The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘Big Brother’ Category

I’m find­ing the cur­rent series of Celebrity Big Brother quite painful to watch.

That’s why my eyes ache!

It’s also why there’s been such a long gap between my pre­vi­ous entry and this one; but not for lack of try­ing. I’ve started my follow-up on CBB three times already, which makes this ver­sion the fourth.

I just haven’t felt inspired.

This series has a lot of prob­lems and I am quite sur­prised that I’m say­ing this. Usu­ally, Ende­mol have their act together, but this time around, that is not the case.

From their choice of par­tic­i­pants, to the pace of the pro­gramme„ Ende­mol have mis­cal­cu­lated badly and this is the first time I’ve felt like it’s a com­plete mess.

Remem­ber, I’m a big fan of BB and nor­mally I dig it; you can’t imag­ine my disappointment!

I won’t dis­pute that last year’s CBB series was a hard act to fol­low and one that I didn’t expect them to eas­ily top. They could have at least tried.

Per­haps all the good celebri­ties have worked out just how tough it is being in the BB house and they had trou­ble find­ing will­ing par­tic­i­pants. Maybe, no amount of dosh is enough to secure the ones they really wanted, so instead they had to set­tle for this sad group of B-listers.

I wanted to like them all, I hoped they would be enter­tain­ing, but all of my BB hopes and dreams were very quickly dashed.

First, Donny Douchebag walked. On launch night, his drunken antics showed some promise and I expected more out­ra­geous­ness to fol­low. No such luck, as he stayed sober and quiet right up until he legged it over the wall.

The krazy Ken Rus­sell skedaddled.

There’s a word you don’t see every­day; “skedaddled”.

Ken is one of the coolest film­mak­ers in this coun­try and if you don’t believe, pick up a copy of “Tommy”. Have a spliff, put your feet up and pre­pared to be daz­zled. And the music is from The Who, so you just can’t lose!

He came off as an old eccen­tric and at nearly eighty years old, he was the most elderly con­test ever in Britain. We didn’t get enough of him, before he calmly asked to leave, with only his slip­pers in his place. I wish he stayed longer.

And then there’s “Every­one loves Leo” Sayer. Who knew how screwed up he was? I mean besides his Mrs, who appar­ently shagged Donny Douchebag once, in Leo’s bed. Classy!

But I mean, Jesus wept! I would never have imag­ined that Leo was that bark­ing mad! In Leo-land, he’s as big as the Bea­t­les. In Leo-land, every­one loves him. In Leo-land, I bet his songs are still in the charts!

His depar­ture, I must say, was highly amus­ing and I did laugh out loud at his obvi­ous men­tal short­com­ings. Cruel? Yes, but I’m honest.

Here’s the thing, an amus­ing depar­ture makes good view­ing for a few min­utes, but it doesn’t make a series!

The house could have done with keep­ing all three, but they couldn’t hack it. Leo, because they wouldn’t give him some clean undies and the other two because of the dreaded Goodys!

I’ll say this right now; I like Jade. She is always funny, but the laughs do come from her igno­rance. Just ask her about Eskimos!

Jade also can be quite cruel, as demon­strated by her treat­ment of poor Shipa. Jade is the leader of a cruel cabal­ist coven of bitchy witches that includes Jo and the dim, pretty one. Ok, Danielle if I must. Together, the three of them are meaner than the mean girls in the film, “Mean Girls”.

Shilpa Shetty is a guest in this coun­try, who has not put a sin­gle foot wrong in that house. She has pos­sesses a level of poise and class that should com­mand more respect. She is a sweet, sen­si­tive woman who does not deserve the grief heaped upon her by those three “guttersnipes”.

Danielle, on the other hand, is extremely beau­ti­ful, but hasn’t got some much of a drop of either poise or class. I guess when you’re that hot look­ing, you rely on your beauty much more than your per­son­al­ity and damn it shows! Her per­son­al­ity makes her far less attrac­tive, but it’s not keep­ing her off the front pages of the tabloids almost every day.

Shilpa has more tal­ent in her lit­tle fin­ger than Danielle could ever pos­sess in ten life­times. Shilpa acts, she dances and she deserves the celebrity she has. Danielle is pretty; lots of girls are pretty, it’s just most of them don’t base their entire lives around their looks.

The next time you’re at your local high street or in a pub or night­club, look around you. I promise you’ll see women just as hot as Dani. They’re just not blow­ing foot­ballers in the twi­light years of their careers in exchange for a lit­tle noto­ri­ety. It’s not that they couldn’t eas­ily go to China White’s and pull a foot­baller, they just choose not to!

But back to the Goodys. I don’t think Ende­mol had an inkling of the ruc­tions Jade and her plus-two were going to cause in the house. They could have han­dled it much better

I think Jack­iey can be amus­ing too, but only in small doses. She took over the house the sec­ond she arrived, or rather or mouth did. She start­ing talk­ing when she walked through the front door and just didn’t stop. She’s prob­a­bly still some­where, still talking!

Jack, Jade’s toy-boy, gold-digging dun­der­head of a fiancé by con­trast is prac­ti­cally mute. He hardly every says any­thing and when he does, it only serves to show just how stu­pid he is.

And he spaffed all over Jade’s leg! That was just nasty!

As for the rest of them, Jer­maine is just plain weird, but seems decent enough. And yes, I know com­pared to some of the other mem­bers of his fam­ily, he’s actu­ally quite nor­mal, but that’s not really say­ing much.

The Face-Man, Dirk Bene­dict also seems like a decent enough guy, but there is an air of des­per­a­tion about him that you can almost smell com­ing through your television.

I think Cleo might be a proper, full-on manic-depressive, though to be fair I’m not actu­ally a clin­i­cal psy­chi­a­trist, so my opin­ion doesn’t really count.

Jo from S Club is actu­ally noth­ing like I expected from my first impres­sion of her. I’m quite dis­ap­pointed in her behav­iour and atti­tude. At least I admit when I’m wrong.

And H from Steps, or rather Ian, seems like quite a sen­si­tive guy, though he is try­ing way too hard to be everyone’s best friend. No won­der he was sob­bing in the loo!

Who do I think is going to win?

Who cares! None of them are win­ners in my book!

I’d like to see Shilpa win, just to piss off the bul­lies and to let her know that the UK isn’t chock full of racist louts. Of course we have are share, as does any coun­try, but most of us are noth­ing like that. Thank fuck!

When­ever Shilpa leaves the house, she is deserv­ing of a warm and cour­te­ous recep­tion and any­one boo­ing her should be shot on sight.

I’m issu­ing writ­ten instruc­tions to my per­sonal secu­rity staff right now. They are all ex-SAS, which means they cost a for­tune, but man oh man, they always get the job done!

Just when you thought it was safe to switch your TV set back on, along comes the 5th series of Celebrity Big Brother!

I’m the last per­son to com­plain, I’m a big fan of the for­mat, as count­less pre­vi­ous posts will confirm.

This year’s series looks like it’s going to be a fun one, with pos­si­bly the odd­est mix of par­tic­i­pants in the his­tory of the programme.

OK, we’re lack­ing the shocks pro­vided by the inclu­sion of George Gal­loway and Ger­maine Greer, but come on, Ken Russell’s pres­ence is pure genius!

I realise that is prob­a­bly lost of most view­ers of CBB. I’m not being snob­bish about this; he’s not as well known as Steven Spiel­berg, is he? He’s prob­a­bly not even as well known as Guy Ritchie! And that’s a pity, but I expect peo­ple will be redis­cov­er­ing his films all over the place now!

Ken Rus­sell is the sort of direc­tor that film crit­ics sali­vate over and media watch­ers every­where will be going into melt­down. Big Ken gives a new respectabil­ity to CBB, and adds a level of intel­lec­tual mas­tur­ba­tion never seen before on the show. Well done, Endemol.

The fact that he’s push­ing 80 and the mere act of enter­ing the house seemed to sap him of what lit­tle energy he had, should be some cause of con­cern, as I think if he died in the house, they might choose to pre­ma­turely end the run. That would suck; I want to see it go to its full 25 ago­nis­ing days!

Ken’s already flashed his cock and balls at the dumb pretty girl who was Miss Pretty UK or some­thing and now sleeps with a foot­baller. I’m not over­sim­pli­fy­ing, am I?

She’ll prob­a­bly turn les­bian after that see­ing his “meat and two veg”, but let’s just hope she does so in the house with that other pretty girl, the one from India. I’ve never heard of her, but then I don’t know any­thing about Bol­ly­wood except that there’s a lot of singing and dancing.

Ok, so they are a bunch of nobod­ies. So what? In their minds, they are extremely impor­tant and very well known. Just look at Michael Jackson’s brother, Jer­maine. He thinks every­one knows who he is and judg­ing by the reac­tions of the other celebri­ties upon meet­ing him; that might not be 100% true.

Or Leo Sayer, who had hit records when this old hippy was a teenager twist­ing the night away at a school disco. Have his songs moved up the iTunes charts yet? They will.

The theme this year does appear to be singers, with the 2 for­mer 90s pop stars, Jer­maine, Leo and that young guy with the blonde hair doing the Spinal Tap impres­sion! If that’s his audi­tion, well done and I’m sure they’ll find a slot for him around 1am at the Com­edy Store!

