The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘Big Brother’ Category

I trust you are all wear­ing your fin­gers down to a stub, hit­ting redial repeat­edly as you vote to get Grace Adams-Short out.

As BB vil­lains go, she is cer­tainly doing all she can to engen­der the hatred of the Great British Pub­lic. Her bul­ly­ing and back­stab­bing is a won­der to behold. But the best part of it by far is her com­plete lack of aware­ness as to why she is so disliked.

I touched on this in my pre­vi­ous BB entry, how the chant­ing of “Get Grace out” last Fri­day will be seen as one of the defin­ing moments of BB7.

I’ve actu­ally been think­ing about how that all came about and I’m fairly cer­tain it was an inten­tional deci­sion the part of the pro­duc­ers to allow the house to hear the chanting.

How so?

Sim­ple, remem­ber what was actu­ally going on dur­ing this sequence.

Davina handed over to Big Brother and we cut to the gar­den. Aside from the micro­phone feeds from the house­mates, the only other live mic at that point would have been BB’s. And we all know that BB broad­casts from a sound-proofed booth

In other words, the only micro­phone out­side with the crowd was Davina’s and that would have been switched off.

This means that BB opened yet another micro­phone out­side with the crowd and then mixed it into the house ON PURPOSE. From a pro­duc­tion point of view, it had to be a delib­er­ate, inten­tional move on their part.

Talk about Twisted Big Brother!

By this one sim­ple flick of a switch, they were able to increase the ten­sion this week as well as pro­vid­ing them with a juicier story to fol­low in the lead up to Friday.

I’m lov­ing their work!

Some may crit­i­cise the harsh­ness of these tac­tics, but not me. Since Evil BB5, I think it is Endemol’s duty to keep the house­mates as off-balance as pos­si­ble. Now that the twists are kick­ing in, it’s going to be fun viewing!

What really gets me about Grace, what really winds me up to no end, is that she doesn’t have a clue why she is despised.

Oh it must be the editing!

No, it’s her rela­tion­ship with Mikey “the dolt” Dalton.

It’s because she’s so beautiful!

Buzzzzzz! All wrong! Espe­cially that last one!

And when she dis­cov­ered that Susie nom­i­nated her, her reac­tion didn’t exhibit any of what her name sug­gests; instead she was pos­i­tively “graceless”.

Much like the house will be after 10pm tonight!

Her tirade against Susie, which she dragged Dar­ling Nikki (a wicked old Prince track as well!) into was just so unspeak­ably loath­some that when I watched it on the high­light pro­gramme I nearly gouged my own eyes out in disgust!

And it only got worse, as Grace per­formed two very sad “dances of des­per­a­tion”; one per­formed ver­ti­cally with the other house­mates and a sec­ond per­formed hor­i­zon­tally under the cov­ers with Mikey. Both were equally sad and tragic to watch.

It’s too late Grace; there will be no redemp­tion for you while you are inside the house!

The tabloids are all report­ing that Grace is even more unpop­u­lar than Sezer Yurt­seven. That’s an accom­plish­ment, as he was fairly hated by one and all.

The odds on Grace’s evic­tion have got­ten even worse than Sezer’s, accord­ing to the bookies.

One enter­pris­ing book­maker is even offer 100/1 odds that Grace will receive 100% of the pub­lic vote! I know that’s not pos­si­ble, as some peo­ple will vote for Nikki, though it would be fool­ish to throw your money away wast­ing your evic­tion call on the future footballer’s wife!

It won’t be fool­ish to vote for Grace. I worry that peo­ple will all think that the pub­lic hate her so much, that they don’t have to vote. Silly!

If every­one thinks that way, then no one will vote and we could be stuck with her for another week. We can’t allow that to happen!

So I’m count­ing on all of you out there in inter­net­land, well the British part of inter­net­land, to vote often and vote for Grace. I’ll be cast­ing a few votes of my own before tonight, so as always I’m not ask­ing you to do any­thing that I’m not will­ing to do myself

Vot­ing Grace out tonight will actu­ally be the best thing we as view­ers can do for her. I’m seri­ous. She needs a short, sharp shock to help her learn a valu­able life lesson.

Grace’s real crime is no crime at all; she is merely a casu­alty of her age and more specif­i­cally her own imma­tu­rity. She is remark­ably imma­ture; she is much younger than her years. And she doesn’t realise that either!

Tonight, with our help, Grace will be grow­ing up, very fast. And isn’t that the best thing for everyone?

PS.

