For the past seven days Jack Dee has been the only person in the Celebrity Big Brother house to provide any intentional comic relief. The comedian's reward last night was a standing ovation from the British public.
After a week spent showing there were 50 ways to leave Big Brother (he tried to escape at least twice) Dee was the last person in the house fending off tough competition from Brookside's Claire Sweeney and Boyzone's Keith Duffy.
If none of these images strikes a chord, then either you don't possess a TV or you actually have a life and as a result missed out on the surreal viewing experience that was Celebrity Big Brother. Before Popstars hit our screens, Big Brother was the other highly addictive fly-on-the wall reality TV series where 10 nobodies were incarcerated in an East London house stuffed with cameras and one evicted each week. We could watch them 24 hours a day on the Internet and tuned in every night to see them bond, bitch and in one case cheat. Last week, the nobodies were replaced by somebodies to raise money for Comic Relief. Not surprisingly it made for even more riveting TV and attracted viewers in their millions. The fact that the celebrity version of Big Brother raised hundreds of thousands for charity will read as a mere footnote in the face of the massive watercooler appeal of the programme.
Those who wrinkled their noses in disgust at the original Big Brother asked what was so fascinating about watching a bunch of ordinary people locked up together behaving like ordinary people. And to some extent they had a point.
They don't this time. CBB was inspired. Take a bunch of B-list celebs, put them in the same house and watch them try to behave like normal people. The result was seriously cringe-inducing but absolutely unmissable. It was stomachsquirming, irresistible television. It wasn't a case of, "Oh look, they are just like us". It was, "Ohmigod, they are much, much worse than us". And, where Dubliner Keith "f***ing" Duffy is concerned, they swear more. A lot more.
The Big Brother nobodies were in the house for more than two months. The "celebrities", comedian Jack Dee, TV presenters Vanessa Feltz and Anthea Turner, actress Claire Sweeney, boxer Chris Eubank and Boyzone member Keith Duffy were locked up for a week. Unlike the original, there were no cameras in the solitary bathroom. That was the only concession. Apparently, some bigger name celebs declined to take part after learning they would not have the use of Channel 4's hair and make-up department for the duration of their stay.
It was only a week, but some of them acted as though life without an agent and a personal assistant was a challenge akin to conquering Everest. For Vanessa Feltz the most stressful prospect was that she didn't have someone to tend to her straw-like hair extensions. Cleaning fanatic Anthea was always going to have trouble sustaining that perma-grin.
We soon discovered that Chris Eubank's legendary eccentricity (he wears a kaftan to bed and goes nowhere without his walking stick) is not an act and he annoyed everyone so much he was the first to be nominated for eviction along with Anthea. Anthea cried like a little girl who didn't get an invitation to her friend's birthday party. But it was unfortunate that Eubank was kicked out because at least he was being himself, unlike the others who were shamelessly playing to the hidden cameras. As the week wore on though, even bubbly Vanessa let her guard down and what transpired was fascinating. Taken from their usually pampered lifestyles and denied the luxury of an autocue, both Vanessa and Anthea revealed barely hidden insecurities.
Anthea is clearly wrestling with the public's disapproval of her after she had an affair with her friend's husband whom she then married. She wore a shell-shocked appearance most of the time.
But it was Vanessa who stole the show. After being nominated for eviction she completely lost the plot, scrawling words such as distraught, disconsolate, crippled and ambushed on a blackboard before becoming the first person to tell Big Brother to f*** off. She later told a frowning Jack Dee that the CBB experience was bringing a lot of things to the surface. The benefit of the celebrity aspect of Big Brother is that we all knew she meant her marriage breakdown and weight problems without her having to say it out loud.
The episode prompted one of the best exchanges of the week. Keith Duffy, who came into his own during the programme, emerging as "Housemate You Would Most Like To Go For A Pint With", took Vanessa to task. The sight of a 20-something popstar admonishing Vanessa for not having enough confidence and worrying too much about what people think was simply too entertaining to be true. Vanessa eventually cheered up, but she was the next to go, leaving Anthea feeling more popular than she has in a long time.
All the while Jack Dee, arguably the funniest person with the saddest face on the planet, said the caustic/funny/cynical things that we were all thinking as we groaned at the antics of Vanessa and Co. Who can blame him for trying to escape? He deserved to win if only for casually asking Anthea about "the thing with the chocolate bar" forcing her to explain why she allowed herself to be involved in publicity shots where she was photographed munching a certain chocolate bar on her wedding day.
CBB has taught us something - basically that celebrities are people too. Who, when reading about Anthea Turner's adultery, didn't secretly gloat and dump her in a mental box marked "She Deserves Everything She Gets"? And sure Vanessa has lost weight, but as we flick through OK! magazine we cruelly muse that it hasn't made her that much more attractive. After CBB nobody will look at celebrities the same way again. Slagging them off will not come as easy and in fact, for a short time, may even induce feelings of guilt.
Making fun of Chris Eubank's lisp certainly won't be as funny, you wouldn't dream of dismissing Keith Duffy as a has-been ex-boybander when you have seen how downright decent he is and now when we are watching Brookside's lesbian Lindsey Corkhill we will really be watching the lovely Claire Sweeney. And wondering what she had for breakfast.
SOME Celebrity Big Brother moments will never leave fans of the programme. Anthea's tears on learning she was nominated on the first night, Keith revealing that he finally had a poo and Vanessa going psycho with that piece of chalk. But can the memories ever replace the thrill of watching minor celebrities in their underwear, sweeping the floor while they sing (badly) songs from the Sound of Music? Naturally, there will be intense withdrawal symptoms, alleviated only by a Best of CBB video (soon please and with lots of previously unseen sections) watched over and over with other, similarly afflicted, addicts.
And star-struck wannabes should be forced to watch the tapes. Forget what you read in Hello!, this is what really happens when you get everything you ever wished for. They all may have some degree of fame and healthy bank balances but instead of this bringing happiness CBB showed that for some of the inmates it brought abject insecurity, fear of being alone and a melancholy bordering on the manic depressive. The Big Brother experience gave the nobodies a brief moment in the media spotlight after they left the house.
All six celebrity housemates got something more lasting, a boost to their ailing careers in the friendless, fickle world of showbiz.