I know he calls him­self Donny Douchebag or some­thing, but come on! He’s a cliché of a par­ody of a CHEAP ANGRY SPINAL TAP IMPRESSION!

Did you see? He pissed in the shower before he dis­cov­ered there was a sep­a­rate toi­let. Doh! You could splice that scene seam­lessly into the “Spinal Tap”. If you like Donny, get the DVD and pre­pare to piss your pants! Or your shower!

The hot middle-aged lady from the Kenny Everett video show seems lik­able enough, if a bit mad. Noth­ing wrong with that! I bet she inspired some furtive wank­ing in her day, and prob­a­bly still does today.

Oh and for the record, I’m the same age as Cleo, so that makes me mid­dle aged too.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and ven­ture that the out­side favourite at this point is the only girl from S-Club that could actu­ally sing. The book­ies like Leo Sayer too, but I’m giv­ing her the edge. Wait till she belts out a few tunes!

And I know her name, it’s Jo O’Meara and she had some spinal prob­lems that got in the way of her pop career. She’s seems fine now and good luck too her.
I read the tabloids, so I know this stuff. I can’t help it. We all have our use­less areas of expertise.

Jo seems down to earth, at least in the lit­tle bit I’ve seen.

And what’s the deal with the A-Team guy?

How des­per­ate and/or broke is he? I think we all know the answer to that one! He comes off sharp and witty and I get the feel­ing it’s going to take a lot to get him to snap.

Is it going to be entertaining?

Isn’t it always!

I pre­dict we’ll like some of them and hate some of them and every one of us will have dif­fer­ent list for both cat­e­gories. That’s just how it goes.

Bring on the next 3 and half weeks! Let them all go men­tal! Arm them with rusty knives and fill their heads with high-quality blot­ter acid. Starve them of food so they have to resort to can­ni­bal­ism and that lit­tle blond guy from Steps gets spit-roasted, but not in the way he’s dreamt of all his life. Send three gen­er­a­tions of Jade’s fam­ily into the house next door…

You know, some things are just too hideous to imag­ine. I’m sure glad there’s no chance that’s going to hap­pen tonight!

PS
This really is your last chance to enter the “win the hippy for a week­end” con­test! Go on, you know you want me!
Click here for the orig­i­nal post with all the details!

The win­ner will be announced soon!

I’m let­ting you all down.

I’ve spent most of this month not post­ing any­thing on my blog. I’m sorry.

There are sev­eral fac­tors involved in this total lack of hippy par­tic­i­pa­tion this month, some I’ll share with you, oth­ers I will keep to myself.

I’ve been over­run by spam of late; com­ment spam. At its peak, I was receiv­ing over 300 com­ments daily, all linked to online poker or penis-pill web­sites. Fuck­ing delight­ful! Each spam com­ment would gen­er­ate an email to me, alert­ing me to the new com­ment. It was a real drag.

Com­ments are now, effec­tively turned off. You need to be reg­is­tered to leave com­ments, only there is no way to reg­is­ter. It’s a catch-22 aimed at foil­ing these nasty pieces of shit who want free adver­tis­ing on my site!

I recently read an arti­cle, which explained that spammed com­ments are left by liv­ing human beings, so they can type the weird let­ters into the box to prove they are not machines. Because broad­band and labour are now so cheap and com­puter knowl­edge is so wide-spread in so many far­away places, it’s eas­ier to pay some­one to do the spam­ming for you.

Pretty soon, they’ll be out­sourc­ing my blog to India and you’ll be read­ing my replace­ment, the newdel­hi­hippy. Progress marches for­ward, so watch out fuck­ers, your job will be next!

I did nearly fin­ish a lengthy entry on my own per­sonal xmas mem­o­ries, but never got around to fin­ish­ing it. Xmas has come and gone now, so it’s too late to post it. I’m going to save it for next year.

I also haven’t been around, because I’ve been work­ing loads and most of my Decem­ber shifts were clus­tered into the sec­ond half of the month. I’ve been choos­ing sleep over blog­ging. Again, sorry, but I’m still tired and could use even more sleep!

These days, I’m always tired. I think its old age catch­ing up to me. I don’t bounce back like I used to. Maybe I just need more sleep. I don’t know, but I dream of spend­ing 24 hours in bed, just to put some zzzzzzz’s on account.

That’s never going to happen.

It’s not just the hippy I’ve been neglect­ing, I’ve got other projects that haven’t had enough of my time. After the New Year, I’m going to make a con­certed effort to get back on track.

No, more than back on track, I’m going to take every­thing a lot fur­ther in 2007! Go me!

See, even at my age, self-delusion remains a true skill!

Here’s some good news for you Big Brother fans out there, the celebrity ver­sion kicks off on the 3rd of Jan­u­ary and this hippy is poised to pro­vide you with my own spe­cial brand of com­ment and analy­sis through­out this 5th series.

By far, one of the most pop­u­lar fea­tures in 2006 was my Big Brother col­umn. It would be sadis­tic of me not to give my loyal hip­py­fans what they crave! I am a boy who can’t say “no”!

There are all sorts of uncon­firmed rumours about who might be appear­ing and I’m plan­ning on pro­vid­ing you all with a pre­view before launch night. This Sunday’s papers should give us some more clues and of course, I’ll be mon­i­tor­ing many sources just for you!

So I’m still the hippy you all adore, espe­cially because I’m a com­plete media whore! Things will be pick­ing up here at the hippy, so come back often to see what I’ve got in store for you!

PS
Yes, this is post 497, only three more to go until I announce the big win­ner of my con­test. One lucky hip­py­fan will be win­ning ME for a week­end of soft drug use and inap­pro­pri­ate touching!

Click HERE for more details!

As much as I love Big Brother, I hate it when the series finishes.

I know I’ve joked about it going on for­ever; but in truth a lit­tle part of me really wishes it could.

When a series is cur­rent, it takes up quite a bit of your time.

No, more than that, it becomes part of your life and the house­mates become part of your life too.

Whether you love them or loathe them or some­thing in between; if you’re a com­mit­ted BB viewer then every­one in the house means some­thing to you, in some weird, twisted, post-modernist way.

What does it say about me that every year I let a dozen or more total strangers become my friends, in what is very much a one-sided relationship?

What does it say about all of us?

Our bleak and dreary lives are full of despair, with bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment and untold, immea­sur­able injus­tices lurk­ing around every corner.

If it weren’t for soft drugs and con­sumer pur­chases, my life would be mean­ing­less. I shop; I smoke; there­fore I am.

Oh cheer up you mis­er­able hippy!

Big Brother is a way to escape our own lives by involv­ing our­selves in the lives of oth­ers; many of whom we see as less than our­selves. By judg­ing them neg­a­tively, we can feel bet­ter about who we are.

I don’t have a prob­lem with that.

My prob­lem is that I still become attached to them. I miss them. Some­thing doesn’t feel right when they are all finally out of the house.

I go to E4 and press that red but­ton and god­dammit, noth­ing hap­pens! I can’t see them. I don’t know what they’re doing. They’re not there.

I’ve spent the entire series being highly crit­i­cal of all of them, with my wry obser­va­tions and insult­ing barbs and now I’m pin­ing for them like a loyal dog misses his master.

Sound famil­iar?

Isn’t that what fam­i­lies are like?

The peo­ple you are clos­est to are the ones that drive you the cra­zi­est. The house­mates become part of all of our fam­i­lies dur­ing the entire run of the series.

Like your real life rel­a­tives, I’m sure there are some you like more than oth­ers and oth­ers you pos­i­tively detest.

Per­haps the beauty of our annual, dis­pos­able friend­ships with BB HMs ben­e­fit from being one-sided. They don’t hate us. They can’t. They don’t know us.

Do you feel like you know this year’s HMs well? If you watched the entire series, I bet you do. Me too. I think it is fair to say that we all feel we have a sense of most of them.

The reverse is not true at all. They don’t know any­thing about us, and what they do think they know is prob­a­bly a mix of mis­judge­ment and misunderstanding.

We’re just the gen­eral pub­lic to them, as long we keep pur­chas­ing Heat Mag­a­zine when one of them is on the cover, they’re happy.

Take my beloved Princess Nikki, please. When she stepped out of the house on the night of the final, her reac­tion demon­strated how lit­tle she really under­stands about the audi­ence. The boo’ing and cat­call­ing left her dumb­struck and her inter­view had to be scrapped. They didn’t even bother cut­ting her “best bits” because we’d seen them already, which only per­plexed her even more.

Yet, we as view­ers think we know Nikki, as we think we know all of them. But in real­ity, we don’t know them that well; we only know what we’ve been shown.

Here’s the thing about edit­ing… As much as every­one likes to think that Ende­mol manip­u­late things in the edit suite, they don’t. They can’t. They can only use footage acquired by film­ing the HMs as they do what­ever they do. They don’t use some superduper com­puter to gen­er­ate fake scenes. That’s just silly.

