Television Can Blow Me (14 page)

Watching Big Brother is like meeting up with a friend diagnosed with a terminal illness. You’re smiling but you’re basically waiting for him to die. He’s become a drain on you, his family and the country and not just financially. He’s an emotional parasite who sucks the life and joy out of every locale he enters. You want to rinse his chemo-addled skull with your hot piss and choke the little life left in him right out with your bare hands. But no. You stay, you smile and you sympathise. Because that’s how you roll.

Endemol will have you believing there’s life in the old dog yet, though, and there is certainly no shortage of lemmings willing to throw themselves off the fame cliff if the auditions are anything to go by. These douchebags really will do anything to become famous. Ricky Gervais, when asked what advice he would give to somebody wanting to become famous, said “murder a prostitute” which was a very good answer. Notoriety will do for most of these nitwits. But just who are those brave amphibians swimming around the goldfish bowl over the summer months?

Lisa, 40, the sales rep and Amazonian breast implant vessel from Warrington says the most significant event in her life was when her borefriend pawned his Rolex to buy her fake tits for her. And they say romance is dead.

Mario, 42, the Rolex-pawning long-turd borefriend of Lisa. The Sylvester Stallone, Linc from Prison Break and Buzz Lightyear lookalike suffers from fits of rage and has to be chained to a wall at night and fed raw steak. Has spent the early exchanges offering Olympic standard patronage to Wee Blind Mikey in the hope of staving off his inevitable early eviction.

Luke, 20, entered the Big Brother house to change people’s perception of students. The Frank Sidebottom sounding pro-wrestling announcer doesn’t smoke, drink, do drugs or swear and supports the Conservative party. Seems likely to kickstart a debate a la Gareth from The Office about whether he is an arse faced weasel or a weasel faced arse.

Stephanie, 19, a sexually attractive blonde girl who got kicked out of Popstars for lying about her age. Aerial Telly likes Stephanie. She was alone in showing some balls standing up to the hateful skankatollah Alex the other night and he likes his girls to have a bit of fire in their belly. She will, of course, be first out of the house and first into Nuts magazine.

Rachel, 24, a Welsh trainee teacher with an impressive arse. Rachel will be this year’s winner according to Aerial Telly’s close personal friend and reality TV betting genius Ed Murray. An endorsement from Ed is like getting a blessing from the reality TV pope so keep an eye on this Welsh pie.

Dale, 21, a student PE teacher who says he will “nail any fanny” inside the house and shouted “get your snatch out!” to Rebecca during a game of Truth or Dare. There’s no substitute for class.

Dennis, 23, dance student. Bears an alarming resemblance to Herr Lipp from The League of Gentlemen. Thinks he is heading up a new Lipgloss Bitches clique but the tedious freak is so far out of his depth with Sylvia and Alexandra it’s not funny.

Michael, 33, a blind, Scottish radio producer whose disability instantly made him the house child - a benign, sexless creature who everyone could project their fantasies of the essential innocence and goodness of humanity onto. He will get few nominations as a result so expect this boy to be in the final four shakeup. Excellent ‘Chosen One’ material should the producers choose to make him.

Alexandra, 23, accounts “executive” is a nastier version of Charley if such a thing is possible. Unspeakably vile bullying freak who needs murdering every second she’s on the planet.

Rex, 23, the executive chef is so far notable for being ginger and utterly anonymous.

Mohammed, 23, is a toy demonstrator who was born in Somalia. He has the perfect combination of affable and dreary that makes him a stayer with zero chance of winning.

Rebecca, 23, a nursery nurse. A fat, Vicky Pollard clone who reminds you of last year’s Laura. The first, and least welcome, of the girls to expose her breasticles, Rebecca has a distressing condition known as Nadia arse where she wears thongs despite having the buttocks of a man. The condition is non-fatal but means she and everyone viewing the spectacle may as well be dead.

Darnell, 26, an albino former gangster from St Louis who now lives in London. Darnell’s main ambition is to wrestle the title of Whitest Black Man on the Planet from Aerial Telly.

Jennifer, 22, a part-time model, is a loving single mum who has apparently abandoned her child for fame. This self-professed Catholic bad girl is anti-fox hunting, anti-abortion, anti-smoking, and anti-fur. Let the party begin...

Kathreya, 30, is a fat Buddhist Thai massage therapist. From Thailand. 5 foot 4 and 400 stone, Kathreya made an immediate impact as the early favourite. Whether she maintains this early form depends upon exactly how annoying her screeching and giggling becomes. What do you reckon?

Sylvia, 21, is a devious double-dealing shitbag inside the house who came to the UK aged 11 when civil war broke out in her native Sierra Leone. Reports that she started it are almost definitely true.

That’s your lot. I’m off to watch the football. Peace.

The verdict on Big Brother 2008:
In gradual decline.

Marks out of 10:
6

Big Brother 2008: Stuart tapped the compassion vending machine and it toppled over and fell on top of him

Attention seeking eyeliner-wearing muscle mary mouthbreather Stuart was the focus of last night’s Big Brother. Noteworthy only for looking like an extra from 300 he has bilge for personality but the paranoia brought on by years of self abuse finally provided some entertainment. After the world’s worst poet Belinda and a couple of other mopes heard some inconclusive shouts over the fence, word got around that a syllable sounding something like ‘cha’ was discernible. So Stuart naturally assumed that it was the phrase “GET STUART OUT”, that the entire outside world hates him and that life wasn’t worth living. If only anyone gave a fuck enough for that to be true.

