The Daily Record - Big Brother

Big Brother podcast: Ultimate Housemate Challenge

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:00:23 +0000

With just over a month to go until the previous occupants of the Big Brother house gather for the Ultimate Champion challenge, we catch up with former BB housemate Federico Martone to get his views on the end of the show, his regrets at taking part - and find out if he's going back in for one last stint...

And so it begins: Mario unhappy at nomination as three new faces face eviction

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:26:49 +0000

Interesting times in the Big Brother house this week, as Ife, Corin and Mario face the boot - and moley's not happy about it.

Caoimhe - whom as I said on the podcast last week now has a big target drawn on her back come nomination day - was originally up for the boot, but subbed in Mario after winning the Save and Replace paintball challenge.

Aside from his original undercover mission, it's the first time Mario has faced eviction - and Ife and Corin are also newbies at the survival game.

The latter two are still shocked and stunned at being up in the first place - except by us, obviously - with Ife moaning that their nomination was 'ridiculous' during the paintball duel last night.

But Mario's taken it a whole bit further, and accused Caoimhe of being tactical in her choice of Moleboy.

"Dave picked her one week so she could have easily picked him back," he whined to Ben. "So why would she then pick me when we had no issue?"

At least Mario can rest assured he won't be out on Friday. He's still the bookie's favourite to stay, with Ife expected to get the boot.

Nathan gets the boot, new trio get beamed in from Mars

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:55:49 +0000

So, here's the moment cocky monobrowed northerner got the boot - and the new arrivals landed in their cheapo 1970s Blake's 7 spaceship.

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Nathan's departure first then. Bev and I argued the toss on this on the podcast, and once again she called it spot on - she's having a good series this year, after last year's monumental tipping fail. I did wonder if Nathan's bust-up with Shabby and Caiomhe would put paid to his hopes of staying in the house long-term - the bully tag sticks very easily in Big Brother, as Jo O'Meara could testify...

And I'm delighted to see John James stay on. With Shabby gone he is the de factor personality on the show, a spiky, angry ball of grumpiness moulded to look like Brad from Neighbours. His facial reaction, after being so convinced he was out he'd literally got his coat, to staying was a gem. I predict him rowing with at least one of the newcomers before the weekend's out.

As for the new trio?

Isn't he one of the cast of Inbetweeners?

Young Andrew seems to be an odd, geekier, slightly more likeable version of Luke from a couple of years ago. I'm still not entirely convinced he's not a plant - missing the previous auditions because of his exams doesn't exactly fit with this 'now I'm rebelling' thing he's supposedly got on. But he's an awkward, gawky, nerdy teenager - and having been there, done that and got the special edition t-shirt, I can sympathise.

Isn't she that one from Being Human?

Rachel the Scouse Trolly Dolly seems... fun. Well, when I say fun, I mean marginally less irritating than being forced to watch Twilight while having Mr Sheen sprayed on your eyeballs. A failed Pop Idol contestant (last 50 doesn't count as fame, love - I know someone who made that stage of the Apprentice), I'd not be shocked if there's a bunch of reality show audition tapes featuring her out there.

Isn't she that Brummie one from the Apprentice?

Keeley seems a bit focused, doesn't she? She's only 30, yet says she's been in the travel industry for 16 years and won every award going. She seems to be a bit of a serial (WA)G for the footballing set of Mancunia - presumably because she's about the right height to dribble round like a cone. Says she's got charisma and charm - but the brief glimpses so far suggest about as self-centred as a gyroscope.

New housemates on their way - so let's guess who's the plant?

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:31:24 +0000

Psychic Iain strikes again as, after my prediction of no new housemates going on the show following Shabby's exit and the curtailed run this year... they go and put three more in the house.

Tonight we see Keeley, Rachel and Andrew delivered to the Big Brobot house via spaceship - see, it really has all gone a bit Doctor Who. Now, interestingly Keeley and Rachel were at BB Boot Camp and thus are already known to the housemates.

Andrew, however.... Andrew's a bit of a mystery. He's not from that group (which in itself is odd - surely there must have been more than two failed entrants who aren't on holiday and able to join the show) and very little is known about him.

So I'm with the brilliant lads over at Watch With Mothers. He's clearly a plant. Probably an aspidistra.

It's all gone a bit Locutus of Borg in the house...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:28:39 +0000

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Big Brother podcast: Shabby exits, Caoimhe proposes and the house goes insane

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:14:22 +0000

After a dramatic weekend of action in the house, Iain and Bev are back to consider the spectacular flame-out that was Shabby's departure, Sunshine's eviction and Caiomhe's potential nuptuals...