What they do is take 24 hours of mate­r­ial and dis­til it down to around 45 min­utes of tight, fast paced for the MTV gen­er­a­tion, enter­tain­ment. They want to tell the most com­pelling sto­ries from the house in the most enter­tain­ing, emo­tive way possible.

What I don’t think they do is edit for or against any house­mate. I don’t think they are ever really out to get any­one, but they do let peo­ple bring their own “rope” some­times. You know what hap­pens when they give some­one enough rope, don’t you?

Edit­ing, in it’s very nature is the selec­tive inclu­sion and omis­sion of ele­ments that tell a story. It’s meant to focus the story and make it eas­ier and more reward­ing to follow.

For what pos­si­ble pur­pose would Ende­mol want to manip­u­late the edit­ing any more than they try to hide things when they go wrong?

Actu­ally, I think the oppo­site is true; when things go wrong, they make it part of the pro­gramme, as it adds con­tro­versy and ele­ments of sur­prise and spontaneity.

This year, all the scan­dal and alleged scam­ming brought in the pun­ters much more than it turned them away. The tabloid feed­ing frenzy was just as big as it is every year, but then the rat­ings were just as high too.

None of this changes the fact that every­thing we see is fil­tered by Ende­mol, includ­ing what we are allowed to know about the con­tes­tants. So we don’t really know them at all, we only see cer­tain aspects of them.

I’m sure there are sides to every house­mate that remain unseen by us. No, I don’t mean them squat­ting on the bog!

What we’ve seen is just a glimpse into their lives, a mere peek at who they really are. We don’t really know them, can’t really know them, as we are not given the access we think we are.

Yes, it’s all an illu­sion, but then isn’t every­thing we see on tele­vi­sion just the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of real­ity, but not real­ity itself? Is look­ing out the win­dow at peo­ple pass­ing by any dif­fer­ent from watch­ing live stream­ing from the house?

If you look out your win­dow long enough, you will begin to see the same faces pass­ing by. If you did it for months, you would begin to form opin­ions about these peo­ple through your sim­ple obser­va­tions of such things as cloth­ing, hair­style, facial expres­sion and a mil­lion other things. If you sat there for years, you would prob­a­bly feel as if you knew some of these pass­ing strangers, but would you?

BB is like that win­dow, only with the years of observ­ing crammed into a rel­a­tively short span of time. And it’s the same illu­sion that makes you believe that you know the house­mates well.

The same goes for me, I don’t really know them either.

So tell me this, if I don’t really know them, why do I miss them so much?

If they are still only strangers to me, why do I feel so attached to them?

We love BB because it’s like hold­ing a mir­ror up to soci­ety, but it’s a one-way mir­ror, like they have in chang­ing rooms at depart­ment stores. The house­mates only see a reflec­tion, but BB’s cam­eras can see everything.

We’re all voyeurs at heart; we all like to gawk, even if we’d never admit it.

Tell me you can make your­self look away when you drive past a car crash. You can’t, can you?

That’s why it’s some­times referred to as “car crash tele­vi­sion”, because you just can’t look away.

I can’t just look away either which makes it even harder when the series ends, because its not my choice! I’m forced to go with­out my BB fix and no one even asked me how I felt about it!

The swine!

Yes, I’ll miss Rus­sell Brand and BBBM, it was a real high­light to my view­ing this year and I think he was the real star of the whole damn thing. He has a new series on E4 start­ing next month, but with­out the BB aspect, I don’t know if it will be any good. I’ll cer­tainly give it a go with an open mind.

I’ll even miss Der­mot and Davina, though as pre­vi­ously men­tioned, he’s been sleep­walk­ing through BBLB and her inter­view tech­nique and mug­ging for the cam­era a bit too much to take sometimes.

And as for the house­mates, I really will miss them all. Some of them I’ll prob­a­bly never see again, oth­ers all too often, but as BB con­tes­tants, each one will always hold a spe­cial place in my memories.

Shabaz – may you find san­ity, or may san­ity find you.

Dawn – who?

George – enjoy obscurity

Bon­nie – next time order a Chi­nese takeaway!

Sezer – no comment

Sam – best of luck (what else can I say?)

Grace – may the sugar cubes and car­rots always be plentiful!

Lisa – mint? more like morn­ing breath

Jonathan – we hardly knew ya!

Lea – one day, your breasts will have their own postcode

Jayne – have you ever thought of try­ing antacids?

Michael – she’s not amused

Spi­ral – No means no, matey!

Mikey – no one mum­bles quite like you

Susie – I liked you bet­ter with your tits out

Imo­gen – nice, pretty, smiles a lot (it’s what she wanted)

Jen­nie – you’ll be alright when you grow up

Nikki – we haven’t seen the last of you

Richard – I hope your mum is ok

Ais­leyne – you go girl! I think you’ll go far

Glyn – Keep learn­ing, keep expe­ri­enc­ing, keep living

Pete – eeezamana!

Per­fect Pete; the per­fect win­ner. He was the bookie’s favourite right from the start and stayed that way for the entire run. I’m not dis­ap­pointed he won, he’s a win­ner we can all live with, but it still would have been nice to see a shock Ais­leyne win if for no more rea­son than I now can spell her name properly!

There’s one more group of peo­ple I need to thank and that’s all of you who’ve been drop­ping by to read my BB dri­vel. I’ve really enjoyed writ­ing about Big Brother this year and it’s added an extra level of fun for me.

But the northlon­don­hippy doesn’t end just because BB does.

Here at the hippy, we have fun all year long! Now that you’ve dis­cov­ered me and joined the van­guard of the inter­net elite, why not con­tinue feel­ing supe­rior to other mor­tals by con­tin­u­ing your vis­its to this very website.

It’s not that I’m unknown; I pre­fer to see myself as under­ground. Only the really cool, hip, hap­pen­ing peo­ple come to my site and now you can count your­self amongst this select group of fan­tas­tic people.

How lucky are you?

And I make it easy for you to keep up with all things hippy and I per­son­ally invite you to book­mark my page for future reference.

Even bet­ter, if you dig your RSS reader, why not grab one of my many syn­di­ca­tion feeds, that way, you don’t have to come to the hippy, you can make the hippy come to you!

And with that, the northlon­don­hippy BB col­umn fin­ishes for this series, but the northlon­don­hippy blog lives on!

Catch ya later, masturbator!

I can’t believe we’re in the final week of Big Brother!

I’m not actu­ally in it, mind you, or I wouldn’t have access to a com­puter and couldn’t post this entry.

And you’re not in the house either, or you wouldn’t be able to read any of this fine hippyprose.

Unless Glyn has a micro­com­puter cyborg’ed into his brain, in which case, “hi Glyn”.

Well, it would explain how he man­aged to test out as the most intel­li­gent house­mate this year. Of course, there is a say­ing that goes some­thing like this: “In the king­dom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”.

Per­haps we all need seeing-eye dogs!

I’m not going to attempt to con­ceal my delight at Nikki Grahame’s tri­umphant return and her emo­tional yet roman­tic reunion with “Per­fect Pete” Bennett.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for sentimentality.

I believed they really dug each other way back when, before Nikki was evicted and I still believe it now. Of all the rela­tion­ships that devel­oped in the house this year, this one seems the most genuine.

Only time will really tell. Check back with me in 10 or 20 years and we’ll see if I was correct.

How can any­one be down on the joys of young love?

And who knows… We’ve still got one more night for them to get a good old-fashioned shag in before the final on Friday!

I might be sen­ti­men­tal, but I’m still a BB viewer, of course I want to see some ram­pant rodger­ing! Though I worry with that pis­tol Pete’s pack­ing, that he just might split poor Nikki in half!

If Nikki got on top of Pete, it would look like a dwarf strad­dling a flag­pole! Per­haps not the pret­ti­est of sights!

Let’s face it, it just wouldn’t feel right if Fri­day rolls around and those two haven’t con­sum­mated their rela­tion­ship for us. It’s what we deserve at the very least!

As this is my last entry prior to the final, I thought it might make sense to take a look at each remain­ing house­mate indi­vid­u­ally and weigh them up on their rel­a­tive mer­its, in terms of whether or not they deserve to win.

Jen­nie
– Why is she still there? She’s not very inter­est­ing, she hasn’t done very much; basi­cally she’s just a gobby teenager with an atti­tude and an over inflated opin­ion of her­self. There are so many other for­mer HMs I would rather see in her spot.

If Jen­nie hadn’t received immu­nity from the last evici­tion, would she even still be there?

- Hippy pre­dic­tion for Jen­nie: 6th place
– Future prospects for Jen­nie: being laughed at on the streets of Liv­er­pool by canny Scousers.

Richard
– I know he’s the biggest bitch in the house, but I like Richard. He’s pro­vided more ver­bal com­edy with his insults and one-liners than any­one else in this series.

I can’t say I saw any evi­dence of “sex­ual ter­ror­ism”, but I think he should be care­ful using that label, or he’ll end up on some terror-watch list, never able to fly com­mer­cially again!

The fact that Richard sur­vived so many evic­tions is a tes­ta­ment to his pop­u­lar­ity with the gen­eral, vot­ing pub­lic. Cer­tainly he is deserv­ing of being in the final, but not first place. Sorry, Dickie.

