Dublin - While Anna, Craig and Darren dream of freedom from the Big Brother house, it seems the rest of us are obsessed with the question of which of them will grab the £70,000 prize awaiting this evening's winner of the British game show, writes Harry Browne
After nine weeks of occasional drama, in which 10 original contestants have been "evicted" down to three, tonight's Channel 4 programme sees this week's viewers' vote tallied and the winner announced. And, with Dubliner Anna Nolan in with a shout, Irish viewers are frantically seeking ways to cast a vote: up until now, the voting, to a British premium number, has largely been possible only from UK-based lines.
Help is at hand - at a price, of course. Budget Telecom, a company based in Blackrock, Co Dublin, provides the simplest solution: just dial a number here and your call is put straight through to the Channel 4 computer, at 46p a pop. A Budget spokesman said more than 25,000 calls were registered in the first five hours of operation yesterday, including, he admitted, a good few anti-Anna votes.