I know I threat­ened with this last week, but this time I have it. You can watch high­lights of Lea Walker’s porn video RIGHT HERE.

It’s only been run­ning for just over three weeks, but BB7 has already estab­lished itself as a fix­ture here in Britain.

It seems like any­one you speak to has a far deeper knowl­edge of the com­ings and goings in a cer­tain small house in Elstree than they are com­fort­able admitting.

What’s wrong with being a Big Brother fan? Why are peo­ple so ret­i­cent to admit that they enjoy it? It’s not like you’re cop­ping to cook­ing and eat­ing small chil­dren for lunch! It’s only a game show!

Big Brother takes over the media for the dura­tion of its run and even if you despise watch­ing it, you’ll be hard pressed to escape its reach.

Chan­nel 4 broad­casts at least an hour of high­lights or more every evening. And it’s con­sis­tently more than 60 min­utes in length, they keep extend­ing it with­out updat­ing their sched­ules, which is wreak­ing absolute havoc with my SKY+ — the end­ing is cut off more nights than not!

And on Friday’s, the live evic­tion dou­ble bill is at least 90 minutes.

E4 broad­casts Big Brother’s Lit­tle Brother five times a week, (BBLB) and Big Brother’s Big Mouth four times a week (BBBM), each 30 min­utes in length. Plus there’s a new show this year called Big Brother’s Big Brain.

If you add up all of the already pack­aged pro­grammes, you come up with nearly 13 hours of view­ing a week! Now, that’s commitment!

Add to that the 24/7 avail­abil­ity of live stream­ing via the inter­ac­tive fea­tures of the magic red but­ton on dig­i­tal tv and you begin to get a pic­ture of just how much is there for you to watch. And enjoy. And obsess over!

It’s easy enough to avoid all of that pro­gram­ming, but even if you do, BB lurks in other media. Flip on your radio to any pop­u­lar music sta­tion and I promise you that BB will be men­tioned; in happy talk from the DJ or within their brief news bul­letins. It’s the same on satel­lite tv; news from the house becomes real news!

Open any tabloid or celebrity glossy mag­a­zine and again, gos­sip about the house­mates will be found through­out. The glossies, like Heat and other high­brow pub­li­ca­tions, will stick BB stars on their cov­ers for as long as they can.

Why? For the same rea­son the Daily Express finds a rea­son to put a story about Princess Diana on nearly every Mon­day edi­tion; because it sells!

So even if you casu­ally con­sume your media, you can­not escape know­ing that Pete Ben­nett is the one every­one thinks will win; Nikki Gra­ham is a spoilt brat, Lea Walker is a porn star and Glyn Wise is the Welsh “For­rest Gump”.

Ok, I came up with that last one myself, but don’t you think it’s accurate?

Glyn is being por­trayed, rightly or wrongly, as a coun­try bump­kin. I know he is only 18 years old, but could any­one really reach that age and not know the recipe for mak­ing a fuck­ing sand­wich? If that is true, I really do fear for the future of our planet!

And he’s the “head boy” in his 6th form, so just imag­ine what the dumb­est kid in his class must be like…probably sit­ting in a pool of his own excre­ment shout­ing “ee-eye-ee-eye-ooh” over and over again at no one in par­tic­u­lar; hop­ing one of the smarter kids might bring him one of those mirac­u­lous cre­ations known as the sandwich!

That all said, I do like Glyn, he is a real con­tender for sec­ond place; though any­thing can hap­pen and we can’t all be com­pla­cent that a Pete win is a dead cert. Who knows what twists may be com­ing next?

I was all ready to write a sting­ing crit­i­cism of the lack of teeth in the “Twisted Big Brother” billing this sea­son. Up to the intro­duc­tion of the Golden House­mate, I saw no real evi­dence of any twists. Friday’s live show turned that on it’s head and my lazi­ness and pro­cras­ti­na­tion pre­vented me from look­ing very fool­ish the day before they did this!

See, smok­ing dope does have its benefits!

And the heat­wave here in Lon­don isn’t help­ing, espe­cially in the tin­der­box that is my north Lon­don lair. I might have to rig up my Air­Con for the liv­ing room soon. It’s 30 god­damn degrees in my lounge!

I’m sure that’s why you came to my site today, to get the weather report in my liv­ing room! It’s partly smoky, with ris­ing humid­ity and the mer­cury is climb­ing! So is my blood pressure!

I thought the way they han­dled the Golden Ticket con­test was superb. I’m not going to spend much time on the con­spir­acy the­ory behind the selec­tion of the win­ner; per­son­ally I do think it was ran­dom, albeit good luck that some­one so telegenic was selected. That’s hip­py­code­s­peak for a hot MILF!

