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

PUBLISHED:          22:03, 25 January 2014       | UPDATED:          22:03, 25 January 2014      

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.’

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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. 

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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.

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!’

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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.

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 £50 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’. 

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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.

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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.

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.

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