I've now realised that the easiest way to predict the late entrants into this year's Big Brother is to examine my CD collection. After ZiggyZak from Northern Line, we now have actress Thaila Zucchi, who enters the house today as fake Aussie BB contestant Pauline, known as 'Poo' to her friends. Thaila is not only the Bunny Boiler from recent episodes of Balls Of Steel, but she was also in allSTARS*, the pop band who had four top 20 hits in 2001-2.

The allSTARS* group started off in the children's TV series STARStreet* and had a hit with the theme song first, Best Friends, before going on to tackle the works of Duran Duran and Buck's Fizz with later releases. At the time, they were seen, by me at least, as a British rival to Sweden's A*Teens. God help them. Both groups even had asterisks in their names, as if more proof were needed. (The initials of the first names of the five allSTARS* members spell out the word 'STARS', so perhaps they were more like ABBA, the band that the A*Teens themselves were always covering in their early days. Yeah, right.)

Here's the allSTARS* number 12 hit version of 'Is There Something I Should Know?', coupled with 'Things That Go Bump In The Night', freshly plucked (and dusted down) from my CD shelves, where it lives between All Saints and Marc Almond. That's the free banner/poster that came with it, showing Thaila in all her glory. Like ZiggyZak, she appears to have changed her name since her pop days, as the single's booklet has her name as 'Thalia'. Same letters, different order. In this case though, I think it's just a record company cock-up.



Inexplicably, the programme's official website, StarStreetOnline, has now fallen into disuse. We can still see one of the band on our TVs almost every day though, as Ashley Taylor Dawson was in Hollyoaks before Star Street as the smarmy Darren Osborne, then went back to it and is still there now.

Thaila has done quite a bit of acting work, as we can see from her showreel, which has a really good joke right at the end:



That snack ad, where she's mouthing through the glass, is very familiar too, but I would never have recognised her from it. I suspect heterosexual men might find her a bit more memorable than I do. Am I right? I don't recognise her from The IT Crowd either, even though I watched two or three episodes of it and thought it was quite good.

We know from Balls of Steel that Thaila is one fearless, gutsy woman who can think on her feet, and she'll need to be, as there is surely a chance of her being recognised by a housemate or two. In addition, housemate Brian was following BB Oz before going into the house and has already said that he doesn't recognise her from it. Let's hope that, as well as faking an accent for a week and feigning jetlag today, she has her backstory sorted out, to explain why she entered the Aussie house late. Here's a typical Bunny Boiler scene:



The BB8 housemates will apparently be told that PaulinePoo will be living in a guest room next door during her visit (which may arouse more suspicion with people like Gerry and ZiggyZak), but she'll actually be popping into Dermot's BBLB studio every day, to give us an insider's view of the house. It should be excellent, if they can hold it together.

It's also rumoured that only PaulinePoo will nominate for eviction, so surely the script will run like this:

She nominates Charley plus someone else. We vote for Charley to be the fake evictee. Charley is evicted and probably abuses people before she leaves. Drama all round as she mouths off about everyone to Davina while the housemates all watch on the plasma screen. Charley is then thrown back in. Fireworks. Oh god, it's a really crap idea, isn't it? It means Charley's with us for at least two more weeks. Bugger.

Fake Week will supposedly end with the housemates being asked if they think PaulinePoo is a fake or not. Do they still think Laura the Sloth has been sent to Australia as a swap?

In the meantime, Carole has been asking Big Brother for Vegemite and Aussie biscuits to make PaulinePoo feel at home. Do they have Vegemite in Swindon? Tee hee. This week should be fun. It needs to be, as this series is really flagging, with the constant Charley rows and the Chiggy non-love story being focussed on all the time. I can't wait for this change. Bring it on.

Labels: allSTARS*, Balls Of Steel, Big Brother 8, STARStreet, Thaila Zucchi

· link