated BB ever.

My evic­tion pre­dic­tion is not really a pre­dic­tion, but more of a plea. Let’s keep Nikki in the house!

I know it’s tempt­ing to vent your frus­tra­tions by vot­ing her out, she has been behav­ing like a spoiled lit­tle girl, but that’s pre­cisely the rea­son to keep her in the house.

If Nikki can explode like she did on day 2, just imag­ine what she will be like on day 22 or 52. Don’t you want to see how insane she can get?

Instead vote out Bonnah.

Yes, I know it’s really Bon­nie and yes, I am tak­ing the piss out of her accent. Sue me.

Bon­nie is thick, Bon­nie is dull, Bon­nie is not going to brighten up your sum­mer with her witty repar­tee and insight­ful obser­va­tions. She is just going to lurk on the fringes and go unno­ticed as long as she can.

Bon­nie must go, but that’s a rec­om­men­da­tion and not a prediction.

My pre­dic­tion comes back to the very first thing I said in this entry; that the strongest char­ac­ters get the most screen time. And at the begin­ning, the peo­ple who get the most screen time are usu­ally the most dis­liked. That’s why the real scream­ing nut­ters always go early, it’s neg­a­tive vot­ing. You vote for the one you hate the most.

Let’s not make the same mis­takes we’ve made in pre­vi­ous series. Let’s main­tain the level of insan­ity as long as we can! I don’t want to see Nikki go, but I fear her lit­tle bunny-clad bot­tom will be wrig­gling out the front door come Friday.

As always, I wel­come your com­ments, but please, not your spam!

UPDATE ON WEDNESDAY MORNING!

Shah­baz walked out on Tues­day evening!