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Inane, vain and terminally moronic: The pathetic reality of life in the Celebrity Big Brother house... Three weeks ago, Liz Jones began her toughest assignment. This is her deliciously barbed verdict

By Liz Jones

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I don't do nude. Earlier in the day I’d watched, aghast, as Sam, a 23-year-old reality TV ‘star’, took a long, soapy shower in her bikini, leaving the glass door propped wide for all the world, or at least up to 3.8 million primetime viewers, to see. Sam Faiers, who I did not know until January 3, the day I staggered into the Celebrity Big Brother house, appears on ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex, a programme on which she apparently broke off her engagement to a young man who has DayGlo teeth and who is unable to tell the time.

Not for the first moment in my two-and-a-half weeks in the house did I wonder what on earth I was doing allowing myself to be surrounded by mirrors, cameras and microphones when I cannot bear  my own image or the sound of  my voice.

I was also surrounded by celebrities so stupid that when I said to housemate Lee Ryan, a boy band member, that I couldn’t open the loo door with my bare hands because of a germ phobia, he said: ‘Oh, you have an ATM.’

 
Liz Jones, pictured in the Celebrity Big Brother diary room, was evicted from the reality show on Wednesday

Liz Jones, pictured in the Celebrity Big Brother diary room, was evicted from the reality show on Wednesday

 

I corrected him, saying, No, I have OCD, and of course he retorted with that old celebrity rejoinder, high-fiving me and declaring: ‘Yeah, well, babe. I’m dyslexic.’

I’d decided to enter the house because I needed the rest (!), because some ‘easy’, silly money wouldn’t go amiss, and because I felt that simply ignoring reality TV, now it has reached saturation point, would make me not only arrogant, but hopelessly out of touch with the secretaries, supermarket till  operatives and hair salon creatives for whom shows such as Made In Chelsea are a distraction from their  own lives.

Above all, though, I felt I should do it because for the past 14 years I’ve written reality journalism. A camera might not have been zooming in on my orange-peel thighs, but my pen has speared my depression, my chronic shyness, my loved ones . . . You name it, I’ve exposed it via a metaphorical open shower door.

I’ve made my living, too, eviscerating ‘stars’, especially the type who never went to RADA, delivering  my verdict after spending an hour with them, or never having even met them. 

So, two days before entering the house, I was picked up by a people-carrier and carted off to Elstree. I’d been given a codename, ‘Lettuce’ (the CBB production team had been emailed a list of my eating requirements, hence the epithet), so news of my confinement wouldn’t leak.

 

 

I was told to wear a beanie and dark glasses so that when I arrived at the ghastly budget hotel, the sort of place that dispenses foam from an appliance nailed to the wall, I wouldn’t be rumbled.

My phones, laptop and book were wrestled from my sweaty palms and, after corridors and lifts were ‘swept’ by young women whispering into walkie talkies, for all the world like CIA operatives, I was shut in a room for two days with a young man who was to be my chaperone, an aspiring actor called Jonny. There was no minibar, no TV, no landline, no escape.

I was dreading 9pm on launch night, my only comforting thought that at least I’m so deaf I wouldn’t be able to hear the boos. As the hour approached, I was blindfolded, giant headphones placed over my ears, so that when I was steered into a waiting line of limos I would not glimpse the other 11 famous people heading inside. They shouldn’t have worried.

When I emerged onto the CBB red carpet through that giant Orwellian eye, to be told I would be handcuffed to a young man so small he could have been a charm on a bracelet and wearing trousers so low slung he resembled a toddler with a filled nappy, I had no idea he was a pop star called Dappy. 

Worse was to follow. 

 
Child's play: Liz reluctantly dresses up with her Celebrity Big Brother housemates

Child's play: Liz reluctantly dresses up with her Celebrity Big Brother housemates

 

As I stood with Dappy, at the bottom of those famous stairs, he was forced to become my human Google: ‘Pop star or footballer?’ I would hiss as I met my fellow housemates. It was going to be a very long three weeks indeed.

