Leo’s departure and Carole’s eviction had a profound effect on the house with a rather nasty atmosphere descending and the entertaining bits rapidly drying up.

Leo had been a time bomb waiting to go off for sometime and it wasn’t a massive surprise that he chose to dramatically bust out of the house rather than face rejection from his public. Was he scared that he may find out that not everyone loves Leo? We may never know but in a way I’m glad he didn’t have to face a baying mob of panto booers on Friday night because I think his self esteem had already taken a bit of a bashing.

All his frustrations boiled over big style in what should have been one of the most dramatic pieces of Big Brother action ever. Herein lies a problem though. We’ve sort of seen all this before. Nick’s disqualification was front page news because it was new and exciting. When Sandy peed in the bin before heading over the wall, it was a bit of a first. By the time Donny climbed out at the start of this series, it really was a bit of a case of 'so what, how unoriginal'.

Leo exit was prompted because he is apparently incapable of washing his own pants. Dirk’s offer of a pair of his only seemed to accelerate his departure. Now old curly top’s out we only feel sorry for whichever poor soul has the job of scrubbing off his skidders.

Had Leo not taken it upon himself to escape, Carole would still be there and I don’t believe we’d have been witnessing the tense events between Shilpa and some of the others that have subsequently transpired.

I wonder whether the tide would have turned against Carole had she stayed any longer. Certainly she would have the edge of over the Mean Girls in any confrontation simply because from the evidence of what we’ve seen, she’s more articulate and intelligent than the other women by some distance.

I’m in no massive rush to take sides on the rather strange bust up that has gone on. I genuinely believe that much of it is to do with an inevitable clash of wills between Jade and Shilpa. I honestly don’t believe that either of them wanted the animosity that has been simmering between them but too often conciliatory moves by either party have been taken the wrong way and I do wonder whether they have the wit or the wisdom between them to put their differences behind them.

Coming out in a really bad light in all this has been Danielle. Perhaps while Carole as in there being all motherly she felt compelled to be on her best behaviour but she been no much short of a vile bitch since the moment of the eviction. She has simply come across as plain nasty at times. It’s one thing to make a genuine point about someone but absolutely another to use it as a stick to beat them with. Sadly despite her anti-bullying comments Jo has at times encouraged this sort of behaviour and some conversations have bordered on being racist in my view.

Sadly it’s not the first time that the spectre of racism has haunted this series. Were this to be the regular version of show with housemates competing to win a competition, the broadcast of this sort of behaviour could just about be justified by saying that it was exposing those taking part’s attitudes. Here in the Celebrity version we have “professional” people who are being paid handsomely to perform in a piece of entertainment. That’s a major difference and hence far more difficult to justify just what has been broadcast. It also begs the question as to how much has gone on that we haven't been allowed to see.

In terms of the split, Cleo has attempted to pour oil on troubled waters but lacks the authority that Carole had managed to muster and the rest of the show looks as if it will be marred by this seemingly unfixable rift.

The fact that the situation with the women had imploded is bad enough but all the blokes are such saps that there is little chance of much excitement coming from that quarter either.

Dirk seems to suffer from bouts of introspection and the departure of Leo had left him with no one to pick holes in while Jermaine is just being too nice now to the point of being scary and H is obviously affected by the house divide. I wish he’d put a shirt on the diary room. You could cut glass with those nipples.

That just leaves Jack and having wished that he’d come out of his shell I’m starting to wish that he’d go back into it again. Loads of people have told me that they think he and Jade are well suited and they didn’t mean it as a complement. I’d actually disagree that they are. I’m not sure that an uneducated dullard is really what she needs at this point in her life unless she wants someone she can feel intellectually superior to. It seems they don't know their Eskimos from their embryos.

Sadly Friday’s events have left us with a house that is uninteresting and actually awkward to watch as demonstrated by the fact that Monday’s highlights show was completely dominated by the tale of Shilpa’s chicken. As someone who has suffered from salmonella poisoning, there’s no way I could completely sympathise with Shilpa on this occasion but that said she's not really coming across to me as the control freak that some of them think she is and the way it was dealt with showed a lack of social skills from virtually everyone including those who just stood back and watched the drama unfold.

The mere fact that a whole hour of primetime television could be devoted to something that should have been resolved in seconds just shows how far this series has come off the rails. It’s not so much food poisoning as mind poisoning that concerns me at present.

Things have taken an unpleasant turn and unless things change rapidly for the better more of us will simply choose not to watch.