The self-proclaimed "most best-known Greek in the UK" is back on the streets.



No, it's Gerasimos Vallerio Stergiopoulos. Gerry and Carole were conclusive proof tonight, by getting the most votes this week, that it's the last 48 hours which dictate who gets evicted from Big Brother. It doesn't matter how good you've been for the last eleven weeks (and Gerry has been my favourite since he entered the house), but if the editing of the Thursday highlights programme makes you look like an arse, you're out. In that respect, Carole and Gerry only have themselves to blame, as last night's programme was all about food, the shopping list, Carole crying and Gerry being argumentative.

It's a damn shame he's out, on only 24% of the vote. (Carole had 49%, and has caused the housemates to have a basic food budget next week, and yet she stays. It's so unfair.) I haven't felt this gutted about a BB eviction for four years, since this night, four years ago, when the lovely Scott left BB4.

Look out gay London - Gerry's back on the market! (Just in time for Soho Pride on Sunday!)



UPDATE: My favourite single camera shot of this whole series so far was the shot of Gerry dancing and looking up at the camera, with his hair greyed for the soap opera task. He looked so happy. It was a brilliant shot. But tonight, they didn't even show it in his best bits! Shocking.

Labels: Big Brother 8

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It's nice to see the Big Brother housemates (unknowingly) getting into the Indian theme of today's anniversary by dressing as swamis. (I did warn you that the India coverage here today might be tenuous, and so it is, but here's a picture from the BBC.)

Which brings us to the Big Question of today: has Gerry blown it? Will he be out on Friday? I think he's undone all of his good works of the last eleven weeks by turning into a moody moaner and admitting to the housemates, because of the lie detector, that he has lied about his age. (We knew from the start that he was 31 but only admitting to 29.) But will it be Jonty and Kara-Louise who get the most eviction votes and then face the gurus to decide who goes? Somehow, I think not. The public won't actively vote to evict the less interesting latecomers. I think they'll go for Gerry.

78 days gone and only 16 days left for them to find the washing machine. The manufacturers who donated it must be furious at the lack of exposure.

Labels: Big Brother 8, India

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Methinks Wendy Richard is going senile. She's just told Dermot and us BBLB viewers that her Number One single (with Mike Sarne) was at the top for six weeks. In the real world - of 1962 - it was two weeks. Still better than Northern Line, admittedly, but quite an outrageous exaggeration of the truth.

Labels: BBLB, Big Brother 8, Number One, Wendy Richard

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The whining limpet has finally stopped demanding all of Big Brother's attention and has left the BB house. About time too. I know ZiggyZak has shamelessly turned hot and cold on Chanelle whenever it suited him, but blimey, had she become difficult to deal with. It's a real irony that Chanelle has left now, just when the eviction of Charley should have made her life so much easier, but she only has herself to blame. She was second or third favourite with the public for most of the run, but Chanelle was stupid enough to believe Charley's lies and convinced herself that she would be booed. It was in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, with her whining and attention-seeking in the last few days. I really liked her at first, but she blew it, the silly thing and now I'm glad she's gone - and ZiggyZak will be too.

I think we've now reached a record number of people - four - who have left the BB house without being evicted. Emily, Lesley, Jonathan and Chanelle have all left for other reasons, almost keeping pace with the number of evictions, which reached only six on Friday. Twenty-three people (and one dog*) have entered the show so far this year.

Last night, the halfway housemates, who have been able to watch the show earlier in the run, all attended a party in the main house. So, did any of them point out the hidden washing machine?

*That's Molly, not a really obvious comment on Charley.

Labels: Big Brother 8, Chanelle

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Separated at birth? New housemate Jonty Stern and journalist/TV presenter Mark Lawson. Spooky.

PS. Thank goodness Charley's gone, with 85.6% - well done the public. Now the housemates can relax and enjoy themselves and we can enjoy it too.

Labels: Big Brother 8, Jonty Stern, Mark Lawson

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Carole reveals that she's one of the few housemates who understands the point of Big Brother. Thank goodness she does.


This is almost as good as when a journalist reportedly asked The Corrs how they had met.

Labels: Big Brother 8, quotes, Richard and Judy, TV

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...for Big Brother viewers and housemates alike. The horrendous Charley is up for eviction, for the first time. About bloomin' time too!

