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.

Nikki Grahame (isn't that an irritating way of spelling "Nicky Graham"?)

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.

Some people asleep

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…

A trusty old reliable Google search throws up various answers from £162m to £400m, in response to my typing the words how much is bono worth and hitting enter.  In short, Paul Hewson is not short of a few quid.  As well as making money from touring with his pop band, he also writes the odd New York Times newspaper column, which he probably doesn’t do for the love of it.

Paul and Mrs Hewson

You may have read his recent article in which he bemoaned a decade of music file-sharing which has — and get this! — hurt the “creators” (songwriters), whilst benefiting “rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.”

Well excuse me Paul, but boo-fucking-hoo.  Your comments hold water, but coming from someone who could well be worth half a billion quid, it’s a little hard to take seriously.  We all know music piracy is theft and that theft is wrong, but to imply that internet service providers are stealing your hard-earned royalties sounds bitter and petty.  Especially when you consider that this £half-a-billion fortune is largely built from a completely mediocre back catalogue*.

Paul in a photo that probably annoyed Mrs Hewson

I don’t hate You Too.  I don’t.  I’ve even got a couple of their albums.  I even like some of the songs.  But that said I can sum this all up no better than my mate Greeny does in his Modern Toss t-shirt.

Greeny in his favourite shirt and 'fat man' hat

And in the interests of fairness, I found some quotes made a few months ago on the subject of music piracy by David Ford (an artist who isn’t worth £500m) around the time Lily Allen made a spoilt tit of herself by ranting about the evils of music piracy in her blog, which, admittedly, I couldn’t be bothered to read but on which of course I’m still entitled to have an ill-informed opinion primarily based upon the fact that I can’t stand her. 

Ford’s Twitter comments ring as equally resonant now as they did when he tweeted them in September:

• why should it be that the ones who complain loudest about illegal downloads/file sharing etc have already made lots of money from music?
• part of the problem is that the lack of respect paid to the artist is mirrored by the artist’s lack of respect for their art.
• i think really, we all know when we are stealing and when we are sharing. obviously i would discourage stealing but to share is a good thing

And printed on his mini-EP CD Pages Torn From The Electrical Sketchbook Vol #1:

“never mind all that legal shit, if you like these songs, why not copy them for your friends”

That’s a bit more like it.

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* This is a deliberately inflammatory and largely unfounded remark intended only to rile Hywel Adams

But anyway, you may notice the blog is different.  I moved.  It looks a bit rubbish at the moment, I accept.  But I will smarten it up, I promise.

Secondly, the supposed diet.  Not a good week so far this week, and it isn’t going to get much better.  As I pointed out in my last post, Monday and Tuesday were disastrous.  A curry one night followed by a carvery (or “eat as much roast dinner as you can” as I usually call it) didn’t suggest I was taking this weight loss thing seriously.  The curry was my girlfriend’s idea (admittedly I didn’t put up much of a fight) and the carvery was for my Dad’s birthday.  Wednesday and Thursday were better, food-wise, but then I ruined things by having a few pints at a pub quiz last night.  Quite brilliantly we thought we’d won the quiz, until we realised we hadn’t thought to hand the answer sheet in.

And tonight I am going to visit some old friends and do a bit of a pub crawl probably followed by a curry.  Tomorrow morning my mate says he’ll cook me a fried breakfast.  I’ll then go and play cricket (very little physical exertion if I’m honest) and, if we win, I’ll probably sink a couple of pints down the club after.  Sunday I’ll be good, I promise.

Someone suggested I go to Weight Watchers, and while I’m sure they do a great job, there’s a stigma attached in that my Mum used to go.  And that’s before I think of “Fat Fighters” from Little Britain, and Peter Kay’s “slimming world” routine.  Obviously I’m not discounting going to Weight Watchers completely, but it’s way down my list of “ways to lose weight” just behind doing my girlfriend’s Davina McCall fitness DVD.  With the living room curtains open.  In my pants.