Will they stay or will they go?

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:04:10 +0000

UPDATE: Shabby's gone, as of 3.30pm, describing herself as the most unpopular housemate. You said it, love...

At the time of writing this, Caoimhe and Shabby are still in the Big Brother house. Whether or not they'll be there by the time I finish this blog is another matter.

Shabby's been humming and hawing about leaving the show pretty much since she got there. Despite surviving multiple eviction attempts, the highly strung actress has found herself at the centre of some drama at least once a week every week since the show started.

A weekend of rows in the house, culiminating in the frankly ridiculous Cringegate - which made Ife look like a moaning minnie and Shabby and Caoimhe look like the Matalan version of Heathers, was enough to make me want her out.

Both of them, in fact.

Caoimhe's annoyance and decision to walk out are fine - go on love, don't let the door hit your arse on the way out. But Shabby's 'if you go I go' lovestruck puppy schtick is getting exceptionally tedious. It's attention seeking of the highest order - especially after the brief ego-massage of an eviction survival.

So while the pair sit around in the garden comparing hats and bitching with Ben, the rest of the viewing public screams at their collective TVs. Do us a favour. Evict yourselves.

Sunshine evicted

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 08:33:43 +0000

Nooooooooooooooooo! Damn you, you fools. Damn you to hell!

Shabby and Caoimhe: In fair Borehamwood where we lay our scene,

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:50:43 +0000

Well. Never saw that coming.

To be fair, when Bev and I were doing the podcast yesterday, it was always with the proviso that things would change once the Save and Swap task thingy was completed. And with his recent rows with, well, everyone, I felt sure Ben was done.

But instead, unrequited love's young dream - Shabby and Caoimhe - must go head to head in a battle for survival this Friday night.

Fantastic.

The slightly obsessive, slightly stalkerish behaviour of Shabby extended last night to considering walking out of the house with Caoimhe, regardless of who got the boot, and an admission that her 'on-hiatus' relationship in the real world may well be dead thanks to her pining for the Dubliner inside the house.

"I don't have a crush, I really like you, which is more."

It's interesting to see Caiomhe's body language when she's around Shabby. The two get on like good friends until the subject of relationships or Shabby's feelings comes up, at which point the Irish brainbox nervously tends to giggle, change the subject and become slightly defensive.

It's like watching two teenagers, frankly. I said at the time this would lead to awkwardness and while most of the potential speed humps seem to have been ironed out, there's still obviously underlying issues between the two to be resolved - something the heightened atmosphere of an eviction won't help.

It also gives the producers something to focus on going into Friday - so Sunshine may as well put her feet up, light up a Havana and chill out... she's going nowhere*.

*The accuracy of this prediction can go down as well as up.

Big Brother Podcast: Week 3 in review

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:11:03 +0000

Three weeks and two housemates down, so it's time for Bev and Iain to cast their eyes over the last seven days in the house - a week of crying, smoking, shouting and fighting.

Up for consideration this week: Shabby's latest temper tantrum, Sunshine's altruism, John James's flirting, Govan's eviction - and just why would anyone go back into the house for the Ultimate Challenge?

Nominations: Shabby state of affairs as familiar faces up again

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:17:12 +0000

Shabby, Dave and Sunshine. Haven't we been here before? Of course we have - the first week of nominations.

That time, of course, the Primark Beyonce got the boot after Dave opted to save his skin and sacrifice hers with the Save and Replace challenge.

This time out, we'll see who survives.

I'm disappointed that Sunshine's up though. Not only is she a genuine eccentric - all pretensions about her name aside - but she's a remarkably delicate character to be in the show. In some ways she reminds me of Freddie last year, but without quite the levels of resilience and self awareness.

Certainly she seemed to have been carefully avoiding conflict and building friendships over the last week, so to see her up is a bit of a surprise.

Less so Shabby and Dave - two of the more 'out-there' characters in the run - but both have strong characters and have survived eviction votes before, so will go into this with perhaps a bit more confidence.

What will be interesting is to see who gets swapped on. The obvious choice is Ben - perhaps the most divisive figure in the show, although I've a sneaky suspicion John James is nearing the end of his time in the house too.

We'll be talking more about all this and what happens next in the Pod this week. Keep an ear out later today.

