Reality TV
Warning: This article contains language and/or sexual references that younger readers are advised to avoid.
It?s almost 5.30am on overcast Friday morning and I can?t sleep. A slow-burning Marlboro Light smoulders on a nicotine-stained saucer on the windowsill. Outside, the early morning long-haul flights groan across the grey skies and the bottles in the passing milk float chink contentedly to themselves. Bird flu, carbon footprints, pension timebomb, global terrorism ? it?s all out there. So what?s keeping me awake this depressingly British morning?
KitKats wrappers.
Choc-tastic tactics, eh? So a certain lucky housemate is going to be picked for BB7 by finding a golden ticket Charlie & the Chocolate factory-stylee. The odds of finding one are about the same as finding Cameron Stout in a brothel so I decide I?m going to try and wangle the system. ?This is cheating chocolatey conundrum of got-its-own-weather-system proportions!? I muttered feverishly, pacing around in the tobacco smoke and wracking my brain for ideas on how to pick out a KitKat bar with a golden ticket. Eureka! I have it! I?m the friend of a friend of an NHS radiologist. Genius I tell you! Where?s my mobile phone?
?Nick, can I borrow your X-Ray machine??
?Well, it?s a sort of lab not a machine. Why?? Nick enquired.
?I need to X-Ray loads of KitKats to see if there are golden tickets under the rapper. So I can get on Big Brother.?
?Goodbye Emzi? (clunk)
?Hello? Nick?.........Nick??
Feck.
Bruv Is The Drug
My find-a-ticket X-Ray dreams crushed, I muse over the morning papers, take a swig of coffee and instantaneously spit it out all over the keyboard. As if trying to find golden tickets wasn?t enough, I?ve just realised that this is to be the longest series. Ever. Thirteen weeks? That?s A QUARTER OF A YEAR OF NON-STOP BIG BROTHER. I think I better lie down. And with that I slipped on the spat out coffee and found myself on the floor anyway.
On the cool floor, with my sore head in a cloud of caffeine and KitKats, I realised that with all my rationality gone and the multicoloured mind frenzy that comes with it, Big Brother fever had hit me for a seventh year. Endemol, our dealer, was about to deliver our next gigantic hit, a thirteen week hit, and the tourniquet is already tightened expectantly. Will we never be set free from our televisual voyeuristic drug of choice? Would we ever want to be? Never. There?s too much insanity to be enjoyed just by sticking a bunch of desperado lab rats into a technicolour hell for our entertainment.
So what is it about Big Brother keeps us glued to the screens year upon year? It?s a flimsy version of reality, badly-edited, agenda-ridden load of telly twaddle, it celebrates all that is shallowness in all of us. It allows me to be spiteful from the safety of my own living room. Endemol and Nestle swallow your cash and between them burp out the next set of no-marks cretinous Z-listers to ensure we?ll all have a new fitness DVD by Christmas.
Ass is crass, romance is pants etc.
I used to love Big Brother for all its interactivity, interesting participants and innovation but now? It?s just a bundle of raging negativity, fights, fake romance, uncelebrateable ?celebrities? and tit mag fodder played out on many media platforms and still I cannot tear myself away.
So with a new found loving hatred of the fickle, ideologically f*cked fame factory that is BB, and with any plans of a normal summer vanishing in the glint of a black and gold eye, I skipped back across the corset of Reality TV and nestled into the familiar bosom of Big Brother once more. I am, quite literally, hooked on this show. Impassioned rant over.
Your Big Brother Mission Of the Week #1
Yes, following in the footsteps of Manpoints, I give you Big Brother Points; a challenge where you have to carry out a Big Brother related task to prove that you are a complete BB fruitcake. This week, you have to drop the phrase ?I like to think I live my life like an international popstar? casually into a conversation. Double your Big Brother Points if you say it to a total stranger then walk off. Good luck!
No Prize For Merchandise
BB7 DVD and book, compulsory fitness video, yawwwwwnnnnnn. Don?t you just wish the merchandise for Big Brother was a bit more exciting? How about Pez sweetie dispensers? There?d be something quite satisfactory about ripping Jonny Regan?s neck open and munching the sugary contents. Or what about a Big Brother Allstars Panini Sticker album? Or a self-inflating Dermot made of strong plastic for necessary bouncing on? Truth is, I come up with cracking Big Brother merchandise every year. My sparkly Lady Jade t-shirts, F*ck Federico badges and Lion Power! Science car bumper stickers all went down a treat but this year I?m stuck. So people, set me a challenge of making some unusual or extravagant BB7 merchandise and I?ll try to make it by the end of the series ? promise.
A Word To The Kielty Guilty?
Remember Big Brother bunnies, our adventure lasts a quarter of a year this time so best have a trial run of your life after May 18th. Close the curtains, block your friends from you mobile, stock up on nutritious food like Arctic Roll and Pickled Onion Monster Munch. Responsible BB addicts are reminded that painting a big eye logo in red on your forehead is the internationally recognised symbol for intense Big Brother watching in progress. And remember, watching Celebrity Love Island 2 is a sin punishable by death by over exposure to Michelle Bass? modernist interpretation Pie Jesu. Ye must be clean of the Kielty to be devoted to the Dermot, dear diary room disciples.
That?s that. Now where?s me KitKat?
The planes still whiz around the grey skies above my dysentery beige room and it?s bare-bulbed gloom, I?ll never get my hands on a golden ticket and the everyday Slough drabness seeps though the pores but I don?t care ? BB7 is just around the corner and every day is a sunny day when Big Brother starts.
