Ad’s All Folks: Big Brother UK 2010 – The Funeral Trailer

So, this is it. 2010; the year Big Brother ended. What once was summer’s must-see TV event 10 years ago is now summer’s ‘I wonder who’s still in the house. Oh it’s him! I don’t like him. He needs to be voted out’ TV. The producers inviting ever more increasingly bizarre and mentally deficient people to join the roster of housemates all in a desperate attempt to garner new viewers.

To promote the final season of Big Brother, Channel 4 have put together an ad that brings together some of the most memorable housemates to stage a mock funeral for the Big Brother chair. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when this was being filmed. The clash of egos and silicon must have only been rivalled in intensity by Mickey Rourke’s swansong smack-down in ‘The Wrestler’.

And to be fair, it works. If only for the testaments to arse-clenching constructed through the dancing of Nikki Graham and Nasty Nick.

He likes to move it, move it!

She likes to move it, move it! They like tooooooo MOVE IT!!!

So, aside from the rumours that 100 people will be whittled down to 13 on BB’s launch day, what can we expect from the show most people treat as the television equivalent of genital herpes. Idiot Box has put together 8 points to look forward to

1. There will be at least one person who will say that they are ‘in yer face’ and/or ‘tell it like it is’. They will enter the house and turn out to be neither telling it like it is nor entering any sort of facial interactions. They will be gone by the 2^nd week.
2. The more obnoxious the housemate, the more the ‘yoof’ will declare them a victory of modern entertainment. Should the ‘yoof’ cry loud enough, Davina McCall will tweet about them regularly. Whether said housemate wins or not, they will adorn Heat magazine covers for centuries to come.
3. A housemate will adopt a catchphrase that he or she thinks is catching on in the real world i.e. ‘Brrrrap!’, ‘Word my treacle’ or ‘Step up to me horse and call it Trigger, this a good brew’.
4. All housemates will be declared as being ‘a fantastic housemate’ by McCall regardless of whether they’ve been a wallflower with all the personality of a brick in a coma (see point 1) or a Hitler-esque monkey mule with a penchant for pissing in people’s mouths.
5. Two people will fall in love with each other. Theirs will be a timeless, undying love. Filled with passion, fire and spice.  It will not be a shameless attempt by two fame-hungry molluscs. Nah-uh.
6. There will be at least one gay person who will set gay rights movement back by about 50 years.
7. Someone will say in their VT they  don’t like immigrants.
8. There will be an immigrant.

The One Where They Gave up The Ghost

Last week saw some news slip under the entertainment radar that, despite being slightly less troublesome than the Haiti disaster, has reduced a number of my friends to cry out ‘aaaw, no way!’ and ‘well, that’s the end of an era’. In fact, I’m sure some of them even have scabbed over marks on their hands from biting down so hard on their fists through grief. It was news so monumental that you won’t even see it on the front pages of the BBC news site which is presently being taken up with stories about the Taliban and cats getting their head stuck in cans*.

 

 

For those without their fingers firmly on the pulse, I am, of course, referring to the sad and tragic news that Channel 4 and it’s inbred sister channels, T4, E4, B4, R2D2 etc, will no longer be showing Friends… Come 2011. Yes, 6 years after the last episode aired, Channel 4 are to put the show to bed after losing the rights in a bidding war with Comedy Central.

The knee jerk reactions have already started and there is at least one Facebook group dedicated to stopping Channel 4 from giving up the adventures of 6 stereotypes of the 90s. I can’t confirm whether these people have any connection with the Save Ianto Jones campaign, but, if they are, and considering the success of THAT campaign, it’s fair to say we’ve seen the last of Chandler Bing and co on freeview. I’m not trying to be cynical simply because I can, it’s just a case of me wondering why anyone is particularly arsed.

Friends long since jumped the shark when Helen Baxendale, appearing as Ross’ bride to be Emily, was in it and the internet became a playground of malice and poisoned words aimed at the young actress from Yorkshire for daring to appear in an award wining American sitcom and be British. I cringe every time the episode comes on where we’re meant to cheer Rachel for ruining Ross’ wedding and then the following episode when we’re meant to hate Emily for wanting Ross to spend less time with Rachel for reasons shown in the previous mentioned episode.

Yes, it could be argued that I’m overanalyzing the show, but that brings me to my second point. Friends became so plot driven in it’s attempts to differentiate itself from it’s competitors that storylines surfaced that wouldn’t have looked half as strange if they had been introduced as ‘a very special episode of Friends’ like they used to do in the 80s when Punky Brewster took crack or Urkle ate nails for a bet and everyone learnt something. For example, remember when Rachel suggested that she may terminate the baby she was having before Ross found out… hahahahahahahaaaa! What, what about that time Chandler and Monica found out they couldn’t have babies! HAHAHA! Stop, please stop! My sides! For a bunch of people living in an alternate universe of New York where 9/11 never happened, they’re a serious bunch of fuckers.