And, at first, my housemates didn’t disappoint. An American actress-slash-model called Jasmine immediately got drunk (not one night went by without cheap alcohol), missed parking her bony arse on a gilt chair, and crashed to the floor. She cut her leg, but when given a plaster in the Diary Room, stuck it randomly above the wound.

There was a pneumatic young woman from Essex who, on a long, wet afternoon, when asked to name an English city, would say hopefully, ‘Cornwall?’, a Nolan sister, light entertainment legend Lionel Blair, four-times heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield, who never lost his look of bewilderment, never once changed his sheets or towel and had never seen the show so he thought he could go to Bond Street shopping every day, and comedian Jim Davidson. I had to concentrate very hard not to call him Freddie, mixing him up with his hamster-eating colleague in comedy.

Nobody liked me. I told each one I am profoundly deaf, but ironically they didn’t hear me, as they only wanted to talk about themselves.


 'Have I had a threesome? I'm lucky if I ever get a twosome...'

Ollie, who made his name in Made In Chelsea, became so brown over the next few days he reminded me of Peter Sellers playing an Indian character in The Party (a film I doubt he’s seen).

When forced to express an opinion by Big Brother, who would boom at us at all hours of the day and night, Ollie was so traumatised at the possibility of not being liked by someone somewhere, a tear snaked down his face, leaving a white snail’s trail. 

 

 

I became more and more alienated, bored with the inane chatter. Even the so-called ‘other’ intelligent woman, Apprentice runner-up Luisa Zissman, who never failed to tell us of her three businesses, and the fact her new man bought her a Birkin bag for Christmas, was as hyperactive as a bee in a jam jar, and kept asking me if I’d ever had a  threesome. ‘I’m lucky if I ever get a twosome,’ I told her drily.

At the dining table after yet another meal (these people could eat for England!), they were all talking about the perils of fame, having to pose in other people’s selfies in the street and so forth, so I butted in nervously: ‘I get no benefit from being well-known at all.’

‘That’s because you’re not famous,’ said Jim, prompting me to wail in the Diary Room (I never pressed the ‘eye’ bell for admission, only entering when summoned): ‘I have millions of readers! If I were in a wheelchair they would have to be nice to me!’

Liz says: 'Nobody liked me. I told each one I am profoundly deaf, but ironically they didn't hear me, as they only wanted to talk about themselves'

Liz says: 'Nobody liked me. I told each one I am profoundly deaf, but ironically they didn't hear me, as they only wanted to talk about themselves'

Sometimes it was horrendous: being woken at 3am by bright lights and klaxons; stupid tasks in costume (a labrador dog soon entered proceedings, never to be seen again when I shouted that I would report Channel 5 to my friend at the RSPCA); the food deprivation, as being confined in a space pod with Lee, followed by two days of inedible slop, meant I went for four days without even a cup of instant coffee.

Amid all that and the otherwise monotonous routine, I began to forget I was on a TV set, and I started to get to know my housemates.

Linda Nolan, despite a No 3 hit record, millions of sales, and eight years on stage in Blood Brothers, had been surviving on benefits; she had battled with breast cancer, and in the past year has lost her sister, husband and mother.

Lee, who as a member of Blue sold millions of records, revealed one afternoon in the garden he doesn’t even own a flat, and any change from his CBB fee after buying his mum a new Citroen would go towards a deposit.


'Financial advice from Jim Davidson? He lost all seven of his houses'

He was asking Jim for financial advice; ironic, given Jim told us he had owned seven houses, but lost them all to the taxman, or to one of his four ex-wives. Jim had been booked to enter CBB the year before, but had been arrested at  the airport by the same squad  investigating Jimmy Savile, even though there were no underage sex accusations. No charges were brought, but he lost a year’s worth of earnings: each time he was saved by the British public, you could see the relief in his eyes. 

 

 

Sam told me she earns just ÂĢ50 a day on her TV show; she dons her famous false

lashes because she suffers from trichotillomania, a compulsion to pull out her own real hair.