When Davina pro­vided the mini-introductions for all 34 poten­tial Golden House­mates, it seemed to me that the major­ity of them had media con­nec­tions and/or had try to audi­tion their way on to BB in the past. If that’s true, then it only makes sense that the one selected would have a higher chance of fit­ting either of those descriptions.

As I’ve said before, it takes a cer­tain kind of indi­vid­ual to want to destroy their lives on real­ity television…it takes some­one with a screw loose! It takes a scream­ing crazy wannabe!

What I thought was excit­ing on Fri­day was the moment of rev­e­la­tion as Ais­leyne Horgan-Wallace read out the instruc­tions to the house­mates and then they showed all 34 Golden Ticket win­ners to them on the plasma screen. I think it could be one of the defin­ing moments of this series.

Not just because it was a brave depar­ture for BB, break­ing the fourth wall INTO the house and giv­ing them a look out­side, but because of what was over­heard from the bay­ing crowd.

“Get Grace out! Get Grace out!”

How cool was that? Grace Adams-Short is com­pletely deserv­ing of this pub­lic scorn, she has earned it with her vile atti­tude and school bully tac­tics. She’s pure poison!

What’s even fun­nier is she thinks it’s down to her canoodling with that vacant dolt, Mikey Dal­ton. He’s dull, he’s dumb and I can hardly under­stand a word he says, er mum­bles. Watch him sail under the radar straight through until the final week.

I think there’s a good chance Grace will be nom­i­nated this week, as the Golden House­mate is the only one nom­i­nat­ing and peo­ple who know her say she’s been watch­ing the show and can’t stand Grace.

I’m ready to vote, vote, vote if Grace is up and I urge you to do the same. We got rid of Sezer Yurt­seven, let’s leave noth­ing to chance!

And now on to the “des­per­ate house­wife” men­tioned in the title. No, I don’t mean the ABC/C4 series; I am of course refer­ring to the new Golden House­mate, Suzie Verrico.

Suzie, a 43-year-old house­wife and strip­per from Kent has been try­ing to get into the house for years. She’s audi­tioned at least 3 times and was a standby con­tes­tant for a pre­vi­ous series. Again, so what? Des­per­ate wannabes are per­sis­tent, espe­cially when they are house­wives with rich husbands!

Suzie’s hubby bought 60 cases of KitKat choco­lates search­ing for a Golden Ticket. When that failed, he picked one up on eBay for a cool four grand. Now that’s love!

Though I did see a great the­ory on the DS:BB forum that said he did it to get rid of her for a few months, so he could live that wild des­per­ate hus­band lifestyle full of hard drugs and hook­ers, with total impunity, know­ing his mis­sus was safely locked up under the watch­ful eye of one hun­dred video­cam­eras and the entire nation! That would be the ulti­mate in dis­creet planning!

Suzie admits to a boob job (which seems to be a pre­req­ui­site for entry into the house this year!), but denies hav­ing any work on her face. From my per­spec­tive, her nose, lips and cheek­bones look a lit­tle too good to be true, but what do I know!

Yes, she’s a hot­tie and she’s put Lea’s nose right out of joint, espe­cially because she’s 8 years older than Lea, but looks much younger!

Suzie doesn’t realise yet that being the Golden House­mate isn’t going to be fun. They already have her sleep­ing in a drafty, tiny cup­board that they have named the Golden Bed­room. She also doesn’t know that her nom­i­na­tions will be the only ones that count this week and Davina hinted that more unpleas­ant­ness is to fol­low later in the week. I won­der if they will force Glyn to admin­is­ter the daily golden shower?

It looks like Twisted BB may finally live up to the hype! It’s about time!

Thanks to every­one who voted to get rid of Sam Brodie last week. I didn’t hate her, I just thought she was dull, whereas Nikki Gra­ham is eas­ily one of my favourites and every sec­ond she is on-screen is pure com­edy gold!

No, I wouldn’t want Nikki as my flat­mate or girl­friend or any­thing, I think she could prob­a­bly drive me to an early grave quite quickly, but as some­one else’s prob­lem, she’s first class view­ing! Please keep her in as long as possible!

I felt gen­uine sorry for Glyn when he cried real tears over Sam’s depar­ture. I think he was actu­ally very upset; he really is a sen­si­tive young man!

I was going to pro­vide a treat for my beloved hip­py­fans, though with a dis­claimer: If you are under 18 or have a weak dis­po­si­tion, please do NOT click on the fol­low­ing link to Lea Walker’s porn video…

But the link went away and it’s no longer on the pirate host!

