The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘tabloids’ Category

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!

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?

I spent most of Sat­ur­day glued to my television.

I’m nearly always glued to a tv some­where, I was super­glued to one as a child and haven’t been able to become unstuck since. It’s just another of my many addictions.

Silly as this may sound, I was watch­ing the efforts to save that North­ern Bot­tlenosed Whale in the Thames as was appar­ently, most of the world.

Ok, I’m a sucker for sen­ti­men­tal­ity, but in our empty, mean­ing­less lives, aren’t we all? Wasn’t every­one root­ing for the whale?

I spent hours watch­ing the live cov­er­age on SKY NEWS, who seemed to have all angles cov­ered as res­cuers attempted to save the stricken whale.

It popped up in cen­tral Lon­don on Fri­day, swim­ming past many Lon­don land­marks, attract­ing crowds and the media. They hinted that the whale might have been injured or sick, but kept our hopes high for that happy ending.

On Sat­ur­day, they actu­ally tried to do some­thing. They caught it, tested it and tried to trans­port it to the open sea. It died on a ship, on the way, around 7pm.

I had a feel­ing it wasn’t going to be good news from the jour­ney, so I put on movie instead. “Capote”, was the film and it was a dodgy pirate copy given to me by some­one. I don’t think it’s out yet here in the UK.

Good film, excel­lent per­for­mance by Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man in the cen­tral role. He should win some awards. It’s about the late author, Tru­man Capote and his four-years spent writ­ing “In Cold Blood”. “In Cold Blood” tells the story of the mur­ders of four fam­ily mem­bers in the Amer­i­can mid-west, at a time in soci­ety when events like this still held some shock value.

They don’t anymore.

It’s a clas­sic book and is required read­ing for any­one who is inter­ested in the decline of mod­ern soci­ety. Some might argue that Capote high­lighted a point, an event that marked the begin­ning of this down­ward spiral.

When I fin­ished the film and returned to satel­lite tele­vi­sion, the big red ban­ner on SKY NEWS said the whale had died. This upset me far more deeply than it should have.

Why?

Because I’m a hard, heart­less bas­tard most of the time; at least I try to be. Life is too full of pain and hurt and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment to be any­thing else.

So why did the whale’s sad tale effect me as it did?

It all comes back to our sad and empty lives, which we all strug­gle to fill with mean­ing. Thank­fully mod­ern life throws up all sorts of dis­trac­tions and diver­sions to pre­vent us from dwelling on these facts for too long.

I’ve got my con­sumer elec­tron­ics and tv chan­nels up the wazoo. I’ve got the inter­net, but so do you, or you wouldn’t be wast­ing your valu­able surf­ing time on my blog.

And by waste, of course I mean life-enhancing experience!

And let’s not for­get that dynamic duo of drugs and alco­hol. Actu­ally, it’s not a duo, as alco­hol is a drug too, any fool knows that. And you can trust me, as I’m any fool!

What made the cov­er­age of the whale’s death more bear­able was that another domes­tic story broke just min­utes after the whale’s demise was con­firmed. It was a good, old-fashioned polit­i­cal sex scandal!

And this one had all the ele­ments that make a British polit­i­cal sex scan­dal par­tic­u­larly enter­tain­ing; a high pro­file res­ig­na­tion from senior party post, a with­drawal from a lead­er­ship con­test, a wife, 2 chil­dren and gay sex for money! Who could ask for any­thing more?

Not the News of the World, a Sun­day tabloid news­pa­per, which sniffed out the story. Here, read it for your­selves, it’s a TABLOID CLASSIC!

The one sur­pris­ing thing in this story of the polit­i­cal party involved, nor­mally it’s the Tories, but I guess since David “let’s legalise drugs and be the hippy’s polit­i­cal hero” Cameron took over, all that’s behind them!

No, this time it was the Lib­eral Democ­rats, though I think they are push­ing the lib­eral part just a bit far this time!

Mark Oaten is the MP involved and he was in a senior role in the party, the Home Affairs spokesper­son. Or should I say Home Extra-Marital Affairs spokesman, because Homo Affairs spokesper­son would just be a cheap shot!

And one last obser­va­tion on this whole sor­did affair; isn’t the term “rent boy’ a bit pejorative?

In these wildly PC times we live in, should we really be refer­ring to 23-year old man as a “rent boy”? Isn’t it insulting?

Every news­pa­per and media out­let, tv, radio, you name it, has all called the young man a “rent boy” and that can’t be right?

Cer­tainly in these enlight­ened times, where 65% OF RESPONDENTS IN A RECENT SEX POLL, said that pros­ti­tu­tion should be legal, we should be using more socially accept­able language.

Might I sug­gest in future, we call them “male pros­ti­tutes” or “gay sex indus­try work­ers”. It’s only right.

Hey, you know what, I think my new blog is doing the trick. I’m back to my old self already!

So if you’re a first time vis­i­tor or an old-school hip­py­fan, thanks for stop­ping by! You’ve dis­cov­ered one of the coolest undis­cov­ered web­sites on the inter­net; it’s not that I’m not pop­u­lar, I pre­fer to see it as I’m still under­ground! It won’t be long before the main­stream media is suck­ing my hip­py­cock! They will be beg­ging me to come play in their tra­di­tional media world!

But back to you! Well done for find­ing me and join­ing my exclu­sive club. Book­mark me; or bet­ter yet, grab one of my many syn­di­ca­tion feeds! You know it’s the right thing to do!

Until next time, my beloved hip­py­fans and fuck­ers alike, I’ve got spliffs to smoke and piz­zas to order!