Dappy, who was covered in so many tattoos I was driven to reading them all one evening, so desperate was I for a book, and who in a general knowledge test  scored only six per cent, which embarrassed him hugely, proved himself a gentleman when for the third night in a row I was sat in the bedroom toilet, vomiting from the stress. He held my hair from my face, and rubbed my back, cooing all the while.

But it was the glamour model, Casey, who was the most surprising of all, telling me she had never once achieved orgasm from a man, that she had been bullied at school for her big breasts, and never managed to make female friends. And there was me, thinking if only I were perfect, I would have sailed through life being adored.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was the ‘love triangle’ between Lee, Casey and the American, Jasmine. I don’t believe anyone had sex in the house; they merely kissed each other.  

Jasmine is the woman who, when I nominated her for being too beautiful, rounded on me in tears to say that I should not have said I wanted to kill myself as her father had committed suicide when she was a child, and that being prejudiced against beauty is tantamount to racism.

There were the arguments, daily, between Jim and Linda: she was ‘evil’; he ‘a chauvinist pig’. 

Liz waves to the crowd on Wednesday night after she was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house

Liz waves to the crowd on Wednesday night after she was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house

In one of my tasks, to write a news story about my time in the house and read it to my housemates, I did in fact get to the bottom of what happened decades before in Frank Carson’s dressing room, a small dark place that now has its own Twitter account. But I told Big Brother I would not be revealing it as I was not about to upset a woman –  even one who said on the show ‘I’m a Nolan not a nun’ – who was still grieving and who was driven to self-harm in the toilet due to her  distress over Jim’s behaviour.

Nor would I reveal the housemate who became so upset one night at how he thought he was being manipulated by the show that he took sleeping tablets mixed with alcohol. Or that the housemates were all  desperate in their own way.

 

 

Much has been made of the fact boards with a script were held up by production staff for a Towie versus Chelsea skit, but the inscriptions said merely ‘Get a pair of shoes from your bag’ and ‘Sing a song’.

Forced by these games to interact, like a team-building exercise, I gradually became bolder. When Evander Holyfield was recounting how he fell off a horse, which he then punched with a left hook, I turned on him, telling him that, given his profession, he should have learned some self-control. This confrontation, when I said I would ‘stab anyone who punched one of my horses’, was shown 15 minutes before his surprise eviction. I felt like Henry Cooper, felling a giant.

As eviction night came round (I survived three public votes), I was terrified at the prospect of having to face the world, but equally scared were I made to face yet another day of monotony interspersed with fear.

One day, I sat in the Diary Room and said, ‘Big Brother, everyone hates me. I’m just a blob.’ ‘Liz, you are not a blob,’ Big Brother reassured me. It was strangely comforting to have a disembodied voice on my side.

When I finally left the house on Wednesday night (I was always nominated because the others knew of my extreme homesickness; they would wink conspiratorially), my newfound friends stood at the bottom of the stairs, making my trademark hand gesture depicting my much missed puppies. I found to my surprise I already missed them, a group of people who are simply trying to make their way in the world.

Making a splash: This CBB bathtub scene, between Liz and Luisa Zissman, took Twitter by storm

Making a splash: This CBB bathtub scene, between Liz and Luisa Zissman, took Twitter by storm

 

When I got out I learned, from the TV audience, the executive producer, the on-set psychiatrist, my boyfriend and later from men and women who would come up to me in the street that ‘the scene in the bath tub was genius, it was comedy gold . . . It was the funniest, most tweeted moment so far . . . and must be one of the most watched clips on YouTube in the history of the show . . . !’

Really? Me, in a bath? Near the end of my confinement, Luisa, she of the hair extensions and insane levels of chutzpah, was given a secret task: to make me laugh out loud. Unbeknown to her, I’d been told I must on no account even giggle, as the whole house would suffer.

I retreated to the bathroom and, having been denied a burkini, put on my swimming costume, wrapped myself in a towel, and stepped into thick bubbles. Still, Luisa tracked me down. And so I drew on every bad thought, every setback in my life, to keep me from laughing.

