I can make you hate by Charlie Brooker Page A

that?
    *
     
    In retrospect, reading this back now, I seem to be taking everything in the world terribly seriously indeed. Like, about twice as seriously as necessary. I mean really: ‘a tiny spoonful of hope’? What a dick I am.

Proximity Big Brother
09/01/2010
     
    The final
Celebrity Big Brother
is here. Yes, the final one. As you watch Sisqo hooking his pants out of his bumcrack, or Vinnie Jones boiling an egg, remind yourself that this is your last opportunity to do so, and attempt to defy the tears prickling the rim of your eyeballs. Where do we go from here, as a people? I cannot tell you. All I have to offer is sneering descriptions of the contestants. My existence is pointless. I’m banging on the glass here. Release me or kill me, someone.
    This year’s launch night included a telling format-change. Normally we’re introduced to each celebrity via a short VT in which they themselves explain what a must-watch character they’ll be (‘I’m not afraid to speak me mind … if anyone in there winds me up the wrong way, there’ll be fireworks’ etc., etc.). But this year, these talking-head character sketches were absent, replaced by short packages in which Davina patiently explained why each inmate qualified as a ‘celebrity’. Often theevidence consisted of photographs of them standing near other, indisputably more famous, people on a red carpet. Two of the contestants appear to have been invited to participate on the basis that they’ve been inside a famous person, and one because a famous person has been inside them. That’s not celebrity, that’s proximity. ‘Proximity Big Brother’ actually has a nice ring to it.
    The trouble with introducing each player via their CV is that the viewer ends up with zero idea of their actual character. Basshunter ’s arrival was a low point. His VT package might as well have been a short educational film outlining the properties of magnesium . In fact, sending in a small mound of powdered magnesium in his place wouldn’t have been an entirely bad idea. What happens when you introduce a small quantity of magnesium to a room full of quasi-famous people? Nothing. But at least that’s a genuine ‘TV experiment’.
    So who’s in? Well, you’ve got Vinnie Jones (yawn), Alex Reid (a videogame version of Daniel Craig), Dane Bowers (nice but yawn), Lady Sovereign (a Sporty Spice keychain figurine), the aforementioned Basshunter (a stretched Swedish Hasselhoff), Rolling-Stone-seductress Katia (effectively a student-age Alice who’s wandered through the looking glass and into her TV), and Nicola T of ‘having tits’ fame.
    Nicola T already seems likely to establish herself as TV’s dimmest comic character since the heyday of Trigger in
Only Fools And Horses
. She communicates exclusively by asking stunningly stupid questions, and always seems surprised and confused by the answer. It’s an endearing trait, albeit one which would swiftly become grating during a day trip to the Science Museum.
    Grand dame Stephanie Beacham should probably win, on account of her habit of sitting in the corner making laconic observations , like a louche unseen narrator. Just for an experiment, they should scrap Marcus Bentley for an episode and get her to do the voiceover. Or permanently station her in an adjoiningantechamber and let her communicate with the other contestants via an animatronic stag’s head mounted on the wall.
    Finally, there are the Americans. Sisqo, a poor man’s Skee-Lo .
Usual Suspects
actor-turned-born-again-rightwing-talk- radio-scary -man Stephen Baldwin, who looks and sounds like an escaped serial killer who, having cut off Alec Baldwin’s face with a jagged spear of glass, is currently wearing it as a mask and speaking very softly in a bid to evade the authorities. He’s the contestant most likely to perform a live, spontaneous exorcism in the house. In fact, I thought he might do precisely that when Heidi Fleiss walked in. Fleiss is spooky. She vaguely