The Compulsory Big Brother Item

Yes, so BB8 has started... sigh. It's odd how it captures all 'da yoot' audience as well as normal, sane, thirtysomethings. If you watch the commercial breaks you can tell the young 'uns drive everything, as they're all ads for music, interwebs and jeans that hang off your arse.

What can I say that's original about Big Brother?

tv secret (hey we ain't had one for ages):
I was involved in the birth of reality tv - but it's not my fault, honest.

Not directly you understand, but I was working for a company who properly came up with the first ever reality show. My mad boss was literally foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm for it... although he did this a lot, usually when I pitched some ridiculous unmakeable idea (to distract attention from my side of the company not doing well) and he'd think I was a genius. For ten seconds. Everyone else, of course, hated me for pandering to his madness. Hey, I didn't care. I managed to keep a job until the very end, the last ever employee of the company. Hah.

I was asked to do some development work on the idea and I did, mainly rules and games and that. One of the senior staff who was working on the show then got poached by Endemol, and soon afterwards Big Brother came out. My boss was spitting gallons of froth at this point, like the milk bubblifier attachment on a capuccino machine...

It went to court in the end, for no real reason - my boss kept the idea when he flogged the company and ended up making gabillions of pounds from the US; Endemol made gazillions of pounds on BB worldwide. The court action resulted in the lawyers making gatrillions of pounds but nothing much else.

(A note here - I once pitched a show to a Famous American Agent in Cannes during a company-wide training week in a chateau. Now that sounds glam, and the wine was fabulous but we were basically there to learn to sell things. Anyway, American Agent - lovely teeth, nice suit, tidy hair.. all your American attributes - quite liked the idea but said it was too complex. You could've blown me down with a milk bubblifier when the same show turns up on CBS with the same cast-types and the same format... produced by a new company set up by the same American agent. Tsk. Nothing I could do about it, obviously, and part of me was flattered my little ol' idea ended up on primetime telly in the USA and is now in series 9 or something. Part of me wanted the gagrillions of pounds American Agent made but we can't have everything in life...)

OK, back to BB. Specifically the new one. It's, er, full of ladies. Well, women. Er, females and female-looking non-gender specifics. That Tracey one is surely a fella in a frock. I can offer no opinion on it except why isn't Davina pregnant? Surely that's the way it works. And Chris Moyles on the BBBM or whatever it's called... what's that for? OK, I know he appeals to dem youngstahs but who at C4 thought his lumbering shouty ugly presence is good for C4?

Another tv secret:
On the first series the male contestants* used to masterbate furiously in front of the camera behind the mirror in the bathroom singing "It's only a gameshow", knowing it couldn't be used on tv. But by series 2 the blokes did it furtively as having seen the show they thought it'd be broadcast. Proves how thick they were, dunnit?

So I offer no further opinion of BB as I intend to avoid it as much as possible.

* Yes, I know they're supposed to be called 'housemates' not contestants but I can't bring myself to call the repellant 'look at me!' types who populate these things by the name normal people use for people they share a house with. They're competing in a game show so they're contestants.