I dug up ‘poor dead Squeaky’, said my mum will probably die while I’m in this kindergarten, that my boyfriend will dump me having now seen me in harsh lighting, that my old-lady bottom resembles a melting Viennetta, and that the only plus point living among all these beautiful young women has been that ‘Whatshername has developed a boil!’. 

 

 

This series has generated 2.5 million tweets. Reading them, people were saying, instead of my usual death threats and insults, how much they liked me.

‘You are a stunning, kind, wonderful woman,’ said one. Katie Piper wrote ‘Liz is hugely misunderstood!’, while Phillip Schofield, who normally tweets that I’m bitter and unhinged, wrote: ‘Hahahaha. That’s the best Liz has been!’

I had more viewers, for that bath scene than watched Nigella Lawson on Channel 4.


 'Instead of insults and death threats I was getting compliments'

I’ve changed, too. I know now why these celebrities give up their privacy, and rarely see their own families because they are always on tour. The thought I might have cheered someone up on a cold dark night because of my rant in a bath tub is a nice one.

And I think I will be kinder now I’m out, too. At a post-eviction shoot the next day, the photographer was saying that Jasmine, when she left the house, was ‘bloody awful. She said she slipped a disc but she was in six-inch heels!’, and that Casey, given her breasts are real, ‘is over,  now they’ve dropped’.

I hope Casey, only 29, finds the upshot of ageing will be a man  who wants to please her, not just help himself.

In Boots just now, women shopping in their lunch hour came up to me, thrilled: ‘We talked about you in the office every day! We were rooting for you! We love you!’ Even my ex-husband emailed to say: ‘You were a model of grace.’

That’s why people want to be famous. That’s why they do shows like this one. Love. Entertainment. It’s as simple as that.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs...t.html#ixzz2rSCw9WaX Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

FM
Last edited by Former Member

11.33pm: The Dappy / Lee conversation continues into the night. Lee maintains he and Casey agreed to 'just be friends' long ago

 

11.47pm: We've lost count of how many times Lee's said "bruvs" during his chat with Dappy

 

 

12.04am: The epic chat is over. Lee's in the toilet. Dappy's clambered into bed. Looks like it's the end of Day 23

 

12.20am: We're looking at an empty House here. We've a feeling we'll have a bunch of wide-awake HMs early tomorrow morning

 

12.44am: There's nought but a faint Zzzz in the House at the moment in terms of activity

 

1.00am: Lee's sleepless in Borehamwood and in the smoking area. Penny for 'em, Lee

 

1.18am: Jim snores. Dappy lifts something to throw at him to stop it. Realises it's a dirty pair of pants. Thinks better of it

 

1.38am: Important news! Jim has stopped snoring. Nice one, Jim

 

1.55am: We're signing off. HMs will be livewires tomorrow with all the kip they're getting. See you bright and early

FM
Last edited by Former Member

NEWS

Day 23 round-up: A ticking time bomb

3 hours ago

After a topsy turvy evening that saw Luisa and Jim manage a conversation without a slanging match, the housemates awoke feeling chipper on Day 23.

Little did they know, Big Brother was about to lob a great big cat amongst the pigeons.

The For Who the Bell Tolls task introduced a grandfather clock into the Living Room. When the timepiece chimed, housemates had to take on statue like status and not move a muscle.  To make things a little trickier, BB had a few surprises in store.

Sam's mum stepped over the threshold, Ollie got a smacker from his pooch and the boys from Blue left Lee with a non too subtle mantra (One Love).

But that was nothing compared to the shocker that was Jasmine's entrance into the living room! Awkward doesn't do it justice. After laying into a wide-eyed frozen-faced Casey, the spurned Lee lover let rip into our 'confused' boy-band lothario.

The fallout was momentous with Jim acting as a shoulder to cry on for Casey and the lads (Dappy, Ollie and Jim) offering Lee a few pearls of wisdom. Once again, for Lee, sorry seemed to be the hardest word.

 The day's drama took its toll on out housemates and they were in all bed by midnight. This task is ticking over into tomorrow. What will Big Brother throw at the housemates next? Watch this space.  