Spare us all from more of her bile and get her to a psychotherapist by calling:

09011 21 22 04.

She should be out on Friday (for real this time), even though Tracey has become nastier recently, so Charley won't get to see the six (six!) new people who'll be entering the house. (Not all of them will stay.) The big question is, will any of them find the washing machine? Fifty-six days in, and the housemates are still wasting their time washing by hand...

Labels: Big Brother 8, eviction

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Tomorrow is Big Brother's birthday (and the halfway point of this series), so the nominations were made a day early (ie. yesterday). Because they're a bunch of idiots, the BB housemates have decided to put my future husband up for eviction. How could they?

Evict Nicky instead. She's a misery.

(Charley's plan - to tell a shedload of lies - is working brilliantly, as she avoids the public vote again. She's obnoxious, but she's not as stupid as she looks.)

Labels: Big Brother 8

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Who goes – and comes straight back again? You decide!

Name: Charley

Occupation: Unemployed – and unemployable

Career aspirations: Hooker for footballers, Vicky Pollard impersonator.

Hobbies: Causing fights in empty rooms, self delusion, pretending to be Nicky from BB7 in the diary room.

Likes: Herself, mirrors, arguments, money, having the last word, not being bovvered.

Dislikes: Other people, listening, team activities, being challenged.

Talents: Amazing foresight – but only in retrospect. She knew I was going to say that.

Truisms: “I’m not being funny, but…”
No, you’re fucking not. We’re laughing at you, not with you, you heinous bitch.

Why she should go out and come back in again:
She shouldn’t – we know what she thinks and so do the other housemates. There are no secrets that she can tell Davina.

What she’ll say if she’s evicted: “I said it would be fucking me. I knew it.”

What she’ll say if she comes back again: “I told you this was going to happen. Fucking bring it on.”


Name: Nicky

Occupation: Moaner.

Career aspirations: Professional lemon sucker.

Hobbies: Whinging, conspiracy theories, changing her mind, talking about nominations, being envious.

Likes: Moaning, men (but won’t admit it).

Dislikes: Everything about being in Big Brother.

Talents: Complaining, hiding the personality that she showed in the first few days.

Truisms: “I don’t think Liam likes me.” Perhaps if you smiled occasionally and stopped hanging around with your poisonous shadow?

Why she should go out and come back in again:
It’ll be far more entertaining for the housemates to see what she says in the diary room that she doesn’t say to their faces. She’ll also be shocked that six of the other ten nominated her. On the downside, she may well be so miserable afterwards that she’ll refuse to go back in. Who would blame her? I wonder if there’s a contingency plan?

What she’ll say if she’s evicted: “I was going to go anyway. I’m not enjoying myself.”

What she’ll say if she comes back again: “Can’t I go into the secret house next door? I don’t think I can do this. They all hate me and I hate them all as well.”


What Channel 4 will be saying next week:

“We deeply regret the death of one of the housemates. We had no idea that putting the mentally unstable, aggressive, psychotic flatmate Charley back into the house would lead to resentment from the other housemates and uncontainable violence. We are, however, very pleased with the ratings for the show where the housemates all took turns at stabbing her.”

Labels: Big Brother 8

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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

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After leaving the Big Brother house in the middle of the week when his grandma died, Jonathan's week goes from bad to worse in today's News Of The World. Leaving aside the usual NOTW hyperbole, there's obviously a real story in there. Why does anyone who goes into the Big Brother house think that these stories won't be raked up? The answer is surely that they don't. Anyone as intelligent as Jonathan knows exactly what will happen, which leads me to the conclusion that this is self-induced, as he implies. He hopes this is a first step towards therapy and recovery.

I'm missing Jonathan's wit in the BB house, especially the way he was able to insult the horrid Charley directly to her face, but she was too thick to realise. There were some excellent moments between them. He'll be missed, but it's obviously for the best that he left, for him and his family. I hope he manages to sort his life out soon.

Labels: Big Brother 8, Jonathan

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...but did you see ZiggyZak's face when he realised that he'd have to spend at least another week with Chanelle? Priceless. The tabloids will get to use the name they stole from me for the Chanelle/Ziggy coupling for another seven days, at least. 68% voted to evict Laura, with 32% for Chanelle. Laura spent 52.6% of her time in the house in bed. Did she really think she could go any further by not doing anything?