If you have seen the clip and I’m sure many of you have, then my lit­tle BB themed joke will make sense:

What do a KitKat wrap­per and Lea Walker have in common?

They both have four fin­gers inside them!

I never said it was in good taste! I won­der if that’s the kind of pub­lic­ity the KitKat peo­ple want?

Phew!

And by “phew”, I mean thank fuck I’ve made it to this morn­ing. I’ve now got about 9 days off and I need it. I’ve worked loads for the last few months (ok, since Decem­ber!) with­out hav­ing that much time off, so I am look­ing for­ward to some seri­ously indul­gent hip­py­time! I’ve earned it.

Work­ing as I do, every hour the good lord sends, you learn to really look for­ward to time off. If you com­pound my worka­holic nature with the fact that I choose to only work overnight (which involves turn­ing my body clock around back and forth from days to nights fre­quently), you might have some idea just how fucked I feel right now.

I can laugh about it, in my manic way as I am right now, sit­ting here hunched over my key­board like a man pos­sessed, but I know it’s tak­ing its toll on me.

Not that you came here for shiftworker’s blog weekly! You’re here to dig my lat­est views on Big Brother, with that patented hippyspin!

And I’ve got so much I want to write about it, that I’m cer­tain I’ll for­get some­thing or run out of steam before I can spill all.

For starters, what’s the deal with all these peo­ple walk­ing out the back door? I under­stood it with Shab­haz Chaudhry, because of his obvi­ous insta­bil­ity. I don’t even think he would dis­agree with that.

And if there wasn’t con­for­ma­tion enough of his afore­men­tioned insta­bil­ity, he left me with no doubts at all after pro­claim­ing his gen­uine desire to return to the house while mak­ing a rather sedate appear­ance on Big Brother’s Big Mouth.

Dawn Blake’s depar­ture is another story. I had high hopes for Dawn on launch night; her video pro­file hinted at a dark per­son­al­ity that I looked for­ward to see­ing in the house. I thought she was going to be different.

Man, was this hippy wrong! It goes to show you how much things have changed over the years with Big Brother.

Dawn’s self-scripted per­for­mance in her video and audi­tions was a sham; it was a cal­cu­lated and nearly suc­cess­ful attempt to put one over on Big Brother. And if she main­tained this façade, she might still be the house, but she made a big mis­take: she thought she could fool Big Brother far more than any­one ever could.

Ulti­mately, BB will trip you up, no mat­ter how clever you think you are.

Once in the house, Dawn was fairly dull, at least in terms of BB. She was kind, friendly, car­ing and ratio­nal. We don’t want any of those qual­i­ties in a house­mate unless they are com­bined with some inter­est­ing flaw. Dawn’s flaw was hubris.

I can only imag­ine the reac­tion in the Ende­mol pro­duc­tion office when they dis­cov­ered that the “urgent mes­sage” from her fam­ily was actu­ally a (not very) secret code instruct­ing her to walk.

I expect the pro­duc­ers were equally over­come with feel­ings of embar­rass­ment and anger. As showrun­ners, it’s their respon­si­bil­ity to antic­i­pate poten­tial prob­lems and some­one clearly dropped the ball. I can guar­an­tee you their were bol­lock­ings aplenty that day and I wouldn’t be shocked to find out some­one was sacked or demoted or rit­u­ally humil­i­ated at big meet­ing, in front of everyone!

Trust me, work­ing in the media is like that. Study law or account­ing if you can, some­times I wish I did!

Is it any won­der that there is some con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the cir­cum­stances of Dawn’s depar­ture? It would only be nat­ural for BB to want to have the last word by assert­ing their author­ity, if not actu­ally on Dawn, but for the ben­e­fit of view­ers. We needed a not so sub­tle reminder that BB is always in control!

And as for Dawn….tough shit!

You took on BB and you lost. Yes, you lost. You already looked fool­ish enough with your mantra of “shut-up”, you should have thrown in the towel then.

Now with the announce­ment of your alleged hunger strike over your demands for the BB footage that doesn’t make you look like a twat, you’re giv­ing Shab­haz com­pe­ti­tion in the insta­bil­ity stakes.

Give it up, love. Your ploy to use BB to make your­self spokesper­son for some made-up sports-science watch­dog group was as ill-conceived as the group itself! Go back to teach­ing aer­o­bics to middle-aged fat women for 6 quid an hour and leave the media to the inter­est­ing peo­ple. You dis­ap­pointed this hippy very much and you proved me wrong. That, my good woman, is unforgivable!