Finally, is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen all the episodes at least once? And surely anyone who is a true fan will own all the boxsets by now. Why wait for that episode where Chandler gets a new roommate when you can buy all 10 seasons for £30 at HMV. Friends long since stopped being a must-see show and, thanks to countless repeats on C4, quickly become the kind of moving wallpaper you need in your life when you’re trying to shut out all the bad things in life.

‘What’s on now?’

‘Well, there’s a news report about Taliban.’

‘Change the channel.’

‘There’s a serious documentary about the exploitative nature of sweat shops.’

‘Change!’

‘Oh, Friends is on…’

‘Which one is it?’

 ‘The one where everyone thinks Chandler and Joey are gay!’

 ‘OH HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA! That’s hilarious. Let’s watch it.’

Okay… so could I BE anymore cynical? Point taken.

*The cat was fine by the way.

Big Brother House, this is Davina. Please do not say F*ck or B*gger.

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It’s a regular occurrence really. I can’t stop it. Every summer it’s the same thing. I promise myself. Assure myself that this year will be different. This year will be the year I don’t watch Big Brother, but it never happens. And I’ll be honest with you, to paraphrase Chris Rock, I love Big Brother, tired of defending it.

Before I continue, I feel like I need to justify this rant. I mean, I made a private promise that I wouldn’t write about Big Brother, but after this Friday’s abysmal attempt to obtain ratings, the nerd rage flew through my veins like heroin and I couldn’t resist. I justify this blog further by saying one of my favourite writers, Charlie Brooker, is not avert to writing about Big Brother and if it’s okay for the great white Laurence Fishbourne, it’s right by me.

So, yeah, Big Brother. My love for it started round about the second series. In hindsight, it’s easy to say what appealed to me. It had baddies, it had goodies, it had laughs and it had blinking. You could talk to anyone on the street and they would happily give their opinions about Helen and Paul. Yes, there were the detractors but, if the channel had existed at the time, we would gladly have told them to fornicate off to BBC 4.

Something went wrong though. Channel 4 twigged that people liked this series and so tried, and is still trying, to emulate it. Look through any of the next 8 series and you’ll find a checklist of stereotypes:

• The busty blonde
• The dim one
• The black one
• The gay one
• The academic
• The jack the lad
• And so on.

It became obvious which each series that the increasingly media savvy housemates were falling to type. Sometimes even mimicking the catchphrases and attitudes of those before them. Witness Charlie in BB 8 who insisted on acting like Nikki from series 7, right down to the ‘WHO IS SHE?!!!’ speech that set ear drums bleeding across the country. Like the Narrator’s life in Fight Club, everything became a copy of a copy of a copy. Whilst the housemates emulated all the characteristics of Big Brother 2’s housemates, they were not the real thing. Like Tesco Value cola if you will. More recently in BB10, Sophie/Dogface has tried to emulate the success of Jade Goody’s stupidity by shitting out phrases like a machine gun aimed at putting her across as sweet but dumb.

Exhibit A: ‘New Zealand? That’s where Chinese people come from, right?’. No one is that dumb. No one will ever be that

dumb, but because of Helen’s comments about loving blinking and Jade with her East Angular monologue which helped them snuggle up against the nation’s collective bosom, Sophie/Dogface has felt she can get some mileage out of it too .

Aside from cloning housemates in a manner that would make Michel Bay’s The Island take a step back, the main reason why Big Brother is getting a bit wank is because somewhere along the line the producers decided that normal, nice people wasn’t good enough. Why have people interacting normally when you can you stir things up with poor side/rich side, fake housemates, housemates from African Big Brother, housemate’s partners and a different nominations format?

In the first two series of Big Brother it was hard to find someone who would nominate anyone for anything more than them not saying good morning, but then the producers entered a new rule into the book that said if Big Brother didn’t feel your nominations were good enough, you would instantly be up nomination yourself. The next thing you know, the housemates stopped interacting and began weighing each other up. Friendships were only formed if they were beneficial. Get enough people together in your group and you have your say over who goes up for nominations. Big Brother stopped being a social experiment and became a yearly Lord of the Flies.

Along with this new aggression came a new vocabulary from the housemates. If you’ve never seen an episode of BB or find that you get lost in conversations, let Uncle Noonan run you through some of the main phrases you need to know.