- Hippy pre­dic­tion for Richard: 5th place
– Future prospects for Richard: his writ­ing career, per­haps pre­sent­ing on some future Gay TV channel

Glyn
– I was the very first per­son to dub Glyn “the Welsh For­rest Gump” and that assess­ment holds today. Cer­tainly, he has made me laugh, but his increas­ing con­fi­dence and hun­gry ego in my opin­ion make him less of a deserv­ing winner.

I’m tired of hear­ing about Glyn’s jour­ney. For fuck’s sake, they have all been on “a jour­ney”! He can cook an egg; he can wank into a con­dom, and he touched some enor­mous sil­i­con breasts…

So what? Well done for mak­ing it as far as he has, but Glyn shouldn’t win and I don’t think he will.

- Hippy pre­dic­tion for Glyn: 3rd or 4th place.
– Future prospects for Glyn: A career as a minor Welsh celebrity, talk show and per­sonal appear­ances within Wales includ­ing work for their tourist board. And let’s not neglect to men­tion the expected string of “kiss and tell” sto­ries about him in the tabloids that won’t be flattering.

Oh and girls, if you’re think­ing of shag­ging Glyn for profit, you bet­ter be the first! After that, the rates the tabs will pay for your tale will drop off dra­mat­i­cally. Is a night with him really worth 500 quid from a down­mar­ket Sun­day tabloid news­pa­per that will expect you to pose in your undies as well?

Pete and Nikki
– As they are now joined at the hip, I thought it would be best to deal with them as a unit.

I think they are both the real win­ners of BB already as they’ve got each other! I know that some of you out there doubt the sin­cer­ity of their love; I’m not amongst you. Let’s all give those 2 crazy kids a break and just let them have their shot at happiness!

Also, I’m sure they will both do well out of the media, Nikki with her “Princess Nikki” TV series and Pete with his band, “Daddy Fan­tas­tic”. Plus, they will make big money from the tabloids and glossy celeb-mags. Can you imag­ine the Heat cover photo in your head? I sure can. They’ll eas­ily make the most dosh out of all the HMs this year.

I’ve been quite a Pete sup­porter since the begin­ning and still am, to an extent. Put it this way, if he wins, it’s cool with me.

That said, when he played the god card the other day and stated that if he doesn’t win he will lose his faith, he lost a large chunk of my sup­port. It had a faint whiff of manip­u­la­tive des­per­a­tion about it that didn’t sit well with me.

Hippy pre­dic­tion for Nikki: 3rd or 4th place
Future prospects for Nikki: Her glit­ter­ing TV career, future fun with Pete

Hippy pre­dic­tion for Pete: 2nd place
Future prospects for Pete: His band will get a record­ing con­tract and at least one sin­gle will make the charts. Nikki will con­tinue to make him smile

Aislenye
– Per­haps I haven’t been vocal enough in my sup­port for Ais­leyne, though I have always been pos­i­tive in my com­ments about her. Cer­tainly, she is the HM this year that has changed and grown the most, more so than any­one else.

Think about her entrance, when Ais­leyne stepped out of the giant box, look­ing hot, act­ing hard, cloud­ing Glyn’s tiny brain with hor­mones and now con­sider what she is like today.

When I saw Aisleyne’s reac­tion to the clip from her audi­tion tape, it only con­firmed what I sus­pected. Ais­leyne was embar­rassed by her per­for­mance, to the point of tears.

Ok, she cries a lot. It’s hardly sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing how BB broke her down. Any­one who’d been through what she’s been through would prob­a­bly be just as emotional.

Ais­leyne, by all accounts has had a hard life. Dis­owned by her mother, reunited with her father after liv­ing rough for years, the litany of sad­ness is long.

No won­der she’s a hard-ass on the sur­face. Deep down, how­ever, she’s a sweet, smart, young woman who has lived most of her life in fear of show­ing her vulnerability.

When they pre­tended to evict her, then sent her into the house next door, we started to see the cracks in her façade. From that point on, her mask began to dis­in­te­grate and we got to see who she really is.

And who is Aisleyne?

Ais­leyne is a bright, clever, sen­si­tive young woman who’s had one of the rough­est rides ever given to a BB con­tes­tant. She’s con­sis­tently proven her­self to be a good, decent per­son in every­thing she’s said and done. A cou­ple of off-days around the time she was first nom­i­nated don’t detract from her goodness.

I’m going to pro­vide you with a link to a web­site, pur­port­edly to be run by a dis­grun­tled Ende­mol employee. While I can’t vouch for the verac­ity of the infor­ma­tion, I can cer­tainly share the it with you so you can make your own mind up. Here’s the LINK.

If that web­site is to be believed, then Ende­mol have had it in for Ais­leyne from the start. Maybe it’s true, maybe its bull­shit meant to manip­u­late your vote. We can’t know either way for cer­tain, so the choice is yours whether you believe it or not.

Per­son­ally, if I had a cool job with Ende­mol and I dis­agreed with some­thing they’ve done, I’d keep it to myself rather than risk what I expect is a rea­son­ably well-paid gig. Of course, I’m a sell-out and a media-whore, so what else would you expect?

If the odds from the book­ies and early vot­ing fig­ures leaked online are to be believed, Ais­leyne is run­ning a close sec­ond to Pete and only a cou­ple per­cent­age points sep­a­rate them in the voting.

That means, Ais­leyne could really win this, it’s within her grasp, but only if we all help!

So here it is, my hippy endorse­ment: I’m throw­ing all of my sup­port for the final behind Aisleyne!

Ais­leyne is a wor­thy and deserv­ing win­ner; she’s pro­vided us with a sum­mer of enter­tain­ment, laugh­ter and tears! I’d like to see her scoop the top spot and the £100,000 and if we all cast some votes, we could make this happen!

If you’re going to vote, I implore you, please vote for Aisleyne!

And don’t worry, I’ll be putting my money where my blog is and cast­ing a slew of votes for her myself. It’s the least I can do for some­one who has earned it.

Hippy pre­dic­tion for Ais­leyne: 1st place!
Future prospects for Ais­leyne: FHM, Maxim, the News of the World. She’d be a great VJ on MTV Base as well!

So that’s it my fine, fel­low BB fans.

I’ll be spend­ing Fri­day night on my sofa, with my beloved Mrs. H at my side. We will be glued to our Sony Bravia from BBLB at 7:30pm straight through to BBBM and every sec­ond in-between, armed with a small arse­nal of exotic cig­a­rettes and loads of tasty snacks!

I hope you all enjoy the final! Don’t for­get on Sat­ur­day night, there will be a high­lights show wrap­ping up the last day inside the house. Then on Sun­day, the BBLB reunion show airs, which is always entertaining.

Are they doing the winner’s week thing this year? I haven’t checked. I bet they are. Well, it’s some­thing to cling to in quiet desperation.

Every year, it’s just so hard let­ting go! Instead of evict­ing the final six, let’s put the rest of them back in there, and then just leave them in there for­ever and ever and ever…

And as for me, well I’ll be back some­time next week with my final thoughts on the entire series. Until then, have fun and enjoy the final!

Recall the myth­i­cal bird, the Phoenix, who crashed and burned in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion, only to arise, reborn from it’s own ashes.

Could that bird be Nikki Grahame?

Could this be the most amaz­ing Big Brother twist ever?

Of course, I’m talk­ing about the lat­est turn in the most twisted series of BB ever!

As the online rumour mill went into high gear on Thurs­day night, with the news­pa­pers fol­low­ing suit on Fri­day, we knew some­thing big was com­ing, but it wasn’t until Davina con­firmed the terms of this twist dur­ing Fri­day evening’s live show, that we could be certain.

Ten for­mer house­mates are avail­able to be voted back into the house; on Tues­day evening dur­ing a spe­cial live show, the four for­mer HMs with the most votes will be ensconced in the House Next Door and on the fol­low­ing Fri­day night, one of the four will be cho­sen by the remain­ing house­mates, to join them in the main house for the final week!

And here’s the really con­tro­ver­sial bit that seems to have every­one riled up; the return­ing house­mate will be eli­gi­ble to win the £100,000!

Holy mother of twists, Batman!

I won’t deny it; I love this one! What’s not to love? It’s just so big and unex­pected. Ok, per­haps a lit­tle expected, but it is still damn dramatic.

Let’s face a hard truth about BB: the final fort­night has tra­di­tion­ally been dull view­ing. All the really mouthy, enter­tain­ing HMs are long gone, leav­ing a hand­ful of mostly the dull ones, who are on their best behav­iour, hop­ing to win.

Yawnsville, man!

This year, the final fort­night is going to be pulse-quickening.

From Tues­day, we will have ten of them liv­ing in two houses and for the final week, we’ll have 6 peo­ple in the main house AND one of those six will be a for­mer mouthy-pants mad-person who we already got rid of once. It’s extremely cool!

Look, they promised us “twisted Big Brother” this year and not too long ago, we were all moan­ing that there weren’t enough twists. Be care­ful what you wish for!

Would you rather have four of them sit­ting around peel­ing pota­toes or sleep­ing all the time?

