Celebrity Big Brother 2012 – The Housemates (And All That Jas)

And no sooner have our civilian darlings departed in a blaze of (almost) glory than a new batch of superstars has arrived to take their urine-soaked places. It can only be Celebrity Big Brother come to prove that the barely-famous are at least twice as crazy and half as ethically minded as the not-at-all-famous. Let’s take a look at the oddballs.

MARTIN KEMP @ 3.9 is the London-born Jack-the-lad-of-all-trades cum housewives favourite who, I’m pretty sure, has secretly ginger hair (seriously, check the roots, it’s crazy). Having a guaranteed following, based on the popularities of Eastenders and Spandau Ballet respectively, Martin is bound to do well in the voting. He also has the potential to be a diplomat in the house and is unlikely to face a barrage of nominations from fellow housemates.

JULIAN CLARY @ 3.9 seems a worthy favourite, having just fisted Norman Lamont on Hampstead Heath. He’s exactly the kind of notorious homosexual that the public warms to: brimming with innuendo yet not so brazenly sexual or opinionated as to upset the mainstream. Once dangerously witty, he’s now more like the camp albeit fucking hilarious uncle that you only see at Christmas. I say good luck!

CHERYL FERGISON aka BIG ‘EV @ 6.8 is the lovable, bumbling class clown who’s not afraid to muck in or to have a proper laugh at her own wobbly bits. The secret mission on launch night had the uncanny dual effect of showing off both her humour and her vulnerability. Her admission of her fear of Julie only made her more endearing.

JULIE GOODYEAR @ 9 is the matriarchal soap relic known for donning swathes of leopard print faux fur and playing the iconic Bet Lynch in Coronation street. As a central cast member of Britain’s most long-running and beloved soap opera, Julie is bound to have a guaranteed following, not that she is likely to need it any time before the final. As the oldest and most worldly-wise housemate, Julie is unlikely to receive many nominations.

COLEEN NOLAN @ 14.5 is obviously hoping to emulate the success of last series’ win by fellow loose woman Denise Welch. However, as Carol ‘Opinions’ McGiffin put it on Bit On The Side, Denise and Coleen are ‘exact opposites’. Whilst Denise is unreserved, unabashed and probably incapable of picking out a pair of gloves without the help of a certified homosexual, Coleen is more balanced, guarded, maternal and prone towards slightly more conservative values. Having said that, she has certainly shown more of a caring side than others in the house and she is positively bound to find a strong base of voters in the Loose Women audience (honestly, that demographic will vote for anything. That show has won actual awards). 

PRINCE LORENZO @ 18 is the slightly royal ‘The Bachelor’ star and the voice of voiceless creatures everywhere, which basically makes him the future husband that all nine year old girls dream about. Contrary to his title, Lorenzo has so far come across as very earnest and willing to get stuck in, which is something of a pity because a genuinely stuck-up, eccentric prince would potentially make for much better viewing. In this case, His Royal Highness seems like a true gentleman but whether three weeks is enough time to drum up a threatening amount of support is debatable.

MIKE ‘THE SITUATION’ SORRENTINO @ 27 is the Jersey Shore star and notorious shirt lifter (HA! HA! HA!) who has already fallen for fallen angel Danica (within about three hours of meeting her). ‘Michael’ has so far been a lot more timid and gormless than his lothario reality counterpart as well as stating pretty openly that ‘The Situation’ is as much a written character as Kermit The Frog or Keith Lemon. It’s hard to imagine either a fan base crossover or a glut of new fans arising throughout the next three weeks.

ASHLEY MCKENZIE @ 34 is the pint-sized Olympian whose wonky Mohawk looks like a squirrel fresh out of a bar-brawl. Having such long odds as a member of Team GB takes some doing and I the only explanation is that Ashley has been really quite dull so far. Having said that, the rags-to-riches, reformed bad boy story is typically very popular with voters so I think we’ll have to see how much Ashley comes out of his shell in the coming weeks.

MC HARVEY @ 34 is the So Solid Crew member and love-rat who may or may not have slept with Cheryl Cole, depending on whose tweets you trust the most. I’m tempted to say that at such long odds, Harvey represents the best value in the win market right now. On the one hand he’s charming, impossibly beautiful and seemingly caring, funny etc. On the other hand, he’s hated by the two biggest women in reality judging, the bookies don’t like him and also I tipped Conor as the dark horse in my first impressions post during last series of Big Brother so you should always take my whimsical musings with a generous sprinkling of celery salt.