Housemates: Stop bleating after getting kicked out - of course you got spun

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:03:34 +0000

Big Brother's been running for 11 years and 20 series - and when a show's been kicking about for that length of time, there's no excuse if you go on for not knowing what to expect.

Which makes Govan's comments today that he's been spun and made out to be a bad guy hysterical. More so, given he's just 21, and a child of the BB generation.

"I think I have been spun a certain way. Not that I am being arrogant, but I think the majority of the housemates loved me," he whined to Digital Spy after his eviction.

"I'm not being silly and I can admit that I have done things that are offensive and naughty. But I tried to show people respect in that house and get on with people as best as I could. I think that's why a lot of people in the house were shocked to see me go.

"People inside see it for what it really is, while some viewers will only see edited highlights and the Big Brother perspective."

Well, duh.

Now that live streaming is done, of course viewers only get to see what the producers want them to. But it's always been thus on the highlights show. The producers have around 45 minutes of highlights to boil down out of 24 hours of footage - or about 3% of the day's actions. Throw in the multiple cameras, multiple activities and housemates, and that number reduces exponentially.

So what we see is just a mircoscopic snapshot of a day - a prism-filtered glimpse of the show, the same way the 90 seconds of SPL highlights on Sportscene don't tell the full story of a 90-minute game.

Yet every year this moaning and bleating comes from housemates - ooh, I've been misrepresented, I've been portrayed badly, I'm not a bad guy, everybody loves me... Get over yourselves. If you don't your personality and behaviour to be left in the hands of a bunch of jaded TV editors and researchers trying to create a story out of random chats and events spread out over a day... don't go on the bloody show.

As for Govan - with four nominations, and 72% of the public vote... don't delude yourself son. Nobody liked you.

Sun doesn't shine on Govan as he gets BB Boot

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 08:46:48 +0000

Bye Govan. We barely knew you.

Largely because you were such a bitchy wallflower. Perhaps the least appealing of the current crop of inmates, Joh-van (we'll give him his pronunciation once, because to the rest of us he's just Govan) ended up getting the boot with 72% of the vote.

Booed on his way out of the house, the shaven-headed voluntary worker insists he doesn't set out to cause trouble - despite the VT showing him a nicely stitched together (or should that be stitched-up) package of his bitchiness.

But turnabout is fair play. This is, after all, a housemate who lied about his sexuality as he thought it would make him more interesting on the show, and helped engineer arguments - deliberately or not - between those he didn't get on with.

I won't pretend I'm not surprised though, even if Govan was heavy favourite to go with the bookies, that Ben survived. His nominations bust-up this week, and his poshboy demeanour, continues to alienate everyone in the house, while he's such a difficult character to warm to I'm surprised the public went for Sunny Govan instead.

Still, there's always next week...

Super Mario lands nomination as Shabby escapes fatal four-way

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:27:07 +0000

So, Shabby lives to fight another day - much as we predicted in the latest podcast - after successfully completing this week's Save and Replace slide task.

And it means Mario joins an all-male nomination line-up, facing off against his pal Ben, sunny Govan and Dave the Monk for Friday night's vote.

It makes for an even more interesting dynamic than if Shabby had remained up for eviction. Removing her, and with no obvious 'fit' factor to influence the choice from the guys, it's going to have to go down to that old standby - charisma.

In which case, as Bev and I mentioned on the pod yesterday, Govan and Ben may well be on the endangered species list.

Mario - who is not only nice, but dangling a 'secret' in front of the housemates in either a desperate bid to stay in, a desperate bid to get out, or just a piece of 'look-at-me-ness' - looks safe, and his departure would remove both stability and wit from the house at an early stage. Likewise Dave, for all his borderline controversial views on gay marriage and his born-againness, isn't actually that offensive or dislikeable.

Ben's been at the centre of too many rows to not be in the firing line - most notably with Shabby, which would have made an eviction run-off between the two a useful gauge of public perception - while Govan... he's just there. In many ways that may be his saviour - after all, it's hard to dislike someone if you can't see them.

But at the same time, he's made virtually no impact beyond his name (which is only really amusing if you're from Glasgow) so perhaps the nomination will fire a rocket under him.

Rockets in Govan? Who'd have thought it...

Big Brother podcast: Week 2 in review

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:32:41 +0000

Iain and Bev cast their eyes over the last seven days in the Big Brother house - a week that saw Mario survive, Sunshine become a wallflower, Shabby and Ben fall out - and Shabby reveal her love for another housemate.

Plus - this week's nominees are revealed, and thoughts on Rachael's eviction...