Oh and George Askew walked out too.

So what? He was posh, he was dull and he had a seri­ous whiff of inbreed­ing about him. Put your hand up if it would sur­prise you to one day dis­cover his par­ents were first cousins. Has any­one actu­ally noticed he’s gone?

Before I for­get, I want to give a big shout out to Super­Big­Broth­er­Fan! Thanks for all your com­ments, you cheeky lit­tle dick­ens! No, I don’t work for Ende­mol, but thanks for ask­ing! I wish I did, I would love to be on the pro­duc­tion team.

And they’d love me because I’d be quite con­tent work­ing per­ma­nent nights for them. I’d be ace as a senior pro­ducer on BB, partly because I love the for­mat so much and have always grasped it’s potential.

But before I’d con­sider a posi­tion with them, I would need to know a lot more about the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age. This hippy don’t come cheap, I’ve got expen­sive tastes and an even more expen­sive need for skunkweed!

Which reminds, I’m wait­ing for some puff now as the hip­py­s­tock is run­ning low! I’m sure the call will come soon!

And now, in hon­our of SBBF, who really should change their screen name to Super­Hip­py­Fan, a word on BB fans.

You may think with all my waf­fling on about BB that I’m an obses­sive super-fan myself, but in truth, I’m not. I don’t even come close.

I’ve never been to an evic­tion night, I’ve never had an evic­tion party; I’ve never dressed up as my favourite house­mate nor have I attempted to appear on BBBM. I’m merely a fan.

All you need to do is visit any of the online Big Brother forums to see what a proper obses­sive fan is like!

My favourite site is Dig­i­tal­Spy, which hosts one of the most lively and active BB UK forums on the net. I dis­cov­ered it dur­ing the first series and have been a reg­u­lar lurker ever since. This isn’t the first time I’ve name checked them, either!

If you want to know what’s going on “right now” in the house, check out that page. There are peo­ple glued to the live stream­ing online and on E4 24/7, post­ing their obser­va­tions. There’s also a wide range of opin­ions shared and you’re just as likely to find one that is in synch with your views as you are to dis­cover one that dri­ves you into a rage! I really enjoy dip­ping into them frequently.

And if any of you DS read­ers some­how make here to my blog, I bid you the warmest wel­come! You guys can drop by anytime!

Now that we’ve caught up with all the walk­ers, let’s take a look at tonight’s evic­tion with this week’s hippyevictionprediction!

Ok, it’s a bit of a no brainer. Bye bye Sleazer!

Right from his arro­gant, ill-judged entrance, Sezer Yurt­seven inspired instant dis­like. I may come off a bit full of myself here online in my vir­tual won­der­land, but in real life, I’m actu­ally quite unas­sum­ing and quiet. I find Sezer’s brand of con­fi­dence par­tic­u­larly abhorrent.

And the best part is I don’t think he actu­ally believes there’s not so much as a snowball’s chance in hell of him get­ting the boot tonight! The look of shock on his face is going to be so gynor­mus that it’s going to knock the smug­ness right out of him! Yo, yo, yo, he ain’t all that!

And imag­ine the reac­tions from Grace, Mikey and Imo­gen when their leader goes in week two! That my friends and hip­py­fans will be price­less and you won’t be able to pay for it with your MasterCard!

Sezer’s unpop­u­lar­ity is such that at the time of this writ­ing, a ten pound bet with a high street book­ing would win you around one pound. Those are odds that I like, but not from a bet­ting point of view! Sleazer is a gonner!

Please don’t leave this to chance, if you are read­ing this before tonight’s evic­tion. Cast your votes!

After watch­ing Thurs­day evening’s high­lights when I got home this morn­ing, I per­son­ally hit redial half-a-dozen times! That’s three British pounds! I must be seri­ous! And as always, I wouldn’t ask you do to some­thing that I wouldn’t do myself! I’m even going to vote some more tonight dur­ing the first show!!

I can’t say I’m huge fan of Sezer’s evic­tion oppo­nents, but I don’t dis­like either one of them. Richard New­man and Lea Walker actu­ally seem like decent enough peo­ple, and com­pared to Sleazer they are both pos­i­tively saintly!

Do we really care that Lea has mas­sive fake tits and has appeared in a hard­core porn film? Haven’t we all?

Lea seems car­ing and gen­uine; I believe she has been true to her­self since she walked through the front door. She’s going to be thrilled when she remains in the house tonight!