DANICA THRALL @ 55 is… well nobody is exactly sure who she is or what she does but the easiest interpretation is that she gets her baps out on webcam in return for small gifts and money. There seem to be a lot of people up in arms about this career choice. This ‘lot of people’ are actually mental. I’m baffled as to how this arrangement is any different from posing for Nuts. I’m never a fan of women objectifying themselves in patriarchal contexts but I also have no ethical objection towards those who work in the adult sector. The only pity is that Danica hasn’t added some trumpets and tassles to her act because then she could call it interactive cyber-burlesque and VICE mag would be spewing up the walls over it. Either way, she’s hardly going to win Big Brother is she?

SAMANTHA BRICK @ 80 is the vilified Sun journalist who rose to infamy after penning the article ‘There Are Downsides To Looking This Pretty: Why Women Hate Me For Being Beautiful.’ Samantha has already basically admitted to her fellow housemates that the article and ensuing furore were something of a publicity stunt in which she was encouraged to partake. In reality, she seems less like the self-involved character of her writings and more like your average yoga-mum. Nice enough, but too boring and too disliked to make waves on a show with such big characters.

AND NOW TO OUR NOMINEES:

RHIAN SUGDEN @ 120toWIN/3.1toGO is the Vernon Kay sex-texter responsible for ripping out the hearts of scorned women everywhere and pulverising them to make her night-time face masks. According to Rhian, she was only ever on friendly terms with Vernon and he has openly admitted that the blame lay entirely with him. Unfortunately, it takes more than that to convince a patriarchal society that a woman isn’t the whore of bloody Babylon and so it is destined that Vernon shall return to his former glory and Rhian shall exit the fame domain, remaining only as a faded adolescent stain upon the magazine pages of public life. She might not go this week but she won’t go very far. Also, BORING.

JASMINE LENNARD @ 130toWIN/1.4toGO is a tricky one. In Big Brother terms there are two distinct archetypes of ‘evil women’ and I think the most recent civilian series demonstrates this best…

BB13’s two witches came in the forms of Lydia and Caroline. Lydia represented the deluded, erratic and slightly unhinged witch whereas Caroline was the spiteful, manipulative, two-faced and generally calculating witch. Lydia ranted and raved, looking for evil in half her housemates and trying to push the other half into bitching with her. She whined, cried and backstabbed with genuinely no perception of the fact that she herself was capable of doing anything wrong. She was, in a word, oblivious. Caroline on the other hand, knew exactly what she was doing at every twist and turn. She knew what bitching was, she knew how it could make people feel and she knew where she fit in to the whole equation. Whereas Lydia saw herself as the eternal victim and constantly lashed out, Caroline knew she was one of many players and endeavoured to be the best one. Caroline knew how to time a comment and how to weedle out of it with the help of a few crocodile tears. Lydia didn’t have a clue how she looked from the outside.

I’m going to say that Jasmine is either an incredible actress or she’s the Lydia type (intensified times a million). Jasmine doesn’t bitch and lash out because she finds the humiliation of others to be TOtally hilARious. She’s not a bully per se, she’s just off her fucking rocker and needs a LOT of professional help. She’s obviously bipolar, borderline paranoid schizophrenic and bubbling to the very brim with daddy issues. Her erratic behaviour so far in the house is not demonstrative of someone capable of handling the psychological obstacles that Big Brother entails.

So who goes? We decide.

I think Betfair probably has it right. Rhian might not inspire a outpouring of sympathy but people won’t mind voting for her in order to evict the seemingly more despicable Jasmine. There’s certainly something to be said for a subsection of mental BB fancore that might want to keep Jasmine in for the sake of controversy – as was the case with her brief stint on Make Me A Supermodel in which she apparently polled more votes than the other contestants combined – but in this instance I don’t think the shit-stirrers will get their way. For Jasmine’s sake, I hope she goes home. I hope she spends some time with her mum. I hope she drinks a cup of tea and eats a nice fatty quiche and a Toffee Crisp and has a proper good fucking cry and starts to think seriously about a route back to the real world.