On Hell

On Hell - The inevitable Big Brother post

For reasons to numerous to go into - but mainly revolving around having a teenage daughter - I am forced to be interested in Big Brother this year.

It is something I have managed to avoid in the past, middle-class sneering at Jade Goody notwithstanding, and having been drawn into the freakshow, have come to the following all-to-predictable conclusion:

It's awful. Really, really awful.

Fair play to the producers, who, knowing they are onto a winner, for scouring the country for every last mentallist and borderline psycho they can lay their hands on. But what's the point of having mentals in an enclosed space if you then refuse to arm them? Where's the fun in that?

The utter tedium of a competition that will last - so I am told - for three months, has me itching to go down to Elstree with a quantity of napalm to put the whole enterprise to an end as quickly as possible. Only my fascination at loud Welsh Laura's improbable chest is holding me back.

Yet I am drawn in, like Kate Moss to a big pile of white powder in a toilet cubicle.

I could jazz it up. Really, I could.

What are they thinking with knobbly knee competitions, and dressing up as fish? Where's the pain? Where's the woe? These people are carefully selected as mentals in the hope that they'd be interesting. Where's the mind-fuckery?

The winner is going to walk out with 100,000 of the Queen's pounds, and many of the contestants will be polluting our screens and glossy mags through big money deals for years to come. I want to see them work for their money. No. I want to see the bastards suffer.

So: some tasks which would a) get better value out of the contestants and b) be a right old laugh round the water-cooler.

* Housemates collect all their bodily excreta in a large tin bath. They will then be given food for the week at exactly the same weight. Constipated? Starve, you freak.

* The housemates are split into "guards" and "prisoners". The house then becomes a Boer War style concentration camp (a Best of British invention, you'll no doubt be proud to hear) of starvation, beating and bullying until Ofcom makes them stop. There is no reason behind this task. It's just for laughs.

* Two words: Death row. Two more words: Enforced nudity. And while we're at it: Compulsory baby oil (Teh Laydez only)

* A "Who can eat the most baked beans" competition, closely followed by a "Who can fit the most marbles up my bottom" contest, leading, inevitably to the violent and bizarre shooting deaths of at least three of the housemates.

* Wednesday's new housemate: Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, and a "28 Days Later" scenario involving blood-crazed zombies.

Or, I could just stove my television to death with a length of lead piping. It's for the common good. Then nuke the place from orbit. It's the only way to make sure.