Celebrity Big Brother - January 2013

Continued from my earlier reports of other Big Brother shows since 2004 HERE

Marion's aide memoire is shown in full below, available publicly HERE (written in real-time when the celebrities were introduced on the first night), followed there by her still on-going reports and my own responses to them:

Frankie Detorri - world class jockey and the perpetrator of some scandal or other.

Rylan Clark – X factor contestant. Can’t sing but is good at falling to his knees and weeping. He’s basically unintelligible when he speaks which is probably as well because form what I could make out, he has a bitchy side. He also wears a Union Jack jacket which made Brian look good – no mean feat - and prances across the floor like a young daft colt which isn’t fitting when you’re six foot five.

Paula Hamilton – supermodel of yesteryear. She has modelled for everyone who is anyone and is a philosopher too who discusses things with a coconut called Boris, she says. Her image is so clear cut she could slash her wrists on it.

Tricia Penrose – soap queen and damned by the Press for her dress sense. Quite a claim to fame.

Ryan Malone – Neighbours star. He also was suspiciously warmly clad and, quelle surprise, was doomed to go down to the basement.

Gillian Tayleforth – Kathy Beale of Eastenders fame. Good face. Lovely figure – she’s wearing very well indeed.

Sam Robertson – formerly Adam in Corrie. Fine looking boy in his kilt. Technically single, he says, which I don’t quite understand.

Lacey Banghard (yes, really) – page 3 idol and star of nuts. She’s most comfortable dressed in just her underwear, she says, and trilled merrily about how her boobs just keep growing and she hates the way men stare at her. She has this fake breathless little girlie voice which emanates from this huge deep fake chest and which will drive me insane if she stays for long. And yet gorgeous Sam was adjudged the more fake and the most in love with himself between them. FIX!

Claire Richards – formerly of Steps fame. Rather self conscious about her struggles with her weight and declares boldly that she doesn’t give a toss any more. And why should she? She has a pretty face and a kindly eye. Outrageous that she should be half apologising for herself.

Razor Ruddick – former footballer run to seed. He insists he’s a big pussy cat. I don’t believe him. He also says he likes to go about in the buff. I’m trying not to believe him.

Spencer and Heidi Pratt – American Reality show Royalty, apparently. She’s all syrup; he’s got the eyes of a psychopath. She was a Miss Universe (or nearly Miss Universe?); he wasn’t. He’s jealous – doesn’t like other men near her. I guess that’s the drama they will stage.
I’m glad Frankie and Rylan consigned them to the basement which really is sufficiently uncomfortable to please me.

========================
MY ON-GOING COMMENTS DAY-BY-DAY (my website here for those interested: www.nemonymous.com)

Thanks for the aide memoire, Marion, and the acute as well as cute observations. I had only heard of two of these people before: Gillian Taylforth and Frankie Dettori. So what value the word 'celebrity'?
There may have been fixes and rumours, and I guess that Jim Davidson was originally intended to partner Frankie in 'the deliberation of the gods' ... And Fate is indeed a very strange thing made up as it is with fixes and rumours as well as the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction, to coin a phrase!
The split of the House is the most polarised that I can recall. I guess there will emerge a two-way filter of personnel before long and twists and turns...
BB remains the only taboo left that can be embraced by those trying to find truths in the fiction of borderline reality. Many so-called revolutionaries or mavericks as well as aspirationally creative writers become very angry at such TV entertainment and at those, like me, who take, as part of a panoply of experiment, an interest in what they call populist trash...

I'd only add my irritation at Heidi's continual front-of-dress hitching upon those Lovecraftian mounds to which Marion alluded. Spencer and Heidi, Spidie as they're known as a couple. Worth embalming in a Horror story!

I agree with the thrust of Marion's report above - and last night's summary programme was a blind-worm ouroboros crawling through the curdled plumbing of my chilly and dank brain.... Much game-cynicism, too, exemplified by the machinations of some people vis-a-vis the transference between the two polarised areas of the House. And game-confusion. As a sufferer of iritis, I am a believer in each eye being a discrete world of its own and some of my fiction is geared to that conceit. So, Rylan's hypothesis was an - errr - eye-opener. I think he may end up winning this particular CBB. As Marion suspects, perhaps we are missing a lot of action of other contestants through ch5's tendentious editing....