I know there’s a lot of hos­til­ity out there regard­ing this lat­est twist, with some of you feel­ing cheated by this turn of events, so I’m guess­ing my wel­com­ing atti­tude towards it myself might not be well received.

Well grow up; it’s only a gameshow!

Whether you like this twist or not, cer­tainly you can’t deny it’s mag­ni­tude. It’s not so much a ques­tion of the split opin­ion, as it is on the impact. The forums are burn­ing up with this sub­ject and the news­pa­pers are full of coverage.

The buzz is B-I-G!

Ende­mol are fuck­ing around with the basic laws of BB not only because they can, but also because it will be enter­tain­ing! Isn’t that rea­son enough?

Imag­ine if my lit­tle friend Nikki gets back into the house on Fri­day. She’ll knock the entire dynamic of the group com­pletely out of kil­ter! And don’t for­get the tantrums! As if you could!

I actu­ally doubt Nikki will be cho­sen on Fri­day night, though I expect she will make to the HND on Tues­day. Nat­u­rally, I would love her to be cho­sen, but some­how I can’t see those remain­ing see­ing it my way.

I has­ten to add that it is far to early to even spec­u­late on who will make it into the main house and wouldn’t con­sider mak­ing that sort of pre­dic­tion until I know who the four on the short­list will be.

What if it is Jayne, or Lisa, or Lea? Or even Grace? Any one of them could be the Phoenix.

Naw, it would never be Grace Adams-Short, she’s just far too vile!

Look, I spent real money vot­ing Grace out, just like many of you, but I’m not going to moan about it if she gets to go back in! What’s the point, it’s only a gameshow! I got what I paid for, I saw her get evicted to a cho­rus of hor­rific boo’s! If she goes back in, I’ll get to see her boo’d some more as she re-enters and then exits again. I see that as a bonus!

This is not the World Cup, it’s not the Olympics, it’s not even the Acad­emy Awards; BB is light enter­tain­ment first and fore­most and its prin­ci­ple func­tion is fun.

Sure there’s drama and occa­sion­ally tears, but ulti­mately BB is meant to keep us amused and this is the sev­enth sum­mer of enter­tain­ment for me. They need to keep it fresh somehow!

Until they get tired of the gim­micks and announce that next year, Big Brother gets back to basics! How’s that for a response to the backlash?

Now for some more ran­dom observations:

I’m glad to see the back of Mikey “the dolt” Dal­ton. I didn’t like him from the very start, with his misog­y­nist views and over-confident air. He wasn’t very smart or clever and I know I wasn’t the only one to find his mum­blings dif­fi­cult to understand.

And no, it wasn’t his accent! I know plenty of peo­ple from Liv­er­pool and don’t have a prob­lem with them. And I used to watch Brook­side, so there!

Mikey dug his own evic­tion plot last week, with his con­stant, ego fuelled fights with all the other house­mates. His point­less attempts to assert him­self back­fired badly and it couldn’t have hap­pened to a nicer guy!

I still don’t get Suzie Ver­rico. She’s got the body of a MILF and the per­son­al­ity of a Chris­t­ian nurs­ery school teacher; which in this hippy’s world, don’t really mix.

On the one hand, she’s been happy to appear as wank fod­der; strip­ping in men’s clubs, music videos and even LIVE TV’s “Naked Mas­ter­mind” and I’ve even seen the screen cap­tures, but on the other hand, she won’t swear, talk about sex or even play spin the bot­tle with Glyn.

Speak­ing of which, her dis­ap­prov­ing looks at Glyn Wise when he admit­ted to hav­ing a bit of a hand shandy just don’t make sense, when you reckon how many mas­tur­ba­tory inter­ludes she’s prob­a­bly inspired thanks to her work in the soft-core industry.

I’m not say­ing she should have ser­viced all the straight men in the house, though if she did, she’d prob­a­bly still be in there, but per­haps a bit more hon­esty regard­ing her sex­u­al­ity wouldn’t have gone amiss. I think we’d all respect her more if she’d come clean about it.

This has cer­tainly been the year of enhanced breasts, adult videos and naughty pho­tos. Per­haps BB7 will be known as the “all porn” edition!

With less than 2 weeks to go, I sup­pose it is time to start think­ing about who will win this year and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see it as a two-horse race.

Wel­come to the clash of the BB titans: Pete Ben­nett vs Glyn Wise! Does any­one else out there objec­tively disagree?

In my heart, sure I would love Nikki to win, but I know that remains very unlikely if not impos­si­ble, so it’s down to these two.

I’ve liked Pete from the start, as have many of you, but I do feel we really haven’t seen the best of him.

He started out very strong with his com­edy hijinks, but before long, he was down and depressed. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with sim­ply being in the house, away from the peo­ple he loves, but it didn’t help as those clos­est to him got booted out one by one.

Does Pete deserve to win? That’s a tough one, because it depends on your cri­te­ria. Because of his Tourette’s, the easy answer is yes, but do you think he has grown as a per­son? I think he was fairly mature and decent when he arrived and he has main­tained his decency, but I don’t think he’s changed all that much.

Glyn annoyed me at first, and con­tin­ues to annoy me at times, but that said, he has also pro­vided me with many laugh out loud moments of unin­ten­tional comedy.

Glyn has also grown the most and if your cri­te­rion is the “jour­ney” that a house­mate takes, he’s the one for you. I can actu­ally see a Glyn-win, but I’m not sure I’d agree with one.

Do I really care who wins? I have to be hon­est and say that I don’t.

For me, it’s less about any con­test or prize and more about enjoy­ing the ride. Besides, win­ning the main prize is no guar­an­tee of glit­ter­ing media future. Jade Goody didn’t win the third series, but her bank man­ager might dis­pute that!

I’ve made no secret that I wanted Nikki to win, but I’m under no allu­sions that even with this sec­ond chance, she will. That said, if she does make it back into the main house next Fri­day, I will be back here, cam­paign­ing for her as she is a far more wor­thy win­ner than either Glyn or Pete.

While my cam­paign plans on Nikki’s behalf are rather grandiose, I don’t think you need to worry too much.

My team of sky­writ­ers won’t be deployed to paint pro-Nikki slo­gans in the skies above you. And the army of Nikki fans I have poised to knock on doors, can­vass­ing for votes across this great coun­try of ours will prob­a­bly be stood-down too, when the house­mates choose some­one really dull to return to the main house.

That’s prob­a­bly not a bad thing since I can afford to pay any of them anyway!

Greet­ings Big Brother fanatics!

Can you feel the end of this series accel­er­at­ing towards its nat­ural con­clu­sion with far more speed than you would prefer?

Yes, me too.

Per­haps its pre­ma­ture for me to be lament­ing the demise of this year’s BB, but it’s a fact that as the house emp­ties out and we watch the whole she­bang wind down, it’s nor­mal to feel this way.

I will be sad to see this series end, but then I’ve felt this way the six pre­vi­ous years as well. Whether you love or hate the house­mates, or some­thing in-between, you’ll have spent 13 weeks in their com­pany daily and you will miss them.

I secretly wish that they would lock all these peo­ple up in the house, and then do away with weekly evictions.

When one of them died of insan­ity or old age, or they killed each other, then you could replace them with a new house­mate. It would run, forever!

I’d prob­a­bly give them all some rusty, dull knives and enough blot­ter acid to go around and then just kick back and let the fun begin!

Ok, maybe not that last bit, but you get my point. They’re all your bestest friends for 3 months and then they’re gone, with not so much as a phone call or a post­card or a top­less snap in FHM magazine.

Ok, ok, so some­times there are top­less pho­tos in the lad’s mags, but once the pages get stuck together, then what?

Now I’m just being gross!

In the last week or so, I’ve felt the pro­duc­ers have been a bit back on form. I thought the “best friends” task was amus­ing, espe­cially Imo­gen Thomas’s stel­lar singing abil­ity and of course, Glen “Spoirle” Coroner’s rap­ping skills.

Could his raps be any worse?

I’m seri­ous; I mean really, how hard would you have to work to rap that badly? If it was meant to be a par­ody, we’d all be piss­ing our col­lec­tive pants in fits of laugh­ter, but he wants to be taken seriously!

If you ran a record com­pany, would you give Spoirle a con­tract? Would you? With a big fat advance? Of course not!

And as keen con­sumers of music, would you pur­chase his debut CD? Would you even down­load it for free from a naughty site?

Would any­one?

And he’s still creepy. I wouldn’t let him date my daugh­ter if I had one, or baby-sit for her for that matter!

And his “best friend” is equally creepy, but for dif­fer­ent reasons.

Michael Cheshire is weird, with his stuffed cat “Scru­ples”, his nasty under­pants and his twisted belief that he is god, because god is love and he is love, makes me want to call the men in the white coats and ask them to make an urgent col­lec­tion in Elstree, STAT!

I’d like to state with some degree of con­fi­dence that Spoirle and Michael would be going tonight, but I can’t, or rather I won’t. The pos­i­tive vot­ing this week has left me a bit con­fused and I’m quite ret­i­cent to make a firm prediction.

It’s hard to say defin­i­tively how peo­ple will vote since the moti­va­tion is dif­fer­ent from the norm.

