Wednesday 3 July 2013

Big Brother UK: Part 1

Big Brother never made it to NZ. Due to a critical lack of personalities and camera gear, we instead opted for importing the Australian version and found ourselves in love with some of the dullest people that Australia could muster. Ben, the dullest, was crowned the winner and then dropped into a blackhole. That's just how it goes.

But not in Britain.

Unlike Australia, Britain produces characters. Proper eccentrics that, unlike the New Zealand public, the British take to their hearts -- to such an extent that the show is now in its 14th series. So, in an effort to avoid detection as an Antipodean dullard, I've been watching it too. My findings are as follows:

Wolfy

Wolfy claims to not have a TV or the internet, yet somehow has wanted to be on Big Brother since she was a child. How did this obsession begin? Perhaps she got her Shaman to conjure the show? Presumably she was walking in the woods one day when a squirrel suddenly stiffened and began to intone: "Eleven-thirty-four-pee-em. Peter's lost his tweezers." This seems far-fetched, but she does get information from flies, who not only know about the argumentative foibles of humans but also the meta-argumentative foibles of humans trapped in a reality television show. Such is the life of a human without a TV.

Wolfy winds me up the most (ish), but then I find myself suddenly rooting for her when she runs crying to the Diary Room after another interrogative onslaught from Detective Dan. She's clearly not an actor, Dan. The last actor was head housemate with special privileges -- Wolfy barely does more than smoke, spit and perform the occasional Pagan ritual.

Dan

Objectively speaking, Dan's a dick. Well, he's alright -- when he doesn't have a hunch. Except he always has a hunch, and he always sits around frowning about it. He seems to base his entire "Wolfy = Actor" case on the fact he had a hunch about Michael - which turned out to be true. But so did Sallie have a hunch about Michael, and Sallie was partially insane, which puts Detective Dan in some fairly dubious crime-solving company to say the least.

Jack and Joe

While they're an ostensibly cheerful pair, there's something about two fairly identical pink-faced twins with sing-song names speaking in East End accents that makes me weep for my life. They look like they'd tell childish, cutesy rhymes that suddenly explode into "and that's why he's a fucking bloody mess" as a giant, ham-sized ring-laden fist slams onto the table.

Jack and Joe resemble giant babies. They laugh like babies -- that kind of brainless, instinctive hollering that infants do at peekaboo or a funny noise. When it's a child, it's fairly cute. When it's two 18 year old men, it's creepy. What unnerves me most is the way it comes and goes so sharply, like an on-off switch, a happy round open face that suddenly snaps back to a heavy-browed nothingness, staring blankly while the pigs tuck into their old mate Mickey who had to die because he grassed up their dodgy gear to the old bill and put a right spanner in it.

Realistically, they're probably just the new Jedward, except without the singing or the hairdressing or whatever. Hopefully, Jack and Joe's bickering is harnessed correctly and they're sent round the world like Karl Pilkington, to places neither wants to be and to do things neither wants to do, with a full English forever just out of reach.

Callum

Callum is (for the time being) the fence-sitter of the bunch. Which is admirable -- why is it always the way with these people to "tell it like it is" and have enormous bust-ups? Us norms don't go through life instinctively barking at every ugly person we see. Therefore, Callum, for all his snooze-inducing dullard tendencies, represents the regular person in the house. The humanoid of the bunch, perhaps.

Jackie

All satisfied murmuring and indigestion, Jackie's at that age where she loves nothing more than to put her feet up (oh, bliss. Yes. Just, mm, bliss) -- but not before sprinting about doing her exercises, washing the dishes and cooking tea. A reminder of the fate that awaits all of us.

Daley

The most reasonable person in the house. So reasonable in fact that the only thing counting against him is that he decided to go in the house in the first place. Clearly doesn't want to be there, and is clearly bored stiff by his companions. May he remain trapped forever.