Rylan suggested that Charles and Camilla retire to the delights of Southend on Sea, and the crown going straight to Will and Kate. As long as they don't come to Clacton, I say! Unlike Marion, I found last night's show unsatisfactory. Many of these people are paid actors or creators of entertainment worlds as their living, but they, en masse, couldn't dissuade me from believing that they don't really care what happens in these few weeks of CBB that they are suffering for money, leaving me with a sense of that laissez-faire jungle culture lifted from the celebrity-get-me-out-of-here reality show that I dislike and find as unsatisfactory as the current, hopefully temporary, state of this CBB.

As a separate issue, here is an article by Victoria Coren about Jim Davidson's non-appearance in this CBB: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/jim-davidson-arrest-standup-comedy

Marion wrote: "There is something very about this couple."
I quite agree, Marion!
That may have been a Marion typo but it sums up this couple as mutual self-puppeteers of nothingness with tinges of Ligottianism and Aickmanism.
As I said before, Ligotti fiction = Humanity becoming various Metaphors – while Aickman fiction = Various Metaphors becoming Humanity. Here Spidie is neither and both. Phenomenon. Worth watching the series for this alone. Not that I objectively like the resultant creature! But I hope it stays - as one half of it predicts.
Another striking thing last night was Paula. I actually believe she was genuinely in slow meltdown last night. I feel sorry for her. A bit like Vanessa Feltz on the original CBB. A bit like Shakespearean tragic action in real-time before he actually wrote the play.

Sorry, should be SPEIDI not SPIDIE!
Cf the couple on the sofa in the video for the new David Bowie single today.

I think Speidi has been wrong-footed in its plots and ploys on more than one occasion. It should be kept in the House merely for its value as catalysticity. Is that a cold sore (a recurring theme for BB in the past) on the male half's lower lip? If so, that may acount for some of the 'marriage vow' preening so as to avoid osculation?
It was a touching scene between Rylan and Paula. Beauty and the Beast, but which the Beast? Again, for good or ill, two major players.
Yes, I'm pretty sure it was Paula being referenced vis-a-vis the party in the past.
Claire being beset with her own past success as a present torment - was a BB classic. Tantamount to David Bowie being played 'Where Are We Now?'24/7 when he's 80 and by then living just south of Croydon.

Paula's interview was rather stilted, almost as if at a police interview saying 'no comment' to every question, for fear of harming her 'career', perhaps. But Brian was equally stilted...
The earlier scene of Speidi with Paula was amazing: the Reality Royalty couple (should be Irreality Royalty, really) acted tantamount to Jehovah's Witnesses of the Reality for which it is Royal, syrupy, preachy, absorbing Paula in its web...
...talking of which, Speidi is now to be given by BB its own lair officially for such processes to fully symbioticise....
Marion is annoyed about this, but this is the Reality of staging Reality, I'm afraid. If a spider can have a grin, this spider did - across two mouths, one ulcerated.

Very chilling, indeed, is Speidi. God Save the Queen, God Save the Queen, followed by a high-five! Taking up the sibling thing, we perhaps should call this monster the Cold Sororist?
Rylan seems to be becoming the star of this show and his lachrymotics were a delight.
I think Ryan the Toadfish has a big following on Channel 5 as they broadcast NEIGHBOURS. (Ironic with the sibling thing being his neighbour-from-hell now!). So, perhaps Sam is likely to go tonight. No loss.

Agree with all that, Marion, and i was open-mouthed at the end with Rylan's time-truncated outburst!
I had to laugh at Sam saying he didn't hit on Lacey Banghard because she is so innocent! Lacey with her eponymous condom business!

http://ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=182&p=26280#p26280
Just read that and learn. This said everything I wanted to say and everything I didn't want to say but would have said had I thought hard enough!
The outcome of the return from the spy-hole by Speidi also reminded me of the classic Victor big fight years ago, but with different crude abrasions as well as different subtle innuendos. Sometimes enthralling in a filmic way, or theatricality, sometimes disturbing and obnoxious. We do at least have Speidi to 'thank' for that emotional provocation.