I’m still unde­cided as to whether Richard really con­forms to the stereo­type they’ve cast him in, I haven’t seen enough to say for cer­tain one way or the other. I think he’s hon­est and I think he means well. He’ll be stunned tonight when Davina doesn’t call out his name.

In some ways, tonight’s evic­tion reminds me of one from the last series, when Maxwell was voted out. Like Sezer, he was cocky and had no expec­ta­tion that he would go that night, but unlike Sezer, he could be more self-deprecating.

Put it this way, I could pic­ture hav­ing a drink with Maxwell and think­ing he was a bit of wanker, but not hat­ing him, whereas with Sezer, I doubt I could bear to be in his com­pany for more than 30 sec­onds before want­ing to rup­ture my own eardrums!

Oh and another hip­pypre­dic­tion for you, this one from the world of show: This series of BB is going to cat­a­pult Rus­sell Brand straight into the main­stream, right along with his ball bags!

In the last week or so, every national news­pa­per has printed a fea­ture or pro­file of Rus­sell Brand. So far, he is the true star of this BB sea­son. I guess it doesn’t hurt that he’s been knob­bing Kate Moss too!

Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years try­ing to break the main­stream myself. I need to shag Kate Moss. Does any­one out there have her number?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Brother. Oh yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know any­one who sounds like this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betcha just can’t wait for more!

I’m a hippy of my word.

Not only did I sort out my brand new, wire­less, stream­ing sys­tem to be an audio bridge between my iMac and home stereo, but I did it all today.

Who says hip­pies are lazy? This one fuck­ing kicks ass!

I pur­chased, set-up and con­fig­ured every­thing I required already and have been groov­ing to the tunes ever since. iTunes, of course!

First I went to my near­est Maplins and pur­chased the following:

1) One 4 WAY AUDIO SWITCH — £13
2) One RCA Stereo to RCA stereo cable — £5
3) One RCA Stereo to 3.5mm stereo cable — £4

Then I down­loaded and installed a very cool appli­ca­tion called SALLING CLICKER. It’s works very well with my Sony­Er­ic­s­son s700i mobile phone, turn­ing it into a fancy remote for the iMac via Blue­tooth. It cost around £16.

Then I went into cen­tral Lon­don to the Apple store on Regent Street and bought another Air­port Express, the prici­est bit of this set-up. It cost £89.

The whole thing cost £127, which I didn’t think was too bad.

I needed the audio switch because my stereo on has one Aux input and it was being used by my SKY+ through my DVD recorder. Now, I can eas­ily select between the two with the flip of a switch and I still have 2 spare inputs remain­ing, if I ever need them.

Typ­i­cal Apple, I had the new Air­port Express out of the box, hooked up, on my net­work and stream­ing music in less than five min­utes. The con­fig­u­ra­tion was a snap and it actu­ally took longer to reg­is­ter the prod­uct than it did to get it up and running.

The 2nd Air­port Express joined my exist­ing net­work in client mode, which means all it really can do is stream music, but trust me, that’s enough!

I could have con­nected it to an opti­cal in, but my shitty stereo doesn’t have one, so it’s an ana­logue sig­nal into the ampli­fier, but it still sounds great.

Even cooler, since the lat­est firmware upgrade, you can stream music to as many as three dif­fer­ent bases­ta­tions, plus you can use the iMac’s inter­nal speak­ers too.

I’m dig­ging it! I’ve got my entire musi­cal col­lec­tion ripped onto the hard drive of the iMac, so any song I own is only a cou­ple of clicks away.

Salling Clicker turns my mobile into a fully func­tional remote for iTunes, which means I can con­trol all of this from pretty much any­where in my house.

I know, this is turn­ing into tech-geek cor­ner again, sorry I’ll stop.

I’m on drugs. There, are you happy? Is that what you really want? The hippy is stoned. Trust me, I’m always stoned!

I had lunch with my younger brother was I was in cen­tral Lon­don. We went to an American-style diner off Oxford Street. I told them I was the northlon­don­hippy and demanded free food. It didn’t work.

I had a wicked burger and chips, but the high­light was an ultra-thick vanilla milk­shake, which was so good it hurt!

Cen­tral Lon­don was far less busy than I expected, espe­cially around Oxford Street. It was nowhere near as bad as it is on a week­day and I’m sure the cold weather helped.

The Apple Store was very busy, but then it always is. Luck­ily for me, it was busy with browsers and not shop­pers and the queue for the tills was mer­ci­fully short and I was in and out of the shop in about 5 minutes.