Backstabbing: A verb originating from the 1920s meaning to attempt to discredit (a person) by underhanded means, as innuendo, accusation, or the like. An idea that was used in WW2 by Hitler as the reason why the Germans lost WW1 because, as he saw, the Jews were backstabbed the German army. With this history in mind, it’s easy to see how backstabbing in Big Brother has now come to mean ‘he/she who dares to nominate me even though I gave them a fag last week and told them that their hair looks nice.’

Playing the game: Playing the game use to mean being honest and fair. Playing the game now means to enter the Big Brother house and then, um, well, that’s it really. My linguistic study of the housemates’ vernacular doesn’t really come up with a definitive answer to what they are harping on about. Going from the amount of times it’s been used the last two series; I’ve come to understand that playing the game means:

• Being nice
• Talking to others
• Being open and honest with those around you and sharing any opinions you may have about them to their face

Tell it like it is/Keeping it real: These two phrases are the opposite of playing the game and is an accolade held in high esteem by many a housemate including this year’s Lisa. Telling it like it is to:

• Talk behind someone’s back
• Be racist, homophobic etc
• Be friendly with someone and then mock them when everyone else does.
• Be vindictive
• Be loud
• Be aggresive

I’ve yet to find any evidence but I think in Big Brother black means white and white means black.

And before you say anything, no, I can’t discuss this with my fellow fans. That community of shared and learned discourse has long since died with the Jedis. Big Brother fans are slowly becoming more and more like the housemates they discuss. To not like the same housemate as your fellow fan is to say you like Gary Glitter. If a housemate shows an ounce of intelligence they are instantly branded as playing the game (see above) and calls for their eviction echoes through the valley. Should the housemate be mean spirited, manipulative and emulating one of the previous housemates of years past, they are immediately seen as keeping it real and providing ideal entertainment. When Rachel Rice won last year, there were cries of ‘Fix!’ as some fans just couldn’t handle the fact that someone relatively normal and nice had won. Fans wanted housemates like Bex to win. A troglodyte cow woman who spent the better part of her time in the Big Brother house smoking, fighting and setting up a showmance with Luke. The worse part of her time in the house was spent being naked. Most of that time I was trying to force my eyeballs out with a biro.

Maybe I’ve grown up a bit and there’s a deep-seated part of me that ‘s realised that it’s all a load of toss or maybe I’m just no longer the producer’s target audience now that they favour chavtastic WKD drinkers. Either way, I think I’m going to have start a new sin next summer. Kitten drowning maybe…. Oh who am I kidding? I’ll be here this time next year.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.

Ad’s all folks…

So, flick to channel 4 at lunchtime during this week and you were probably met with ‘adult viewing not suitable for screening in the middle of the day’. That’s according to the dozens of people who complained about Life Class: Today’s Nude

Admittedly, having a job means that I don’t have the luxury to watch this midday filth, but I think I’m pretty safe if I were to put my entire life savings on this programme being about as tittalating as an Amy Winehouse video. In my heady years as an A-level student, I took part in the nightmare that was life drawing. If Life Class: Today’s Nude is simialr then it will be half an hour’s worth of students giggling and pointing. That’s how my classes were. The giggling stopped after the college’s cleaning lady became the next model. So  in all honesty the only people who would be even close to getting their rocks off to this are the same people who have to sit on thier hands during the bikini scene in Carry On Camping. That said, try telling that to the ‘dozens’ of people who complained.

And that’s one of my biggest gripes at the moment. It’s so easy to complain nowadays that most people see it as a neccesity more than a right. Flicking through the Guardian’s article on the most complained adverts, a lot of people really don’t have that much to do during their evenings (Says the man writing a blog , right kids? – Ed).

Some of my favourites include:

Barnados – 840 complaints

The number one most complained ad of last year was this. The reason being it was considered to distressing. Barnardo’s initial campaign of two children hevaily involved in a game of Buckaroo, before a big tea of fish and chips followed by as much chocolate cake as they could fit into their cherub faces may have been thee apprpriate decision.

Heinz Deli Mayo

How do you want your sandwich? On Rye or Wheat? Apprently either as long as it’s not homosexual. Over 210 people complained about the kiss at the end of this advert.

Specsavers

123 people complained about this advert as it was felt that it was derogatory to Edith Piaf.  To be honest, even if Edith hadn’t lost a battle to cancer, I’m sure  this advert would be least of her problems. Especally considering it’s one and only joke is somewhat null and void to anyone with knowledge of first year high school French.

Department of Health

Numerous complaints were made about this ad as many people thought that children would start smoking after copying it! This leads you into some horrible never ending smoking paradox that only an android from the future can destroy.

So where does that leave us a society? Well, nowhere new or special. This will continute God knows how long, but at least we’ll be able to live in a Utopia free of homosexual sandwiches.

Anyway, it’s not like we’ve reached the point where somone would complain about a funeral. Oh wait…