Pon­der this: Sup­pose every­one who loves Pete Ben­nett, assumes that every­one else who loves Pete, is going to vote to save him and Richard New­man. I mean every­one and con­se­quently, the pair receive very few votes.

If that hap­pened, then it’s bye-bye Pete and Dickie.

I’m not say­ing it will hap­pen, only that it could.

What are the chances of peo­ple feel­ing strongly enough about Imo­gen and Suzie Ver­rico that they would pick up the phone and spend fifty pence?

It’s hard to say, isn’t it?

If it was a proper evic­tion vote, then it would be sim­ple; we would be see­ing the back of Michael and Spoirle and I don’t think any­one would argue with that.

As well as the “best friends” task, I’m enjoy­ing the prison task, espe­cially the twist, or twists if you’re keep­ing score.

The secret reward room is bril­liant and every home should have one! Well, my house to start. Don’t you think I deserve it?

Sorry this is a bit brief, but I’m work­ing like a dog this week and in this heat, it’s no fun. Have you ever had to run up and down moun­tains in a fur coat, with a small bar­rel of brandy hung from a col­lar around your neck? I didn’t think so!

Oh one last thing and it’s an “I told you so!”

In my last BB col­umn, I said Nikki Gra­hame deserved her very own TV show and what do you know? E4 have announced that she will be star­ring in a new series after BB7 fin­ishes, called Princess Nikki.

Not only did I pre­dict this, but also they’ve stolen, or rather appro­pri­ated one of my ideas.

Admit­tedly it was a total rip-off of “The Sim­ple Life”, but I pub­lished it here before they made their announce­ment. I did, really, scroll down if you don’t believe me!

The supe­rior pro­gramme idea, “Nikki on the Couch” has yet to be com­mis­sioned, so I do remain ever hopeful!

Hey Ende­mol, if you’re read­ing this, I’m await­ing my roy­alty cheques! Just send them to the northlon­don­hippy in north Lon­don and let the post­man do the rest. Don’t worry, they know exactly where to find me!
It would be cheaper just to put me on your pay­roll. If you did, I’d let you have “Nikki on the Couch” as part of the deal. You know it makes sense!

Alas poor Nikki, I knew her well.

I’ve made no secret that Nikki Gra­hame was one of my favourites from this series of Big Brother. While I am sorry to see her out of the house this week, her evic­tion was a nec­es­sary evil. It was sim­ply her time.

The alter­na­tive would have been to see Ais­leyne Horgan-Wallace depart and this week, she didn’t deserve that fate.

Ais­leyne has had a really rough ride in both houses and we’ve seen real emo­tion from her recently. Also, I think there is a deeper attrac­tion between Ais­leyne and Pete Ben­nett than Pete and any other woman in there. Let’s let it develop.

But the main rea­son Nikki had to go this week was this: to give that vile rule-breaking slob, Jayne Kitt a mas­sive slap in the face.

Aside from the fact Jayne is respon­si­ble for dar­lin’ Nikki’s evic­tion, Jayne’s sins and trans­gres­sions in the house have been vast.

Nikki wouldn’t have been nom­i­nated this week if it was the nor­mal nom­i­na­tion process, so I see it as 100% Jayne’s fault.

Jayne is obnox­ious, annoy­ing and com­pletely unpleas­ant, as well as being a very uncon­vinc­ing liar.

You might have gath­ered that I really don’t like her.

You’re right, I really don’t. And that’s just how Ende­mol wants it.

I’m sure her spilling the beans regard­ing the out­side world is piss­ing them off behind the scenes, it remains unlikely they are going to make her walk out the back door.

Oh no, they are going to grit their col­lec­tive teeth until next Fri­day, when they can evict her prop­erly, regard­less of how much she reveals.

Why?

Sim­ple.

Think of the rev­enue they will make from the tele­phone and text voting!

Jayne is becom­ing such a fig­ure of hatred that I will cau­tiously pre­dict she will have the most votes cast against her than any other BB house­mate in the his­tory of the series.

And you know some­thing; I don’t blame Ende­mol at all for doing it. Some­one should ben­e­fit some­how from her brief stay in the house!

How am I so sure that Jayne will be up for evic­tion next week?

How can you doubt it? She’s already cost the house their lux­ury shop­ping bud­get, their access to hot water and now sweet, crazy lit­tle Nikki!

Cer­tainly the major­ity of the remain­ing house­mates will nom­i­nate her. Wouldn’t you if you couldn’t smoke a cig­a­rette, drink some wine or eat any­thing other than rice, pasta and lentils?

I sure as hell would!

And I might even pull my dialling fin­ger out of the moth­balls and cast a few votes for her myself, not that I’ll need to because I can’t imag­ine who­ever she came up against being despised more!

The only pos­si­ble rival for evic­tion being Glen “Spi­ral” Coro­ner, because he’s just so creepy and inspires so much dis­com­fort. There are uncon­firmed rumours that more has gone on with him in the house than we have been allowed to see in the high­lights. I’ll say no more.

Instead I’ll say this:

Get Jayne out!

And bring back my lit­tle Nikki!

To me, Nikki is a star; a real discovery.

She’s pro­vided more com­edy moments than any­one this year. She’s a pocket-sized dynamo of emo­tion and angst, adorably cute and wor­ry­ingly volatile at the same time.

A strong char­ac­ter like Nikki was bound to have fans and detrac­tors, but no one can argue that she ‘s been a cen­tral fig­ure in the house.

Whether you love her or hate her, I’m sure you watched her antics with slack jawed won­der; my own mandible hit the car­pet on more than one occasion!

We haven’t seen the last of Nikki, oh no. Watch out Jade and Chantelle! There’s a new blonde real­ity star on the rise!

I’d give Nikki a series in a sec­ond and the pitch would be piss-easy.

How about a British ver­sion of “The Sim­ple Life”? Could you imag­ine Nikki being told she had to milk a cow or slaugh­ter a baby lamb! Just wind her up and let the hilar­ity ensue.

Or how about “Nikki on the Couch”?

It would be a thirty-minute sit­com con­sist­ing of Nikki vis­it­ing her psy­chi­a­trist to talk about her week. It would be great, maybe we could get Ricky Ger­vais to play the doc­tor. You can pic­ture him mug­ging for the cam­eras as Nikki goes into one, can’t you? And we could have a dif­fer­ent recep­tion­ist every week, like a run­ning gag. Lea Walker could do the pilot.

And you all must be won­der­ing why I don’t have my own tele­vi­sion chan­nel? I’m a media genius!

And now for the threat­ened ran­dom obser­va­tions and other assorted bits and bobs that I’ve been mean­ing to mention.

I’ll start with one big let-down for this hippy last Fri­day night dur­ing the live evic­tion. I was wait­ing all week for Davina to read out all of the names of the house­mates prior to announc­ing who goes. It’s usu­ally a very excit­ing moment.

This time, it was a limp, damp, dis­ap­point­ing squib.

Instead of doing it prop­erly and allow­ing the crowd reac­tions to cause mas­sive ruc­tions in the house, they copped out and sim­ply said, “All house­mates except Jayne, you are up for evic­tion.” It was the coward’s way out!

Here’s another one, have you noticed that the only peo­ple in the house who have con­sis­tently used the “c-word” have all been women?

How do I know it’s the “c-word”?

Sim­ple, near as I can tell, it’s the only naughty word that they won’t broad­cast after the watershed.

I found it fan­tas­ti­cally amus­ing that this par­tic­u­lar word has slipped out twice; both times dur­ing the live Fri­day night evic­tions and on both occa­sions, from the same bizarrely buxom housemate.

Ok, I’m talk­ing about Lea and the word in ques­tion is “cunt”.

Is it a word you haven’t come across before?

Did it burn your eyes just read­ing it? Does it harm your ears when you hear it?

Does it under­mine your moral­ity and lessen your spirit every time it passes over someone’s lips?

I didn’t think so.

It is just word. We give it the power to offend.

And guess what? We can take that power away as well.

For starters, stop bleep­ing it. We all know what it is any­way. The con­text gives it away.

It’s an old word; it’s been in com­mon usage for years. There even used to be a street in Lon­don whose name included that word.

If that word does offend you, then what the hell are you doing read­ing my blog? And I wouldn’t watch the tv series “Dead­wood” either.

You could always phone Chan­nel 4 or write to them. They won’t pay atten­tion to your spe­cific com­plaint, but you will get a per­son­alised reply.

If your let­ter or phonecall is par­tic­u­larly amus­ing or crazy, it will be for­warded around their Horse­ferry Road HQ like mad for sheer enter­tain­ment value.

If it is a real humdinger, it might end up in the Holy Moly mailout!

Broad­cast­ers aren’t so much inter­ested in par­tic­u­lar com­plaints, as much as they are inter­ested in trends. I’d guess that they had very few com­plaints over the acci­den­tal “c-word” slip-ups, barely enough for them to really register.

Raise your hand if you’ve seen the Imo­gen Thomas sex video?

Just me, then.

Well, come on, I had to screen it, in the inter­ests of being bet­ter informed so that I may write my BB col­umn from an edu­cated perspective.

Ah-hem.

If you do want to see it, you can find it if you look hard enough. No link from me this time.