What can I say; I’m a card car­ry­ing, paid-up mem­ber of the cult of Cuper­tino. They make the coolest shit going!

I wish they invent even more cool stuff, just so I can buy it. I’m seri­ous,; noth­ing fills the empty void that is mod­ern life bet­ter than prod­ucts from Apple.

Last night was the end of Celebrity Big Brother and I must say I’m always sad to see any series of BB end. This series was espe­cially enter­tain­ing and I under­stand the view­ing fig­ures last night were very high.

The win­ner was actu­ally a non-celebrity; which is kind of ironic, in a post-modernist, wank-speak sort of way.

I’m a self-confessed fan of the for­mat, but I do have one change I would make to it. I wouldn’t let them back out again; I’d leave them in there until they all killed each other and feasted on each other’s flesh. At least once, anyway.

The next series of reg­u­lar old, normal-people-BB starts in a few months and I can’t wait. I heard they’re going mix it up a bit this year and put in half nor­mal peo­ple, half pris­on­ers from Pen­tonville prison, but only those doing time for seri­ously vio­lent crime. It’ll be an exper­i­ment to see if the nor­mal peo­ple help reha­bil­i­tate the pris­on­ers, or if the pris­on­ers just kill the nor­mals! I can’t wait!

I’ve spent the last three weeks watch­ing Celebrity Big Brother on Chan­nel 4.

It’s no sur­prise, since I’m a fan of the Big Brother for­mat, but this par­tic­u­lar celebrity ver­sion has been spe­cial. I’ve watched a well-known Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment com­mit polit­i­cal sui­cide; live on television.

How often do you get to say that? Count­ing this time, just the once!

George Gal­loway, the MP for Beth­nal Green and Bow shocked the nation when he entered the BB house three weeks ago. He’s known for being part of the anti-war move­ment, who met Sad­dam Hus­sein more than once and impressed many with his per­for­mance before the US Sen­ate last year. He gave those losers a right reaming!

After see­ing him on CBB, I think his per­for­mance at the sen­ate was just that; a per­for­mance. In the BB house, George Galloway’s true colours came through.

I don’t mind that he pre­tended to be a cat, or that he danced badly in a red leo­tard, that was just part of the game. Even the inces­sant rule break­ing could be for­given, because all he really did was speak about nominations.

No, where he lost me was when he lost it with Michael Bar­ry­more. Bar­ry­more, a British enter­tainer with a che­quered recent past, was an easy tar­get for Gal­loway and he hit at him ver­bally and hit hard.

The quote that did it for me is when Gal­loway said the fol­low­ing to recov­er­ing alco­holic Bar­ry­more; “poor me, poor me, pour me another drink.”

Classy, eh? Now Bar­ry­more has given grief to his share of peo­ple in the house as well, but this was a new low.

Pretty much every­one in the house is dam­aged in some way this time. With every series, the freak show gets all that more freak­ish. I can’t wait till the next proper series starts this May.

I heard they’re going to recruit actual men­tal patients and arm them all with rusty knives! It will be a rat­ings winner!

I’m still think­ing about that whale.

You know the one I mean; the whale that swam up the River Thames and died dur­ing the res­cue attempt. Yes, that whale.

The num­ber of peo­ple I’ve encoun­tered in the last few days who have expressed emo­tion over this sad tale amazes me. It seems this ran­dom event has touched a lot of peo­ple, but what does it really mean.

My younger brother (the inter­net whiz who designed this very site) said some­thing to me about it that got me think­ing; that the whale’s appear­ance in Lon­don and sub­se­quent death is a bad omen for my home city.

It’s an inter­est­ing thought and it got me won­der­ing what the sig­nif­i­cance of this event could be.

While I think my brother is in the right direc­tion, he hasn’t really nailed it down com­pletely, but he has inspired me to have a go at doing so.

I’ve decided that the whale is a metaphor for the state of the planet.

The whale lost its way, got sick and died.

You might argue that as a race, we’ve lost our way and now the planet’s sick too. You’d be right.

We’re going to hell in a hand­bas­ket; we’ve passed the point of “no return”. At least that’s what they had on the front page of the Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per a cou­ple of weeks ago. The Indy seems to rel­ish hav­ing a fright­en­ing head­line as often as possible.

The party’s over folks, even the whales are check­ing out early. That’s why I’m sit­ting here puff­ing on a juicy, skunky, spliff in the mid­dle of the afternoon!

