Here it comes, whether you like it or not.
Big Brother is approaching for its annual cavalcade of fame-hungry stage-school kids fighting, shouting, crying and shoving wine bottles up their vajayjays – but this time, there’ll be a difference. This is Richard Desmond’s Big Brother now it’s on Channel 5.
I wrote a short while ago about how Desmond’s publications have turned into an incestuous circle-jerk of cross-promotion in which it’s hard to work out where the plugging ends and the actual content begins. And BB is going to be all of that, but turned up to 11.
It has already begun.
“We’re starting to get really excited about the return of BB,” says New magazine, ahead of the usual rather predictable celebrity flimflam in which it’s reported that Cheryl Cole zeugmatically lambasted her sometime beau Ashely Cole on the phone: “You’ll never be in my life, my home or my heart again”.
Meanwhile, Star magazine says “We’re all talking about Big Brother’s return!”. Are we? Apparently, we are. Well, when you’re in the Desmond universe, we are.
OK goes with “Big Brother presenters finally reveal their shocking new celebrity housemates” on the cover, introducing a story in which, surprise surprise, the new celebrity housemates aren’t actually revealed. But regular readers know by now that the coverlines aren’t so much a description of what’s inside the mag as a series of long-range salvoes intended to hit as many targets as possible. Brian Dowling, host of the new show, reveals that he would love to see “Britney Spears and the Octomom”.
So now we know.
As well as all that, there’s a handily-timed celebrity coupling of former Big Brother contestants – Alex Reid, crossdressing cagefighter and onetime husband of Katie Price, has become smitten with Chantelle Houghton, the celebrity who wasn’t a celebrity, but then she was, but then she wasn’t again. Never let it be said, by the way, that I’m snooty about this kind of publication because it contains some delightful prose:
When these two heartbreak refugees, drowning in the shark-infested waters of failed celebrity relationships, clambered aboard their love life raft and bumped lips for the first time, the nation raised a collective eyebrow and tutted,
splurges the intro, rather joyfully anticipating the cynicism. OK is well worth a read, even if you have no love whatsoever for the parade of beaming physogs within.
The stage is set, then, for an all-out assault from Desmond’s assets over the coming weeks. The Daily Star has always prided itself (if “pride” is a feeling we can, hand on heart, associate with that publication) on plastering its pages with Big Brother whenever it turns up; and this can surely only accelerate as the frenzy begins; the Daily Express will no doubt show a great deal more interest in BB this time around, due to the Channel 5 connection.
There’s nothing wrong or unethical with any of this, by the way; it’s just that I think it might be interesting to see the way in which the rival publications deal with it. How are the Star and Express‘s non-Desmond-owned tabloid counterparts going to cope with giving what is essentially free publicity to a competing business? On the other hand, it’s going to be difficult to pretend that Big Brother isn’t there, either. Is there going to be some way of covering it without covering it? Perhaps we’ll start to see a slew of articles on how BB isn’t what it used to be, how it should have ended with Davina, how it’s all gone pear-shaped since it moved from Channel 4… and perhaps it’s not beyond the realms of imagination to think that these kind of articles are already being penned in preparation for the battle ahead.
As for me, I’ve always watched Big Brother, and I suspect that isn’t going to change any time soon; whether it survives the transition from Channel 4 to Channel 5 we don’t know just yet. But I think that the move might actually be a chance, to use that horrible phrase, to “reboot the franchise” and clear out the clutter. If it does fail, I have a feeling it won’t be because of a lack of support from Richard Desmond’s other assets.
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