Remote Vision

CBB5 Day Twenty-Two

Deep in the heart of London SW1, halfway between Tate Britain and Scotland Yard, lies Horseferry Road, the home to our friends at Channel 4. It would be no surprise if we learned that CH4 executives had been out en masse flinging themselves under buses following the latest in a line of comedy of errors that has fated this latest (last?) series of CBB.

After all that has gone before, you would think that somebody or other in that Alice in Wonderland world of CH4 meejah would have owned the responsibility to make sure the last few days of this disaster would be trouble free.

But no, even the phone vote for this week’s evictions fell foul of the most basic of mistakes, and so CH4 are forced to refund money, but yet again have blown the goodwill and belief of their viewers away.

There really is so little interaction between the housemates that the one hour highlights show seems to last for a week, as the merest glimmer of interest is stretched beyond endurance.

Shilpa became so over exuberant that I thought she had discovered, stored in the biscuit tin, the world’s most precious jewels. She was almost hysterical. It transpired that it was a few flakes of snow that had raised her temperature to such heights that Cleo volunteered to go out and fill a cereal dish with soggy snow, for Shilpa to muse upon.

Gruesome Jo had, of course, to rain on the parade, and inform us all, in her gruff, rough manner, that ‘it ain’t snow’. She repeated this mantra in the style of a skanky kid taking pleasure in informing a bunch of five year olds that faeries don’t exist.

Jo has become the whiniest housemate in CBB history, and there is plenty of competition for that accolade. She whines about the food, her colleagues, and most of all, about the tasks. If I was in there, I think it would only be the daily tasks that would stop me from going stir crazy with the routine of it all.

Then the nominations, and inevitably, it was Jo who fell back on to the old, tried and trusted, ‘delighted to be nominated’ gambit. This is the traditional response from a needy inmate who wants to mask their insecurity, and does so by overcompensating in their response to nomination.

Cleo, in the most patronising tone, told Jack – I will repeat this so you know it isn’t a typo – told Jack that he has such wisdom about him. This is like popping over to see Saddam and remarking upon his humanitarian qualities. It’s like walking up to Tony Blair and telling him he is the greatest statesman we have ever known, and congratulating him on his foreign policies.
Jack, the great intellectual. The Bertrand Russell of Borehamwood. It just doesn’t fit.

H from Steps’ great quote of the day, to Jermaine: “Who was Billie Jean based on? Was it the tennis player?”
Yes indeed, it must surely have been inspired by the 38 Grand Slam title winning Billie Jean Moffitt King, who in fact partnered Michael Jackson in winning the mixed doubles at Wimbledon over a record breaking five years in the early 1980s.

Hence the famous lyric:

“She told me her name was Billie Jean, as she volleyed an overhead smash past Evonne Goolagong.”

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