If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother; it’s not wor­thy of your valu­able view­ing time. Aside from the fact that the script was weak, the story a bit thin and the pro­duc­tion val­ues quite low, it was really dull.

Imo­gen? Dull? Why I never…

If you do get to see it, like me you will prob­a­bly spend most of your view­ing time try­ing to work out if it is really Imogen.

The qual­ity of the pic­ture is rub­bish mobile phone video and it must be a year or three old, because Imo­gen looks a bit younger.

It really wasn’t until I heard her speak and only then did I start think­ing it might be Imogen.

The video is explicit, fea­tur­ing close-ups and every­thing. The sex is fairly vanilla, though some­what ener­getic. Watch­ing it made me feel a bit dirty and not in a good way.

A word of warn­ing to all of you out there: Any­thing you film these days, espe­cially if it’s dig­i­tal, is going to find it’s way onto the inter­net. You only need to visit YouTube and have a ran­dom poke around to see what I mean.

If you don’t want this hippy, along with mil­lions of other peo­ple around the world watch­ing you do some­thing you don’t want us to see, just don’t film it.

“Oh baby, it will just be for me, I’ll erase it later” is a lie on a par with “the cheque is in the post” and “I won’t cum in your mouth”.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but when they showed Davina drag­ging Nikki out of the house on the Sat­ur­day night high­lights, it was the first time ever Davina made an appear­ance in the high­lights show.

You may have noticed that the high­lights pro­grammes limit our per­spec­tive to what can only be seen from within the house.

Think about when they replay the evic­tion on the Sat­ur­day night high­lights show, you only see the depart­ing house­mate from inside the house.

What you never get is the reverse angle of the evicted HM walk­ing out the door and into the crowd.

Since you could see Davina from the per­spec­tive of the house, it was only nat­ural for us to catch a glimpse of her at the top of the stairs.

Well, I thought it was cool.

And you ‘re think­ing, “Hippy… You anorak!”

Nikki’s evic­tion was, in the words of my younger brother, “dis­tress­ing to watch”, espe­cially when she wouldn’t walk out the door of the house. The com­bi­na­tion of unbri­dled angst and over­whelm­ingly fear that was appar­ent from the look on her face made me feel sad.

Watch­ing Nikki’s evic­tion inter­view was like rid­ing on a roller coaster of her emo­tions. She was up and down more than the lifts in Canary Wharf on a week­day! I thought Davina han­dled it with sen­si­tiv­ity and I think she had gen­uine affec­tion for Nikki.

I did too, I really liked Nikki.

Nikki, if you hap­pen to stum­ble upon my blog when you Google your­self, as you invari­ably will (don’t worry, every­one Google’s them­selves, you won’t go blind), know that you had one crazy middle-aged hippy in north Lon­don, who spent two entire months being com­pletely enter­tained by you.

And if you’re inter­ested in pur­su­ing any of my ideas for those tv series fur­ther, have your peo­ple call my peo­ple and we can do lunch! I’ll have to get some peo­ple first, but it’s on my list of things to do this week.

Remem­ber, I came here today not to bury Nikki, but to praise her!

As much as I try to be a loyal Big Brother fan, some­times the pro­duc­ers do piss me right off.

I’m refer­ring to the lat­est and biggest twist to ever be per­pe­trated on BB; the house next door. To say I’m dis­ap­pointed in the exe­cu­tion of this poten­tially amaz­ing turn would be an understatement.

It wasn’t bad enough that last week when the orig­i­nal house­mates heard work­men con­struct­ing the secret house and spec­u­lated cor­rectly on what was com­ing… OR that Lea Walker could hear the new house­mates while in the diary room… OR even that the new house­mates could hear Jayne Kitt in the old house after Ais­leyne Horgan-Wallace sent her packing…

I could go on!

The sim­ple fact is that the producer’s have blown this one and blown it big. Had they pulled this twist off cor­rectly, we would all be mar­vel­ling at their cre­ativ­ity and inge­nu­ity; instead we’re all quite rightly, moan­ing and whing­ing about it.

Had all the secrets been prop­erly kept, the sur­prise as each new house­mate entered the orig­i­nal house would have been real. And when Ais­leyne returned, the shock would have been astound­ing to watch.

How long does any­one reckon for the old house to fig­ure out that Ais­leyne is return­ing? Will they work it out today, tonight, or tomor­row or will they just hear her in the diary room too?

What should have been the most well-planned, flaw­lessly exe­cuted twist in the his­tory of Big Brother in the UK has turned into a giant wank.

That’s what I’m refer­ring to in the title of this post­ing, “A twist of the wrist” as this twist has turned into masturbation.

I guess I’m not really hid­ing my dis­ap­point­ment very well, but as a true BB fanatic, this missed oppor­tu­nity to really sub­vert the dynam­ics of the house is a huge let down.

But hang on; I do not think that it will kill the series.

Noth­ing, short of a mur­der in the house will could do that, and even then, they would prob­a­bly turn it into a real­ity TV who­dunit! To vote for Richard in the lounge with rusty knife, text “KNIFE” to….

You get the idea!

Would it really have been that dif­fi­cult to exe­cute this twist prop­erly? I don’t think so, not with the amount of time spent plan­ning it.

Here are some sim­ple things they could have done to insure this twist worked correctly.

First of all, they could have com­pleted all the con­struc­tion and out­fit­ting of the secret house before the launch in May.

I know that sounds obvi­ous, but imag­ine if all they had to do before last Fri­day was give the place a quick dust­ing before send­ing the new house­mates inside. The orig­i­nal HMs wouldn’t have heard a bloody thing!

For that mat­ter, why did they have to build it so close to the orig­i­nal house? Shouldn’t it have been much fur­ther away, per­haps con­nected by a long, camera-run like cor­ri­dor, that could have linked to the diary room in the same way. It just seems like a no-brainer!

And is shar­ing a diary room a good idea? The old house­mates are going to twig that they don’t get in there as quickly as before and realise that it’s being shared!

And how about the new housemates?

If Ende­mol knew they were putting five new­bies into the house mid-run, why weren’t they all put into iso­la­tion at the same time they put the orig­i­nal house­mates into hid­ing? Would it have been that dif­fi­cult to keep them all abroad for 6 weeks? Now that would have been impressive!

My point is that they could have thought this through more thor­oughly. And they should hire me as a pro­ducer, of course!

I’m not jok­ing, I’d be wicked, though nat­u­rally, I wouldn’t come cheap! Qual­ity and exper­tise are expen­sive, but I’d be worth every penny. I wouldn’t let some­thing like this happen!

So what did they get right?

I thought Aisleyne’s tear­ful reac­tion to evic­tion on Fri­day night was gen­uine. It showed a vul­ner­a­bil­ity in her that had pre­vi­ously been obscured by her “ghetto princess” per­sona. She’s not really the hard-ass she pre­tends to be.

I think the new house­mates are all good choices; extreme char­ac­ters, most likely unbal­anced and des­per­ate for a taste of fleet­ing fame. They’ll fit right in with the rest of them in the main house.

The most annoy­ing of the bunch is def­i­nitely Jayne Kitt. Hands-up if you didn’t guess that she would be the first one to move next door!

I don’t see any hands!

She’s loud, she’s dim and she will drive every­one in the house absolutely mad! She’s a bit like a female, slightly less men­tally unsta­ble ver­sion of Shab­baz Chauhdry. Remem­ber him?

Another sim­ple pre­dic­tion: Jayne won’t last long. The other house­mates will nom­i­nate her at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­nity and we’ll vote her out just as quickly. Enjoy the chaos she causes while you can!

Fol­low­ing on from my dis­cus­sion of Pete Ben­net last week, I wanted to men­tion another exam­ple of why I like him.

After he revealed to Ais­leyne that he nom­i­nated her last week, he was called to the diary room for a bollocking.

Unlike other house­mates who have received warn­ings in the diary room for dis­cussing nom­mos, Pete didn’t make excuses or denials. He calmly admit­ted he did it, said he was sorry and then explained why. He was an adult about it and his jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of why he did it should be com­mended as well.

Pete felt his friend­ship and gen­uine affec­tion for Ais­leyne meant more to him than play­ing the game. That’s a decent thing and decency is indeed rare in the BB house.

Please don’t let the rev­e­la­tions in last week’s papers about Pete’s drug use put you off of him. Peo­ple that age take drugs, it’s a fairly nor­mal thing for them to do. Please don’t be judge­men­tal about it; per­haps you smoke tobacco or drink alco­hol, or like a strong cup of cof­fee! It’s all the same, really, soci­ety just doesn’t like to admit that they are all drugs.

I would never endorse the use of Ket­a­mine, or “spe­cial K” as it is known. It’s nasty stuff that I tried once, around twenty years ago and didn’t enjoy.

The British gov­ern­ment only recently clas­si­fied Ket­a­mine, so chances are it was not even ille­gal when Pete was pho­tographed tak­ing it. So he wasn’t even break­ing the law!

I know Pete is not assertive enough with the women in the house; I think he has trou­ble being direct. Lea con­tin­ues to mess with his head and manip­u­late him. From my per­spec­tive, she’s the one com­ing between Pete and Nikki Gra­ham. I still think some­thing could hap­pen between them, if they had the space to breathe!

