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I made a big mistake the other day.

The most frustrating thing is that it’s a mistake I make at least once a year, and every time I tell myself not to make the same mistake again.

Fortunately I won’t be making the exact same mistake again, at least not until Channel 4 realise they have nothing to fill the gaping Big Brother-shaped hole in their summer programming schedule and decide to resurrect the show to hysterical fanfare and moronic public acclaim.

But despite my condemnation I again find the programme irritatingly intoxicating.  The ‘civilian’ version no longer holds my interest, but ‘Ultimate Big Brother’ with its eclectic mix of former housemates like John McCririck, Coolio and Ulrika Jonsson, is a wholly different and in my eyes somehow more acceptable guilty pleasure.

Instead of watching nobodies who want to be celebrities but have nothing to offer the world other than a desperate desire to be a celebrity, I’m watching people who used to want to be celebrities that have nothing to offer the world but now actually are celebrities famous for nothing other than a desperate desire to be a celebrity.

I actually fell into the trap the other day of thinking that now Josie (BB11 winner) had left the house there were only actual celebrities left and no-one from the civilian version of the show.  Then I remembered that Nadia, Brian, Nikki, Makosi etc etc etc were all ‘normal’ housemates that have since been catapulted, in my stupid brain at least, to celebrity status.  This saddens me.

What saddens me more is that I’ve started to grow inexplicably fond of Chantelle Houghton, and I’ve started to consider the merest hint of a possibility that Nikki Grahame might not be the most irritating person in the entire history of the world and that my previous belief that I’d very much enjoy throttling her until dead was a massive exaggeration and she’s actually a reasonably nice person with an unfortunate and unhappy-sounding history of eating disorders and psychiatric issues.

Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age.  Maybe it’s that now that these people have had their fifteen minutes of fame they’re not as irritatingly desperate to be the loudest and most outrageous person and they’re just, at the risk of sounding incredibly naïve, acting quite normally.  A point perhaps validated by Victor Ebuwa, one of the few housemates I haven’t heard a peep from since he left BB the first time around, who’s still a complete and utter look-at-me-I’m-on-Big-Brother dickhead, desperate for any kind of magazine interview, topless Heat Magazine shoot or fast food restaurant employment.

I actually signed up to follow the Big Brother Twitter account today as well.  What a fucking vapid waste of internet that is.  Some highlights:

13:44 Ulrika is singing Endless Love, practising for her task. Victor says she has a nice voice.

12:06 Ulrika, Chantelle and Brian are talking dresses

10:15 Nadia and Makosi are saying how they miss their cars and shopping

06:17 Preston just had a little scratch downstairs.

04:30 Nikki has her hand on her neck.

03:07 Chantelle is sleeping on her back.

All genuine BB tweets.  I contemplated ending with a made up ‘funny’ but decided, as so often in life, that reality is funnier than fiction.

But anyway, I hope ‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman wins it.  This is despite the fact that he’s clearly not the most interesting housemate, doesn’t actually seem all that nice, and has formed some sort of desperate clique with the aforementioned twat of twats Victor.

The simple fact is that if it weren’t for Nasty Nick, we wouldn’t still be watching BB.  Now, admittedly, this might not be cause for massive celebration (quite the opposite, arguably) but I think there’d be some justice if he won it, even if Brian Dowling is by far the most entertaining housemate and the only one I can think of to have made an honest living outside BB (SMTV Live, anyone?).

I’d wager I’m one of a tiny minority hoping Nick wins, and in fairness my reasons hold little water, but he should get some credit for helping catapult Big Brother to the bloated twat hatchery it’s become.  Or maybe he should be shot into space for propelling the likes of Charley, Alexandra (“‘member I told you!”), Grace, Sezer (evicted from BB7 in the first week with a record 91.6% of votes) and on and on and on ad infinitum.  But then you think of all those genuinely great BB contestants and iconic TV moments like, erm…