The northlondonhippy

Where’d the last year go?

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was pre­view­ing the sev­enth series of Big Brother, and now here I am writ­ing about BB 8, which launches on Chan­nel 4 this evening.

Can you feel the excitement?

Nei­ther can I.

Usu­ally, there is more of a build-up to the start of a BB series, but it seems to me that there’s far less of a buzz. It seems that the whole thing is dis­tinctly low key.

That’s prob­a­bly inten­tional fol­low­ing the inter­na­tional con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Celebrity BB, a few months ago. Remem­ber? Shilpa Shetty vs Jade Goody? How could you forget!

The pro­duc­ers of BB, Ende­mol, don’t want any trou­ble, yet they know that the pro­gramme is really only suc­cess­ful when there is con­flict. Chan­nel 4, on the other hand, view BB as the cash cow that it is; it’s respon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing the lion’s share of C4’s annual income, so they want to be as cau­tious as possible.

C4’s desire to avoid any prob­lems have led to var­i­ous rumours: about a crack police squad mon­i­tor­ing the live feed, with pow­ers to arrest house­mates or shut the entire thing down; news­pa­per reports that C4 has vetoed sev­eral poten­tial house­mates for being a bit too “wacky”, instead insist­ing on safer choices. And most of all, they have stated that the theme of this year’s series is “fun and love”.

Oh dear. I really hope most of that is bull­shit. Per­son­ally, I’d rather see the police out on the streets, arrest­ing vio­lent crim­i­nals, not watch­ing TV for three months!

The house design is meant to reflect this sense of fun. They’ve put the cooker in the bed­room! Crazy, man! They might even deny them a toaster and ket­tle! Good, golly, gosh, what will they do?

Am I sound­ing a bit jaded this time around? Damn straight, I am. BB is sup­posed get big­ger, meaner, wilder, and nas­tier, every year and it feels like we’ve taken sev­eral giant steps backwards.

I don’t want a kinder, gen­tler, Big Brother. That would suck in so many ways and on so many lev­els. I want twists, I want con­flict, and I want peo­ple to hate each other! That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

There’s one wild­card in all of this, that will com­pen­sate for what­ever steps the pow­ers that be take, to keep things level and that’s the 12 new house­mates. Even with all the screen­ing and psy­chi­atric test­ing, they are still just peo­ple and that makes them unpre­dictable. It’s down to them to do things that keep us all hooked.

And we will be hooked, we always are; the pro­gramme is addic­tive. I don’t know about you, but I have an addic­tive per­son­al­ity and just can’t help myself. Once I start watch­ing, I know I’ll stay with it till the bit­ter end. You will too.

As I’ve said count­less times, I am a sucker for the for­mat. What does that say about me? What does it say about every­one who watches?

It says that deep down, we’re all voyeurs and given the chance, we’d sneak a peak at anything.

Do your ears perk up when you hear some­one whis­per­ing? When you see a mar­ried cou­ple bick­er­ing in a shop, do you try to secretly glance their way, to see what you can pick up? And when your neigh­bours argue, do you turn down the TV, to try to hear what they are saying?

Big Brother is almost the same, though you need not hide your shame when you stare at it, full-on, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Big Brother appeals to the secret Peep­ing Tom in all of us.

Con­tro­versy will always find a way, where BB is con­cerned. I’m sure no mat­ter what they do to keep things calm, it will still make the front pages of the news­pa­pers before the sum­mer is out. “Big Brother in SOMETHING shock” the head­lines will scream.

At the very end of the series, so says another rumour, they are going to blow the house up, as they are mov­ing to a new loca­tion next year. That would imply that the explo­sives would need to be set before the finale, in and around the remain­ing house­mates. Is that safe? Does it mat­ter? At least it insures one way or another, that we will see some sparks fly inside that house!

So there you go, that’s my lit­tle look ahead to the next three months of BB. Expect spo­radic hippy cov­er­age of Big Brother 8, right here, when­ever I feel like it.

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