Marion wrote: "An interesting psychological note - Spencer has taken to referring to himself and Heidi in the third person. 'speidi will be nominated this week...' and so on. Very strange."
Strange, yes, but now seemingly natural in the evolution we've gradually watched of the horrific single creature Speidi from two selves and two bodies. The synchronised shards of random truth and fiction have now even provided a lair for this creature.

I agree that Speidi is being increasingly treated with kid gloves by BB and that this creature is now subtracting from the life of the show, making it become a caricatural parody of BB, and, as if infected by all this, there now ensue boring grotesqueries among the others. Sad.

There is something Jekyll & Hyde about Speidi as a unit, perhaps the first ever example of two people in symbiosis with this phenomenon in synchronised tandem. Also, I think they could be accused of deliberate sabotage of this CBB show, and I wonder what arguments there have been beforehand about their contracts etc. and what arguments there will be once they leave!
I wonder what we haven't been shown.
I expect and hope they will go tonight. Then I might stop having nightmares about their voices!
Razor did indeed do well last night. He's pretty game.
The others are all a bit dumpy-lolloping, except when Ryan is cavorting in the novelty snow!

Marion wrote: "This is an abortion of a show, all out of balance and all staged."
Really can't add much to that. Had an odd chuckle at the caricature Dictator and his Saddamite statue.
And at Razor's Jim Royle act in scratching the front of his exposed Y-fronts! But nothing to write home about.
Speidi's sneer-borne voices continue to bug me. And their actions are not consistent, changing tack at the slightest sniff of their own wayward self-perceived character-building for future profile in UK.

Speidi's snuggling legover scene was indeed breathlessly fabricated. As has been indeed Channel Five's wrong-headed and tendentious editing with regard to the 'Spylan' programme. Poor show.
One of the four detached women will go tonight, I reckon Or is it three?.

Marion wrote: "This has to be the worst BB in history. I shall be glad when it's over."
Well, can't argue with that. And I'm afraid I didn't catch what Gillian said about tasks.
The only possible highlight was Rylan doing his pre-death make-up as Aschenbach (from Death in Venice).
The angel/devil task was ludicrously staged, with no build-up to Razor and Rylan being cast in these parts.
And I feel that Speidi is tantamount to a BB mole or agent provocateur - a professional Reality Show participant without even a glimpse of anything REALLY real about its two halves. A strange paradox about the 'real' world that the assumed real world has become.
And have you noticed that the male half of Speidi always has a water bottle or other form of drink in his hand EVERY time we see him? Perhaps he has to drink for two. :|

A slightly more enjoyable programme last night, mixing the cerebrality of celebrity with fishtail slapstick. (Albeit the latter under the direction of BB's official double-headed 'agent provocateur', that continues constantly to 'water' itself to the bottled gills).
The debates on Fame and Reality were actually - Heaven forfend! - interesting.
The Flinching Heads 'happening' was Beckettian or Pinteresque.
And following Speidi's distaff side 'pole-dancing', I can fully see what Marion meant about the paradox of such feminine attractiveness without intrinsic sexiness.

Marion wrote:
"Heidi does her best, I'm sure, but she just goes through the motions of what is expected of her- a wholesome cheerleader cannot turn to vampish-ness so easily. She's a divinity manque. Razor's reaction to Gillian all dolled up was proof of that - 'she scrubs up well for an old one,' he said. A backhanded compliment to be sure - but recognition of an earthy warmth that Gillian possesses even at 60.
I'm sure that's true of you too, Des, now that you've turned 65. Happy Birthday!"
Marion, that's extremely astute of you in the first paragraph (I do recall that comment by Razor very well), and very kind of you in the second paragraph. Thanks so much.
des

The whole Speidi thing is weird and worrying, its voices still haunting my anxious dreams. Give it credit (or debit), at least, for that. A Horror Creature where Fakeness is a virtue, or so it (fakely?) claims. Fake clandestine handjob, included, if indeed it was fake or intended, real or imaginary... No Horror Writer could have created it. No Horror writer worth his or her salt can miss it.
Yes, a Big Blogger incident of major proportions. BB has gathered some kudos for that nifty stunt. Still uncertain how to interpret the intentions of all parties, and body language talks with crossed torso.
Marion's description of Rylan above, meanwhile, is spot on, with Noel Coward dressing-gown and fake Scissorhands. Also, his Aschenbach beard shaped and neatly darkened...
The others are just bystanders, despite efforts by Razor to stand-out on the cutting-room floor. And trusting Marion's BB judgements, as I do, keep an eye on Tricia.