So forget the snuffly truffles of nothingness that was BB6, dig out your Jason Cowan dartboard, throw on a copy of the Big Brother theme tune on as loud as you dare and I?ll see you in the forum with a mouth full of KitKat. Last one in is a pair of Anthony Hutton?s 70s undercrackers. Love it or lovingly hate Big Brother 7, let?s hope it?s a classic. You can officially get excited now.
Emzi
KitKats wrappers.
Choc-tastic tactics, eh? So a certain lucky housemate is going to be picked for BB7 by finding a golden ticket Charlie & the Chocolate factory-stylee. The odds of finding one are about the same as finding Cameron Stout in a brothel so I decide I?m going to try and wangle the system. ?This is cheating chocolatey conundrum of got-its-own-weather-system proportions!? I muttered feverishly, pacing around in the tobacco smoke and wracking my brain for ideas on how to pick out a KitKat bar with a golden ticket. Eureka! I have it! I?m the friend of a friend of an NHS radiologist. Genius I tell you! Where?s my mobile phone?
?Nick, can I borrow your X-Ray machine??
?Well, it?s a sort of lab not a machine. Why?? Nick enquired.
?I need to X-Ray loads of KitKats to see if there are golden tickets under the rapper. So I can get on Big Brother.?
?Goodbye Emzi? (clunk)
?Hello? Nick?.........Nick??
Feck.
Bruv Is The Drug
My find-a-ticket X-Ray dreams crushed, I muse over the morning papers, take a swig of coffee and instantaneously spit it out all over the keyboard. As if trying to find golden tickets wasn?t enough, I?ve just realised that this is to be the longest series. Ever. Thirteen weeks? That?s A QUARTER OF A YEAR OF NON-STOP BIG BROTHER. I think I better lie down. And with that I slipped on the spat out coffee and found myself on the floor anyway.
On the cool floor, with my sore head in a cloud of caffeine and KitKats, I realised that with all my rationality gone and the multicoloured mind frenzy that comes with it, Big Brother fever had hit me for a seventh year. Endemol, our dealer, was about to deliver our next gigantic hit, a thirteen week hit, and the tourniquet is already tightened expectantly. Will we never be set free from our televisual voyeuristic drug of choice? Would we ever want to be? Never. There?s too much insanity to be enjoyed just by sticking a bunch of desperado lab rats into a technicolour hell for our entertainment.
So what is it about Big Brother keeps us glued to the screens year upon year? It?s a flimsy version of reality, badly-edited, agenda-ridden load of telly twaddle, it celebrates all that is shallowness in all of us. It allows me to be spiteful from the safety of my own living room. Endemol and Nestle swallow your cash and between them burp out the next set of no-marks cretinous Z-listers to ensure we?ll all have a new fitness DVD by Christmas.
Ass is crass, romance is pants etc.
I used to love Big Brother for all its interactivity, interesting participants and innovation but now? It?s just a bundle of raging negativity, fights, fake romance, uncelebrateable ?celebrities? and tit mag fodder played out on many media platforms and still I cannot tear myself away.
So with a new found loving hatred of the fickle, ideologically f*cked fame factory that is BB, and with any plans of a normal summer vanishing in the glint of a black and gold eye, I skipped back across the corset of Reality TV and nestled into the familiar bosom of Big Brother once more. I am, quite literally, hooked on this show. Impassioned rant over.
Your Big Brother Mission Of the Week #1
Yes, following in the footsteps of Manpoints, I give you Big Brother Points; a challenge where you have to carry out a Big Brother related task to prove that you are a complete BB fruitcake. This week, you have to drop the phrase ?I like to think I live my life like an international popstar? casually into a conversation. Double your Big Brother Points if you say it to a total stranger then walk off. Good luck!
No Prize For Merchandise
BB7 DVD and book, compulsory fitness video, yawwwwwnnnnnn. Don?t you just wish the merchandise for Big Brother was a bit more exciting? How about Pez sweetie dispensers? There?d be something quite satisfactory about ripping Jonny Regan?s neck open and munching the sugary contents. Or what about a Big Brother Allstars Panini Sticker album? Or a self-inflating Dermot made of strong plastic for necessary bouncing on? Truth is, I come up with cracking Big Brother merchandise every year. My sparkly Lady Jade t-shirts, F*ck Federico badges and Lion Power! Science car bumper stickers all went down a treat but this year I?m stuck. So people, set me a challenge of making some unusual or extravagant BB7 merchandise and I?ll try to make it by the end of the series ? promise.
A Word To The Kielty Guilty?
Remember Big Brother bunnies, our adventure lasts a quarter of a year this time so best have a trial run of your life after May 18th. Close the curtains, block your friends from you mobile, stock up on nutritious food like Arctic Roll and Pickled Onion Monster Munch. Responsible BB addicts are reminded that painting a big eye logo in red on your forehead is the internationally recognised symbol for intense Big Brother watching in progress. And remember, watching Celebrity Love Island 2 is a sin punishable by death by over exposure to Michelle Bass? modernist interpretation Pie Jesu. Ye must be clean of the Kielty to be devoted to the Dermot, dear diary room disciples.
That?s that. Now where?s me KitKat?
The planes still whiz around the grey skies above my dysentery beige room and it?s bare-bulbed gloom, I?ll never get my hands on a golden ticket and the everyday Slough drabness seeps though the pores but I don?t care ? BB7 is just around the corner and every day is a sunny day when Big Brother starts.
So forget the snuffly truffles of nothingness that was BB6, dig out your Jason Cowan dartboard, throw on a copy of the Big Brother theme tune on as loud as you dare and I?ll see you in the forum with a mouth full of KitKat. Last one in is a pair of Anthony Hutton?s 70s undercrackers. Love it or lovingly hate Big Brother 7, let?s hope it?s a classic. You can officially get excited now.
Emzi
More: Reality TV, Big Brother