Oh fuck it, I’m always puff­ing on a spliff! The state of the world has noth­ing to do with it! Does it really mat­ter that we’re fucked? None of us are going to live for­ever, although

I am look­ing into hav­ing my brain down­loaded into a com­puter when I die. If the can some­one forge me a dig­i­tal cock that can actu­ally be sucked, I’ll hand over my credit card details asap!

Besides cheat­ing death, I’ve been look­ing into solu­tions to my musi­cal library problems.

It’s funny how you don’t really know you even have a prob­lem until you dis­cover that there’re prod­ucts out there offer­ing you solu­tions for it!

I’ve got my entire musi­cal col­lec­tion on the hard drive of my iMac as well as on my iPod. Groovy so far, but at the moment I have no way to eas­ily play all this ripped music through my home stereo, a scant 5 metres across the room.

I could just plug the iPod into the stereo, or use a pow­ered dock to con­nect it, but that’s not ideal. On the iMac, iTunes is able to cross fade songs, so it is actu­ally bet­ter than the iPod in that regard.

There are two wire­less options I’m con­sid­er­ing for mak­ing this con­nec­tion between my desk­top com­puter and my stereo.

The first way would involve buy­ing another Air­port Express, adding it to my wire­less net­work, and then con­nect­ing it to my stereo. The Express will do a good job of stream­ing my music across the room using the famil­iar iTunes interface.

And the lat­est ver­sion of iTunes can now stream to three Air­port Express’s at the same time, plus out­putting to the inter­nal iMac speak­ers at the same time. Now that’s pretty cool too. Apple uses it’s own Losses codec over your wi-fi net­work, so the sound qual­ity will be as good as the encode of your library. Mine’s only 128 AAC, and some 128 MP.3’s, which is good enough for me anyway.

The only hitch to this plan is I don’t have a remote con­trol for my iMac and there are a few less than ele­gant solu­tions to this, so over­all this is not the best solu­tion. I’d have to get up and walk to the com­puter to change tracks or playlists and here in the future, I shouldn’t need to do that. Per­haps I could get a robot to do it for me.

In the interim, I’ve been attach­ing a set of high qual­ity wire­less head­phones to the iMac, my Sennheiser TR120, which are really good, but I want room fill­ing, foun­da­tion shak­ing sound! Also, I don’t want to always wear the head­phones, which though very good, are a lit­tle cum­ber­some. They’re not uncom­fort­able, but they’re not light, in-ear head­phones either!

I’m wear­ing them right now, as I spew my dri­vel. I’ve got iTunes set to shuf­fle, and as always it’s throw­ing up some nice sur­prises, like Steely Dan’s “Hey, Nine­teen” and “Jesus Walks” by Kanye West. Dig it, fuckers!

The sec­ond way I’m con­sid­er­ing is to use some­thing called a “Squeeze­box 3”. This is also a wire­less device, but it works a lit­tle differently.

The Squeeze­box 3 joins your wi-fi net­work and uses it’s own server soft­ware to stream music files from the iMac’s hard drive. It has it’s own remote con­trol and the device has a dis­play of it’s own that would show all the track infor­ma­tion. It also receives inter­net radio sta­tions, inde­pen­dently of the iMac. It’s actu­ally a very impres­sive and seem­ingly well-designed piece of kit.

The down­side to the Squeeze Box 3 is it won’t pick up on my iTunes playlists, though I expect you can cre­ate sep­a­rate ones on its server software.

The Air­port Express method is the sim­plest, except for the lack of a remote. It’s also cheaper than the Squeeze­box 3, by about half. I think I’m reach­ing my own con­clu­sion here!

The Air­port Express is the way to go!

The solu­tion to the lack of a remote is to pur­chase a share­ware pro­gram called “Sail­ing Clicker” which uses wi-fi or Blue­tooth enable devices you might already own, to act as a remote for your iMac. It only costs about 20 quid, so it’s not an expen­sive option either. Plus, it’s won awards.

See, this blog doesn’t just help you, it helps me too, with all of these impor­tant pur­chas­ing decisions!

And speak­ing of help­ing you, my new blog is attract­ing a lot of vis­i­tors already. I guess becom­ing a proper web­site is a good move. I’m get­ting all sorts of new hip­py­fans every day.

Lots of you are dig­ging the hippy! Keep book­mark­ing me and grab­bing those syn­di­ca­tion feeds! Once a hip­py­fan, always a hippyfan!

And very soon, you’ll be able to sign-up to the hippy’s brand new newslet­ter! It will be set up soon, as will my clearly stated pri­vacy pol­icy, so you’ll know that I won’t do any­thing with your email address except send you my occa­sional newsletter!

Dig it, fuckers!