Monday, January 05, 2009
Hats Off To Coolio
CBB6 Day Three...or hats on to Coolio as he has yet to be seen without his often quite bizarre headgear. As he prowls around with his "just going out to explore the Antarctic" heavy duty furry hat, he has a more than passing similarity to a tawny owl, awaiting its moment to swoop down on its unwitting prey.
But, thank heavens for Coolio, who (despite being told by Ulrika that his behaviour is reminiscent of her four year old child), has been saving these early days from the most rigid tedium. Indeed it has been easy to make a connection between the sponsor of CBB, and the dozy, sleepy, ambience of the show. Although we may all express a certain degree of gratitude if he saves us from his threat of washing intimate parts of his anatomy in the sink.
Tina's effervescent and monotonous use of the 'f' word has cast her as this season's Danielle Lloyd, without the intellect of the former swain of Teddy Sheringham. Tina, in an absolute avalanche of four letter words, expressed the view that sometimes the Press get 'things' wrong. Surely not! What an insight into the world of celebrity.
Tina's conversation with LaToya was excruciating. The chat started in the kitchen area, and briefly, Latoya must have felt that she had a kinship with Ms Malone, as they exchanged horror stories related to former partners.
Cut to the smoking area, and the conversation continued. LaToya's doll-like facial features dropped as Tina continually over-talked her, despite LaToya's keenness to establish a sort of rapport. It must be difficult for LaToya (or any of her brothers and sisters for that matter) as they appear to have been constantly 'betrayed' by chancers and parasites who have tried to establish a form of friendship, only to exploit any closeness that is found.
So when Tina said, "I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to a Jackson!", it killed the moment dead. LaToya must have heard this almost every day of her life, and how many conversations she must have strayed into, where the other party was just itching to ask questions about Michael, we can only guess.
There was a 'task'. Oh yes. A 'task'. You know, the one they usually trot out about celebrities gauging their popularity in a sort of in-house league table of fame.
The production team have had three years to consider a new introductory quest since Chantelle took her place in the line-up, and Preston began to query her celebrity status. It didn't work very well then, and it worked not all this time around.
Terry Christian (who has been throwing in some magnificent one-liners which have flown so over the heads of his colleagues that they went into orbit somewhere over Hertfordshire) was nominally in charge of the task, the purpose of which was to discover who had the most inflated ego. Tommy 'Socialist Sweatshirt' Sheridan immediately made himself a leading candidate when he decided to take over, with his foghorn voice insisting that they rank everyone alphabetically. There was no consultation and no 'voting' in this brave new world of Socialist Tommy.
The second part of this disastrous task involved Terry filming short bursts of nothingness to use in the closing credits of the episode. It had no purpose and no connection with the overall business of seeking the inflated ego for the nomination.
Terry diplomatically referred to the task as 'weird' before nominating Ulrika - that Brendan Behan snub was always going to come back and haunt her, as was the lack of acknowledgement of the Groucho Club reference on the first evening.
So finally for today to Ulrika then; she continues to exhibit an odd combination of insight and tetchiness. She very uncomfortably referred, several times, to 'panic' and told us she had just experienced one of the longest days of her life.
I think we also, inadvertently received an inkling of the contract arrangements. Desperately indicating that she would love to be nominated and get the hell out of there, I think it is rather clear that the vast sums to be paid for participation are payable for whatever the length of stay, unless the 'celebrity' walks out. So Ulrika is in this twilight zone of counting the thousands of pounds that are in some sort of holding escrow world, where she nearly has the fee in her grasp, yet she cannot leave without being pushed. No wonder she feels a sense of panic.
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# posted by Terence : 2:23 PM
