Brotherly hate

At the time of writing it’s Day Five inside the Big Brother house and here are six things I happen to know.

1. The series is, once again, being presented by Davina McCall, a woman so profoundly irritating in every way, that she has become the televisual equivalent of the sound of Freddie Kruger scraping his nails down a blackboard and chattering too loudly on a mobile phone while I’m trying to watch an episode of Seinfeld in the same room.

2. The voiceovers are, once again, being, eh, voiced by that bloke with the Geordie accent whose every utterance sounds eerily similar to Vic Reeves singing ‘The Rhythm Is Going To Get You’ in the cabaret style.

3. The series is, once again, being accompanied by an even more depressing series called Big Brother’s Little Brother, which is being fronted Dermot O’Leary. A rarity among those in his profession in that he is actually good at his job, Dermot’s stock in trade is making very, very bad television programmes tolerable by his mere presence. His urbane, heroic stoicism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds in recent years means that he deserves better than playing second fiddle to Davina’s “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!! Did you see that?!?!? He’s BUTTERING … the … bread!” (Cue: dramatic turn to camera sporting slack-jawed look of faux astonishment.)

4. One of the occupants of the Big Brother house is a very attractive young girl named Anoushka, who apparently wants to jump the bones of one of her fellow contestants.

5. There is a secret pub behind one of the walls in the bathroom of the Big Brother house that the occupants don’t know about. Perhaps they know about it now – that’s another thing I don’t know.

6. A tabloid newspaper has offered a bounty of £50,000 to the first couple to have sex on this year’s Big Brother, on condition the sex they have is that of a heterosexal, eh, bent.

Here’s six things I don’t know.

1. The number of occupants in the Big Brother house.

2. The number of occupants in the Big Brother house, excluding the fair Anoushka, that I’d like to “give one” to.

3. The number of chickens in the coup in the back garden of the house.

4. Anything else about the Big Brother house and its occupants.

5. Whether or not there’s a token Paddy.

6. How long I can conceivably continue to avoid finding out anything more than I already know about this dull-but-compelling series that chronicles the tedious day-to-day activities of a group of attention-seekers who live in a house that doesn’t have television, radio, t’Internet or newspapers.

Short of heading to Siberia for eight weeks with your head encased in cement, it is virtually impossible to remain blissfully unaware of activities in the Big Brother house. This year, however, purely for the hell of it, I’m giving it a right good lash.

So far I’m doing quite well. I have refrained from watching as much as a second of any of the 24 hours of coverage from the Big Brother house broadcast on E4, Channel 4 and the Internet each day. I have braved the horrendous withdrawal symptoms that go hand in hand with not reading tabloid newspapers for four whole days, although I did happen to accidentally see the front page of one Sunday scandal-sheet, which was devoted to Anoushka’s alleged craven plea for physical affection.

I have also stopped looking at the TV schedules and taken to relying on memory instead: Monday is Frasier and West Wing night; Tuesday is CSI, Boomtown, Sopranos and NYPD Blue night etc and so on. (Although now that I think of it, half of these shows will probably get “bumped” because of you know what.)

Any time the subject of B** B****** crops up in everyday conversation I screech in horror, cover both ears with my hands and dash from the room wailing “Scaramouch! Scaramouch! Will you do the fandango?” I have asked my nearest and dearest, in whose company I spend most of my time, not to speak about, venture opinions on or even mention That Show in my company. Why, just yesterday, I dived across a coffee table and almost dislocated my shoulder in a gallant attempt to turn off a radio on which a certain topic was about to be discussed.

Needless to say, everyone I know thinks I’m deranged. And to be fair, they have a point. My determination to make a success of my little experiment is fast becoming far more of an obsession than any passing interest I ever had in Big Brother itself. My relationships, both personal and business, are suffering. (Of course this is hardly surprising, as even the strongest rapport is bound to be put to the test when one of the parties involved habitually sprints out of rooms while Rhapsodising in a Bohemian fashion at the mere mention of the word ‘Davina’.)

With this in mind, it seems that, short of embracing the Siberia/head-encased-in-cement option, the only way one can feasibly avoid finding out anything about the multi-media extravaganza that is Big Brother is to impose a blanket media ban and lock oneself in a house with an array of like-minded individuals for eight long weeks.

But that would be stupid.