Marion wrote: "Gillian has let slip that Rylan Scissorhands leaves the house on Sundays to attend rehearsals for the X-factor tour. Whatever happened to being sealed off from the outside world?"
That is very disappointing. It makes a mockery of the whole process, especially if Rylan is being bolstered and fed info by his chums on X Factor. When coupled with Speidi's agent provocateur status, the whole thing becomes scandalous with viewers being encouraged effectively to give money to Ch 5 when voting for HMs on this unlevel playing-field, ie when ringing the special telephone numbers.

Marion wrote: "The show is so awful this season that it is almost fascinating. [...] No HM should go in the eviction tomorrow night - we should be able to evict the entire Channel 5 production team for staging such a ludicrous manipulation. They should have trusted the material they had in the HMs and allowed them to develop organically instead of trying of forcing them nto these set pieces."
I agree. But there is a dilemma there in those two statements. There is some gladiatorial pleasure - demonstrated by the British public in the 1960s/1970s where essentially contrived Wrestling matches with Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, Giant Haystacks were watched by millions on TV every Saturday (Kent Walton commentating) with little old ladies in the live audience getting out of their seats and shrieking violently at the competing Black versus White. All contrived for maximum effect.
This CBB seems to be feeding off this telephonically lucrative mass-hysteria (as CBB perceives it), and Speidi is just the equivalent of tag-team wrestling where it is the Black team and Claire and Tricia are the White. Was there a professional wrestler in those old days called Spidey or Spider? I think there was!

Yes, what Marion says. Razor from the cutting-room to the mustard. A great old shaver.
Speidi has flip-flopped through this whole series. Perhaps that's part of its game plan, but are we ever shown it pre-planning its game plan? Or does it already know what the other thinks? Or osmosis by water bottle? Or beneath the bed covers?
Taking its bed away seemed somehow symbolic.

Marion wrote: "...he looked like one of the demons from the Exorcist. He creeps me out."
That is perhaps the skill needed in becoming a so-called Reality star. But is this as an accomplished actor or as the person for real?
Tricia said in her interview that the programme would have been boring without Speidi. A moot point. But I tend to agree with Marion when she says: "So it is on to the final. Hard to get excited about it really - the potential winners have been clear from the start. Gone is the ferocious excitement provoked by genuine competition amongst the HMs." -- with that genuine competition being subsumed by the antics of 'Spylan' and by Channel 5's tendentious editing.
Meanwhile, the creepiest thing is Speidi's distaff side and its gratuitous gushing (like its other half's water bottle in free flow).

Yes, not much happened tonight, except tears, and words written on a wall, mene mene tekel upharsin. Fame is the Spur? Or Fame is the Spider? The Final impends.... I hope no-one wins.

Razor out first. That's a surprise.
I think Rylan is likely to win. And a remarkable performance by Spencer (calling him by his separate name for once rather than as the nameless 'spear' of Speidi). I really don't believe all those tears but it was a unique moment during all these years of watching BB, not *really* knowing for sure. Almost a self-crucifixion at the Last Supper.

I am surprised that Ryan is in the last three. It must be the Neighbours Toadfish factor that is featured daily on Channel 5, not that I watch it!

Well, the interview with Speidi didn't really prove anything; they flip flopped throughout the season because they really couldn't focus on a game plan, or they were being their real nasty selves, or they were very clever, or they had billionaire friends voting for them, as Ryan said in his interview. Whether they were truly entertaining, as Brian claimed, is probably right in the sense that people love villains, and the day of the organic BB is now finally over after heading in that direction for the last few seasons. Sad.
Congratulations to Rylan, not that I ever really liked him.
Above all, thanks to Marion for her reports. See you in the Summer.

---------------
Marion's full reports available publicly HERE

=============
EDIT (June 2013) MY COMMENTS ARE CONTINUED HERE