The northlondonhippy

Archive for June 18th, 2007

I inad­ver­tently hit upon some­thing in my last BB piece, which is indica­tive of the cast­ing of the entire series. The more I’ve watched, the more this fact has stood out:

Every­one in there is very media savvy; they are very aware of the process and the part they are play­ing in it.

My first clue to this was when Emily Parr men­tioned sev­eral cor­po­rate brand names, right after her racist slip of the tongue. She was hop­ing that they would dip the sound and spare her fur­ther embar­rass­ment – well, we all know how that turned out!

The point is, Emily was very hip to the game, even if she was too pig igno­rant to apply her knowl­edge with any great effect. Emily’s not the only one.

Let’s take everyone’s favourite housemate…to hate, young Charley Uchea. She’s appar­ently worked a pole dancer, that’s a form of enter­tainer; she had to deal with pubic, er pub­lic atten­tion. I’m sure she knows what pole danc­ing audi­ence wants to see. She’s also got a cousin who plays Pre­mier­ship foot­ball, hangs out in all the “hot clubs” and has had sex with other “celebs”, at least that’s what the papers say. She’s more clued up than you might realise at first and she knows how to use it all to her advan­tage. If it wasn’t for her sour face and ugly per­son­al­ity, she might be a threat!

First evictee, Shab­nam Paryani is another great exam­ple of this media aware­ness. On day 3, when she was con­sid­er­ing a walk out the back door, did she ask about how quickly she could see her fam­ily? Did she ask if there would be men­tal health sup­port? Did she even ask if she could have a hot meal once she got out­side? Nope, all she was inter­ested in was her “pack­age”. No, that is not some vague ref­er­ence to the rumour that Shabs is a pre-op trans­sex­ual. Shab­nam wanted to know if she could still sell her story to a tabloid or glossy mag­a­zine. She wanted to know if she would get to appear on BBLB and BBBM. She wanted to know if her bra and knick­ers pics would be in a Sun­day tabloid news­pa­per, with rev­e­la­tions of her secret love ses­sions with men AND women.

Shab­nam didn’t walk, but her desire to dis­close her sex­ual his­tory while pos­ing in her undies did appear in yesterday’s News of the World. So you see girls, being stu­pid and doing noth­ing doesn’t mean you can’t have your dreams come true! Who needs an edu­ca­tion or skills?

And while I’m on the scary sub­ject of Shabs, how about that ass-crack of an evic­tion rou­tine! If that didn’t con­firm how sub­nor­mally intel­li­gent she is, what else would? How about the shrink on Sunday’s BBLB telling Der­mot that her IQ was under 70? Yikes!

Yes, I know I’m being harsh, but that’s my point. Those who live by the media, die by the media and I should know, because I’m the media whore you all love to adore! But you won’t see me skulk­ing around Bou­jis hop­ing to get papped!

This is by far the most self-aware group of house­mates ever. They know the fourth wall is there and they are play­ing to it with reck­less aban­don, because they know if they can paint the right pic­ture of them­selves to the out­side world, great riches await.

I’ll just throw some ran­dom obser­va­tions out there, hap­haz­ardly drawn together from my own per­sonal media monitoring:

- Seány O’Kane – trav­elled to the states to fol­low the Michael Jack­son trial, was inter­viewed repeat­edly by British TV crews, as the lone, crazy from back home, Report­edly audi­tioned for Bad Lad’s Army, was rejected for not being “men­tally sta­ble” enough.

- Shab­nam Paryani – Appeared on Britain’s Got (no) Tal­ent and some pro­gramme about embar­rass­ing illnesses.

- Billi Bhatti – one of the new guys, a model who has done print work and, if what I read on forums is true, snogged a trans­sex­ual in a music video. Does any­one know if it was Shabnam?

- Jonathan Dur­den – mil­lion­aire, media company-owner and for­mer com­men­ta­tor for the Guardian on adver­tis­ing. Sound like a real media insider to me. What’s he doing in the house? Ladies and gen­tle­men, start your con­spir­acy theories!

- Chanelle Hayes – a posh spice look-a-like, mak­ing per­sonal appear­ances as Vic­to­ria Beckham.

- Zak “Ziggy” Lich­man – for­mer boy­band mem­ber, model and music producer.

I could go on, and on and fre­quently do, but you get the idea. This year, it is an open secret that fame and for­tune is what they all crave. They all think that just on their looks and per­son­al­ity alone, we should love them and give them lots of money and ado­ra­tion, but we know better.

I like the fact that they are all unashamed, wannabes. It brings an ele­ment of hon­esty to BB this year that we’ve not seen before. It’s a know­ing wink from the pro­duc­ers, that they know that we know that the house­mates know just what is await­ing them after a stay in that house.

In the first series, win­ner Craig Phillips wanted to win the sev­enty grand so he could pay for an oper­a­tion for a young woman with Down’s Syn­drome, which at the time, moved most of us to tears. Craig’s gen­eros­ity was touch­ing and genuine.

In this series, they all want to win so bad they can taste it. Then they’ll have the money to shop for cloth­ing and sun­glasses, so they can look nice on hol­i­day in the Mal­dives where they get snapped, sun­bathing top­less “in the secret pho­tos they didn’t want you to see”, which paid for the trip, plus a lit­tle extra for a pair or two of Manolo Blahniks.

Isn’t that what we all dream of?