The twist at the end was pure genius. It's fake week, with a fake contestant, supposedly from BB Australia, entering on Sunday. She's really an English actress. I was completely fooled, as was the Aussie comedian on BBBM tonight. There will be a fake eviction next week, as the housemates get to watch the eviction interview and the poor evictee is immediately put back in. Brilliant.

Labels: Big Brother 8

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1) "I'm not gonna get booed." - Laura.

Well no, at least not until the moment you leave the house, you smug, lazy, bitchy stirrer.


2) Dermot: "Midlife crisis, or not?"
Jonathan: "It’s my third."

Dermot questions the sadly departed Jonathan on BBLB, on his motivation for joining the madness in the first place.


3) "I wouldn’t imagine anyone over 34 would want to watch Big Brother."
Davina McCall, Question Time, BBC One.

Davina, I feel alienated.


So, who's going tomorrow? The bookies reckon that Laura is a dead cert for eviction, at 1-33. I hope they're right. Despite Chanelle's pathetic whinging at times, and her blatant attempts to act out the role of last year's Nicki in the diary room, she's basically a decent person. The voting public has already made the wrong decision once this year, by voting out Seany, and there's been a habit of splitting up couples in the past via the eviction vote, so Chanelle may not be as safe as the bookies say.

I don't think I've ever changed my opinion of a BB contestant as much as I have over Laura. On opening night, based on first impressions, she was my winner. She seemed good fun, with the right attitude. But the mask has slipped. She fanned the flames of the racism row, prior to Emily being thrown out, because she couldn't resist dropping unsubtle hints to the others about it, and the way she lectures the housemates from under her duvet and looks miserable most of the time is now really boring me. She has no time to even listen to other people's opinions (just like the detestable Charley) and has a really nasty streak to her as well. She even had the cheek to announce, when it was revealed that she was up for eviction, that she would walk if she were up for eviction. (She was lying, of course.) It was as if she genuinely believes that the housemates shouldn't be able to contemplate nominating her. The arrogance! Let's get her out.

Glyn was a great ambassador for Wales last year. Laura is in danger of undoing all his good work.

What do you think?

Labels: Big Brother 8, quotes

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He's out:

This week's eviction choice was a strange one, wasn't it? I didn't really want any of the three nominees to go. I don't dislike any of the three, but none of them are amongst my favourites either. It was also difficult to predict, in that I couldn't decide if it would be mother Carol or Jonathan and his moobs who would go. Seany's eviction is even more shocking than Charley not facing the public vote.

Chig's theory: The housemates are so scared of Charley that they can't face living with the vile, self-obsessed gobshite for the three days between the announcement of the nomination results and her inevitable eviction. Come on housemates, show some spirit! Our phones are poised and ready!

Labels: Big Brother 8

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Loving them already!



On the evidence of the first three, Big Brother is doing very well with the casting of the men this year. It's just a shame the same can't be said about the women.

Labels: Big Brother 8

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Okay, it was a bit too easy. The one on the left speaks more slowly, makes more sense, is more classy and has fewer psychological 'issues'.

Coming soon, more Big Brother puzzles, including...

Which twin would you like to slap first; Sam or Mandy? Does it matter?

and

Who looks more like Victoria Beckham; Chanelle or Chig?

Labels: Big Brother 8

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Dateline: 1999.
Location: The offices of Global Talent Records.

Northern Line's manager: Okay lads, here's the plan. Three hit singles should do it. Andy, as you're in Birmingham, work on that Chig chappy. He'll probably buy them all, some in both versions, including the ones with the free postcards, which he'll probably scan in 2007...



Then one of you can go out with Kerry Katona...

Dan: Kerry who?

Manager: Trust me Dan. You'll get a successful modelling career out of it as well.

Zak: And what will I do boss?

Manager: Oh, you'll have a brief fling with Suzanne Shaw and in eight years' time, you'll be the only man in the Big Brother house.

Zak: Big what?

Manager: Trust me Zak. But you'd better change your name. Ziggy should do it.

Northern Line: It'll never work.

Labels: Big Brother 8, Northern Line, Ziggy

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