My affec­tion for Nikki con­tin­ues to grow every day and I expect she is the sort of char­ac­ter that you have a strong reac­tion to, one way or another. You either love her or hate her and I for me it is pure unadul­ter­ated love.

I think she is great enter­tain­ment, but what really redeems Nikki is her self-awareness over her moods and the abil­ity to laugh at herself.

I would love to see Nikki win, but I’ll be happy if she is in the top three.

I’ve gone off Glyn a bit as his recently gained con­fi­dence and assertive­ness is piss­ing me off. I liked him bet­ter when he had the wide-eyed won­der­ment of a coun­try bump­kin, now that he thinks he’s Mr. Cool, it just doesn’t work.

New girl, Jen­nie Con­ner appar­ently fan­cies him a bit, accord­ing to her fam­ily. I know she has a boyfriend, but so what? She also knows that BB cou­ples make big money out­side of the house. She’d eat poor Glyn alive!

It’s hard to say what will hap­pen next as its unclear how nom­i­na­tions and evic­tions will work this week. ITV’s “(non) Celebrity Love Island” starts next week, so you have to think that Ende­mol have some­thing up their sleeves to put against it. Aisleyne’s return to the house most likely, but will they stretch it out until next Mon­day? Only time will tell.

On a per­sonal note, it seems that many of you out there are enjoy­ing “the northlon­don­hippy BB col­umn” as these entries are now known. I’m pleased that you do, because I’m enjoy­ing writ­ing them and as always, I wel­come you com­ments and emails.

Greet­ings BB fans! I’m glad you could drop by.

It takes a BB fan with a cer­tain high level of intel­li­gence and style to fully appre­ci­ate my spe­cial brand of BB dri­vel, so well done you for find­ing me!

Here at northlondonhippy.com, we’re aware that you have a wide vari­ety of BB colum­nists to choose from, so thank you for choos­ing the hippy!

So are you dig­ging the show so far?

Well, I sure am! But as I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for the for­mat. I guess I’m just a voyeur at heart, but aren’t we all?

Don’t get me wrong, as much as I enjoy Big Brother, there are things I don’t like about it as well, and I don’t just mean that dull as dish­wa­ter, Suzie Ver­rico. I had such high hopes for her! Oh well, you can’t win them all.

Take a moment and imag­ine that your home or work­place was wired up with cam­eras and you could eaves­drop on the pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions of peo­ple you know. You’d watch that, wouldn’t you? I bet you wouldn’t be able to look away!

It’s the same with strangers; the oppor­tu­nity to view the for­bid­den is extremely appeal­ing. It’s nor­mal to want to see what you shouldn’t see, we’re all curi­ous about what should be secret.

We all know what it feels like to be slag­ging some­one off, only for them to walk into the room and be greeted to an awk­ward silence. On BB, you can actu­ally see it happening.

For exam­ple, a cou­ple of nights ago on the high­lights pro­gramme, Lea Walker and Nikki Gra­ham were in the kitchen talk­ing about Ais­leyne Horgan-Wallace in less than flat­ter­ing terms, when Ais­leyne walked in on them. They promptly stopped talk­ing and the awk­ward moment of silence that fol­lowed was very amusing.

Moments like that hap­pen in real life all the time, but the BB cam­eras cap­ture them for our entertainment.

As I think we’re about a week away from reach­ing the mid-point of the run, this is a good time assess where we are now and where the show may be heading.

Pete Ben­nett con­tin­ues to be everyone’s favourite, inside the house and out. A Pete win is likely, if not com­pletely cer­tain, just check with the bookmakers.

Pete is indeed very like­able; he’s kind, con­sid­er­ate, thought­ful, and sen­si­tive. It’s def­i­nitely not a ques­tion of peo­ple feel­ing sorry for him because he suf­fers from Tourette’s Syn­drome, though what role it does play in Pete being the favourite is some­thing wor­thy of discussion.

From what I’ve read and seen, Pete has not had an easy time in life because of his Tourette’s; and though we may all accept him for who he is with­out reser­va­tion, this hasn’t always been the case in the real world. Pete has spo­ken of this in the house.

Does that mean he’s become such a nice per­son in response to hav­ing Tourette’s? It’s pos­si­ble, but who could say. Is the Tourette’s the real rea­son the house­mates favour him? I don’t think so, but again how can we be sure?

To me, Pete seems to be a very gen­uine guy, which is why I like him. He is also show­ing that he has the patience of a saint, with the way Lea is treat­ing him. I was pleased to see him finally stand up to her manip­u­la­tion, though he did it in such a polite way that I don’t think she got the message.

Lea is a soul vam­pire; she wants to suck the very life out of Pete; she’s obsessed with him in a very unhealthy way. Lea is prob­a­bly the most needy BB con­tes­tant ever and its too bad she’s cho­sen Pete to latch on to.

Nikki con­tin­ues to be my other favourite; I think every sec­ond she is on the screen is pure com­edy gold. I’d like to give Nikki her very own dig­i­tal tv chan­nel when she comes out of the house.

Yes, you read that cor­rectly, noth­ing but Nikki 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Think of the laugh­ter, the tears, and the tantrums; espe­cially the tantrums…I could charge a bloody for­tune for adverts! I’d be rich, rich I tell ya!

I still think Nikki’s feel­ings for Pete are gen­uine and if Lea wasn’t always on Pete like a bad rash, we might be able to tell if Pete feels the same about her. Per­haps I’m wrong, but I think there’s a spark between them.

I really didn’t see what all the fuss was about with Suzie, when Glyn decided to paint the house with cider. Shit hap­pens, or rather in Glyn’s case, puke does. Hasn’t every­one drunk a bit too much at one time or another and been that ill? I know I have.

Well, I’ll take that back. I’ve always made it to the toi­let, or at least a bin or a bucket, but still, I know what it’s like to drink a bit too much and later regret it.

It’s another feather in Glyn’s cap though, as next year he can expect to win the Valley’s Vomit Com­pe­ti­tion; the boy can spew for Wales!

I hate to agree with Mikey “the dolt” Dal­ton, but he was spot on when he said that Suzie is up her own ass. I’m not really sure how she jus­ti­fies her uppity atti­tude, when only a few years ago, she stripped off for a z-list music video. (not office safe or suit­able for under-18s please).

It’s noth­ing like Lea’s video per­for­mance, but it’s close enough for Suzie not to be throw­ing too many stones at any­one else in terms of the amount of “class” they possess.

They asked Suzie in the diary room why she wanted to be on BB; a ques­tion I think we would all like to ask the tea-drinking, biscuit-eating stripper.

She’s no fun. She’s dull. I just wish there was a proper evic­tion this week so we could ditch her. She’s served her pur­pose as the Golden House­mate and is now stay­ing on the BB shelf beyond her sell-by date!

As I’m putting the fin­ish­ing touches on this week’s col­umn, we’re still a few hours away from find­ing out who will be our choices to send to the sec­ond, secret house this Fri­day, along with the five new housemates.

I’m not going to spec­u­late too much on who from the cur­rent house will be mov­ing next door, but I will take a stab at how I would like to see this twist play out.

We already know that there will be a fake evic­tion this Fri­day, Chan­nel 4 have con­firmed this already. I’m guess­ing that as this twist was planned well in advance, that the 5 new peo­ple have been in hid­ing since before the series started. I hope so anyway.

Assum­ing that the five new peo­ple have indeed been sequestered away, they will be told that it is launch night for the series and will enter the house with all the bells and whis­tles asso­ci­ated with a launch night. The cur­rent, falsely evicted house­mate, will enter the sec­ond house and be told straight away that they are on a secret mis­sion to play along with the new house­mates that its launch night and to con­ceal the exis­tence of the main house.

Do ya get me?

It will be like hav­ing a mini-BB series, tak­ing place within the cur­rent series! I’m lov­ing it already!

How ever Ende­mol han­dle this, it has real poten­tial to invig­o­rate the series at a point where tra­di­tion­ally BB starts to run out of steam. I would also spec­u­late that this is not the last chore­o­graphed twist in store for us this sum­mer. We’re only half-way fin­ished, we have a very long way to go!

What am I not lik­ing this year? The two “D’s”, Der­mot and Davina.

Der­mot seems to be sleep­walk­ing through BBLB this time around; he doesn’t seem to have the enthu­si­asm that char­ac­terised his pre­sent­ing in pre­vi­ous years. Maybe the BBLB style is a bit tired as well, but I think he’s burnt out with it. Sorry, Derm, nor­mally I’m lov­ing your work.

My prob­lem with Davina is that she is becom­ing a par­ody of her­self. She mugs for the cam­eras too much and her con­stant gurn­ing is really get­ting on my nerves. She’s nowhere near as harsh as she should be dur­ing the post-eviction inter­views as well. I used to like the way she pre­sented the Fri­day night live shows, but for some rea­son this year, it’s just not work­ing for me.

I’m not going to stop watch­ing because a cou­ple of the pre­sen­ters are piss­ing me off a lit­tle; I’m way too much of an addict to ever do that!