MrsH

Day 24: The big freeze continues

 

There's more surprises in store for our unwitting housemates, as 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' task continues for a second day. The rules are the same – as soon as the giant grandfather clock in the living room rings, the housemates must freeze and become human statues. Once frozen, Big Brother will send in distractions which the housemates must ignore – got that Lee?

Today's surprises will see someone's mum offering motherly advice, a BFF leading a dance troupe and a message of support from a spouse.

Oh and not forgetting the mother of all surprises for one unsuspecting housemate. Want to know what we're talking about? You'll have to stick with us to find out...

MrsH

Celebrity Big Brother 2014: Linda Nolan 'self-harmed' in the house

Linda Nolan [Celebrity Big Brother 2014)
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Evicted Celebrity Big Brother 2014 housemate Linda Nolan has claimed she self-harmed in the house.

 

And in true Linda fashion, just like global warming and world poverty (probably), it was all Jim Davidson’s fault.

She told the Daily Star Sunday newspaper today: “I’ve self-harmed in the past and I did it in the house. I hadn’t done it since 2012.

“But that’s what Jim’s behaviour made me do. He made me feel the need to do it again.”

The 54-year-old told the newspaper that Jim bringing up her late husband in one of their numerous arguments left her depressed in her last week of the show.

“After Brian died I selfharmed for more than two years Back then I was very low and went through periods of feeling very suicidal,” she said. “The only reason I went back to that dark place was because Jim brought me there by bringing up what happened.”

Nolan singer Linda claimed: “Jim reminded me how much I miss my husband.

 

“He reminded me Brian wasn’t going to be there to put his arms around me and make everything okay.”

She continued: “He said it to cause a row and then denied he’d even said it. That’s the kind of person we’re dealing with. It was stooping to the lowest point.

“He knew it would get to me. When he apologised it made me feel sick. He can’t be sorry for it because he knows he shouldn’t have said it. It’s unforgivable.”

Meanwhile, Linda confessed that she found being booed during her exit on Friday night “upsetting”, but said she wasn’t going to hide her true feelings.

“I was horrified by the crowd reaction. It was upsetting. But I was true to myself,” she explained. “I can close my eyes at night because I know I’ve been honest.

“If the public hate me for that, there’s nothing I can do.”

Celebrity Big Brother airs nightly on Channel 5.



Read more: http://tellymix.co.uk/reality-...e.html#ixzz2rVHGlHZA 
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MrsH

Celebrity Big Brother 2014: Lee Ryan gets punished over Jasmine Waltz's return

lee in the diary room
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Lee Ryan is set to be punished by Big Brother over Jasmine Waltz’s return to the house.

 

Yesterday, housemates were set a task to freeze every time they heard the clock toll.

A giant grandfather clock was put in the living area and would sporadically ring. When the clock rung, housemates had to freeze completely and become human statues.

Housemates were to ignore any surprises and stay frozen in order to win the task. Housemates could only move again when they heard the second clock toll.

Yesterday, the following people entered the house whilst they were frozen:

1. Blue – Blue entered the house singing One Love. Housemates successfully stayed frozen.

2. Sam’s Mum (Sue) – Sue entered the house to talk to Sam. Housemates successfully stayed frozen.

 

3. Ollie’s mum, sister and dog (Sarah, Amelia and Evie) – Sarah and Amelia brought in Ollie’s dog and spoke to Ollie. Housemates successfully stayed frozen.

4. Jasmine Waltz – Jasmine entered the house and confronted Lee and Casey over their behaviour since she’s left. Lee unfroze and spoke to Jasmine.

As a punishment for unfreezing when Jasmine entered the house yesterday Lee will be called to the diary room and be punished. Big Brother will teach Lee a lesson on how to remain frozen.

The task continues today with more surprises although we’re not sure how they can top yesterday’s dramaâ€Ķ perhaps with a secret eviction?

Highlights of the task will air tonight on Channel 5 from 9PM.



Read more: http://tellymix.co.uk/reality-...n.html#ixzz2rVHizAWp 
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MrsH

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