There followed some spectacularly unconvincing crying for the camera from Stuart, Belinda (bafflingly feeling responsible in some way) was on some Billy Bragg shit like “I am the milkman of human kindness - I will leave an extra pint” and suddenly burst into tears while trying to reassure Chicken Stu. This was the last thing he expected.

All of a sudden, it was Stu comforting Bellender. A wobbling mass of tear streaked emotion that he had no idea how to deal with (quite apart from not having the inclination). Fat Bex came along and watched in mute incomprehension (well, mute by her standards - the tubby fuck only squealed twice).

Stu stumbled upon a brilliant exit strategy. “I need a shower” he said, even though he’d just stepped out of one.

Bellender’s incredibly altruistic display of emotion was of course all about her. A way of showing how compassionate, empathetic and generally brilliant she truly is. In attempting to emotionally manipulate the house, Stuart had stepped into the dojo with a Zen master of specious bullshit. The overfed maudlin fuck gave Stuart a clinic in passive aggression he won’t forget. Until he runs out of eyeliner.

X-Factor 2005

After last year’s thrilling finale between G4’s classy poperatics and the cheeseball stylings of Steve Brookstein, (booed at his first gig after emerging victorious, who says this doesn’t lead to success?) X Factor returned in bullish mood, confident of a winning formula. And well they might be - they stole it from Pop Idol after all (if you believe Simon Fuller).

Having whittled away the lunatics, no-hopers and nearly men, the judges were left with the 12 grateful finalists. It was a Who’s Who of Who’s That? Something Aerial Telly is glad to help out with

4Tune - The lantern-jawed yankophiles were the band of the year. Unfortunately, the year was 1991.

Addictiv Ladies - A missing vowel and a missing chromosome did for these generic R&B turds.

Andy Abraham - He’s a smooth dustbin-swinging brother with a voice like liquid gold.

Brenda Edwards - Gigantic flagcracker who sings the arse off everyone each week.

Chenai Zinuku - Attention-seeking crybaby who thinks the world owes her a living because she reached boot camp stage last year.

Chico Slimari - Laughably poor Ricky Martin wannabe with feet of clay and tonsils of tin.

Journey South - Twin pronged blandathon, all vocal harmony and rousing choruses - will go far.

Maria Lawson - Talented but suffered from being black, female and married. Got voted off by evil Oirish mafia Godfather Louis O’Walsh to save The O’Conway Sisters.

Nicholas Dorsett - The worthy heir to chin beast Craig David, sang like a tit when it mattered.

Philip McGee - Utterly clueless rabbit in headlights, quickly put out of his misery in the finals.

The Conway Sisters - Spent approximately 0.13 seconds in tune in their last performance, a personal best.

Shayne Ward - known by millions as “that boy off the telly”, Shayne is Justin Timberlake’s retarded kid brother who they kept under the sink until he was 15, listening to Boyz II Men records.

Ostensibly, this is where things get interesting between the acts but the key battles take place between the judges. They spend most of their time undermining the others’ abilities as mentors and in fatuous point-scoring - which is terrific fun, of course.

Hymen Cowell speaks the truth but his “sounded a bit karaoke to me” insults are becoming a touch played out. It’s nonetheless been funny to watch his increasingly bemused reactions to the Cult of Chico Time (Slimari’s contrived catchphrase and debut single).

Louis Walsh, on the other hand, is a hopeless people pleaser, way too concerned with what the audience think of him. His pussying out in picking the O’Conway Sisters ahead of Marie was as spineless as a performance from a judge as you could imagine. What a hapless tool he is.

And Sharon Osbourne couldn’t play more shamelessly to the gallery if she were Freddie Mercury - not once does she go against the general audience feeling, an audience consisting largely of the act’s families and friends. Way to defeat the whole purpose, Sharon.

As we approach the finishing straight it looks like it’s most likely between Shayne, Journey South and Andy. Like Steve the Cheeseball they won’t have much of a career. Brenda probably deserves to win. She definitely won’t. Cowell will win his legal case and all be well in the world of X Factor. Don’t fight it - some things were simply meant to be.

The verdict on X-Factor:
New Faces with ‘tude.

Marks out of 10:
7

X Factor 2008 - sob stories bring misery to millions

The return of X Factor should always be welcomed. It’s a great format that produces laughter, tears and distress to the innocent. Though the real story of the early rounds of X Factor 2008 is the increasingly dreary and dubious sob stories that are clogging up the audition stages.

The first episode had a 17-year-old girl from Bridgend framing her fame lust as some kind of mercy mission. “Because of all the bad press that Bridgend has had recently I just think that getting through would be a good bit of news that we need”. Eh? Oh, I get it - Bridgend the graveyard for 22 whingeing adolescents. Well, that’s just what the parents need: a rendition of My Light Shines On every Saturday evening. Truly, the living would envy the dead.