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Big Brother Blog by Grace Dent - Only on Radio Times

Grace Dent

Day 56

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THE PERSON I FEEL SORRY FOR IS DAWN, BECAUSE SHE'S THE ONE WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE IS THE BB7 CHEAT.

Big Brother's biggest mouth

Posted on THUR 13 JULY, 12:15PM

Another day, another morning chorus of twaddle by Jayne. "I cried! Cried on national telly last night!" Jayne bellows, as the rest of the housemates pull duvets over their faces, dreaming of cheerier dawns when BB woke them with road-drill sound effects. "I felt it from the heart, like, proper," says Jayne, referring to her acute guilt over this Friday's eviction.

"Don't worry, they're probably all just really angry at you," Richard chortles, referring to the general public, "They'll just stone you when you come out." A lot of Richard's "jokes" are simply cruel truths said right to your face, dressed up with a half-hearted chortle at the end to signify he's really just kidding. He's not at all, though. "Dickisms", I like to call these outbursts.

Another great Dickism surfaces later in the day when Jayne belches until she vomits in a bucket and Richard says drily: "Tell me, Jayne, how come you don't have a boyfriend in the outside world?" Probably my favourite Dickism was when Richard sat on the edge of Nikki's filthy crumb-strewn bed, surveying the piles of soiled thongs, stuck on her Playgirl bunny ears and remarked deadpan: "Maybe you should have bought piggy ears instead?"

"I want you to all go in there!" commands Jayne, putting me in mind of Jabba the Hut rousing the underworld gangs of the Outer Rim territories. "Go in there and say you'll go on strike or sumfink. Tell 'em it's me who should be punished." Everyone just ignores her. "They don't negotiate, Jayne," Richard says eventually. "You gotta go in there, cos I feel terrible," Jayne carries on badgering.

Later, during breakfast with Nikki and Susie, Jayne drones on again about her guilt, to the persistent reassurance that no-one really cares, and that they think it's sort of exciting that they're all up for eviction - it saved them the guilt of nominating each other, etc.

"Well, I still think people are being nasty!" says Jayne, "Like Ash and Jennie. They're talking about me!" "No, they're not," says Susie firmly, quashing Jayne's bitching session. "Oh, well, maybe it's just me then," concedes Jayne. But the matter is far from dropped.

Spiral goes hell for leather, whacking the grill to bits like Animal from The Muppets, with an expression of wild-eyed glee

Elsewhere, Spiral has taken over from Pete on DIY percussion, grabbing a whisk and a hairbrush and attacking the outside grill, creating a free-form, migraine-inducing racket that can't even be loosely termed as music. While Pete tends to create a more Goan party vibe, with gentle beats and subtle recurring sounds, Spiral just goes hell for leather, whacking the grill to bits like Animal from The Muppets, with an expression of wild-eyed glee. "Wow, he's really good," the housemates mutter. No, he bloody isn't, you sensory-deprived fools!

Lord, if there is one thing that would have me slung out of the BB7 house for aggressive behaviour, it would be my attitude to these impromptu drumming sessions. I hate them. "Oh, wow, look! Pete's got two upturned ice-cream boxes and he's made some bongos! Let's all settle in for the night and listen!" "No, let's not encourage him!" I'd be screaming while trying to top up my own drink with bleach.

Saying that, I am particularly bongo-phobic. I once had to be physically restrained at The Hacienda from mounting the stage and hammering Shovel from M People to death with a kitten heel. "One night in heaven" this certainly was not.

A lot has been written recently about Love Island starting on ITV and how Channel 4/Endemol will really need to raise their game to keep Big Brother viewers hooked. But if Endemol really are terrified by the prospect of Chris Brosnan (who?) and a girl whose stepdad used to be Gazza trying to help Alicia Duvall recite the alphabet, then I think they'd pull out bigger guns than the Big Brother 7 burping competition.

All the housemates are gathered round and given fizzy drinks and the competition is to burp as many times as they can. It's a sort of bawdy drinking game, like the Welsh rugby team used to play, before they had to start getting to bed early to shave their legs and apply fake tan.

The task here is to burp more than 200 times, which isn't any great feat for Jayne, who probably burps 200 times while waiting in the five-items-or-less queue at the supermarket. Amazingly, the house passes the task and is rewarded with many bottles of fight-juice, sorry, alcohol.

Nikki enters the diary room to perform a pre-prepared monologue about housework and "clones". Wave hands, flick hair, get very angry, grit teeth, repeat things again and again. "Michael is a slob!" she says. Michael is in the bath, naked, doing a shoulder stand with his head under water, one hand clutching his dangly bits, humming loudly, not improving his reputation as a total freak at all.

"I don't do any housework myself," says Nikki, "but it makes me very, very…angry!" Nikki grits her teeth and sweeps one arm to the side to denote being "very angry". To quote Ash: "Boring."

Ash and Pete are in bed together chatting about nothing much. Nikki is trying to sleep, but really she is listening, silently fuming that she's not with Pete. Eventually, she grabs her hot water bottle and storms out to meet Jayne. "They're talking about me! That slut is in bed with Pete! They're slagging me off!" says Nikki, beginning to cry. Jayne pacifies Nikki, saying what a "big heart" she has.

Nikki and Jayne move into the garden. Nikki says she wants to leave. Jayne gets angrier about Ash. "That conniving little slag! I'm waiting for it to kick off. I've been watching to see her weak spots. Sometimes she sits back and looks vulnerable…I'm waiting." "You're so wicked!" says Nikki. "But I can't do anything yet…cos, like, she hasn't done anything to me," adds Jayne, "But she's a bully."

Oh, yes, Jayne, she's the bully, you clearly have a thorough understanding of that term. When you're slung out you should get in touch with the Beat Bullying campaign and see if you can tour some schools with Jodie Marsh.

It's 3am in the morning. Jayne blabs to Nikki about how Ash is seen by the public in a bad light and how Nikki is very popular. Nikki is "queen of the manor", therefore she has to stay. "I know I'll get sacked for it," she says, "but she [Ash] is going." Jayne says lots of other things that make Nikki smile about how "they" (the public) see her. At 3:15am, Jayne takes off her mic quickly and puts it under the duvet and says something else. On the live feed the sound is cut. None of this makes it into the highlights show.

The person I feel sorry for is Dawn, because somehow she's the one we're supposed to believe is the BB7 cheat.

What should we do with Jayne? Mail me on grace.dent@bbc.co.uk.

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