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.Undeterred by this strong whiff of tragedy, the programme steams on, coughing up clips of George Best, Lynne Perrie, Tracey Emin and Shane MacGowan (whose face, following years of hardcore glugging, now resembles a puff-pastry model of the moon, speckled with broken teeth).So far, so predictable, although along the way we’re also offered more unusual and well-researched clips than you might expect.There’s some great footage of monkeys getting drunk and falling from trees, and an astonishing snippet from a 19608 booze experiment in which a clean-cut middle-ager explains that he drinks very little—‘just a couple of beers in the morning, maybe an aperitif, wine with every meal, and cognac in the evening…’We even get to see Sir Robert Winston smashed out of his mind during an episode of The Human Body (although sadly he’s simply illustrating a point about the effect alcohol has on the brain—he doesn’t get pissed and fight a conjoined twin in a bid to prove fists work better when you’re drunk, more’s the pity).The overall effect is pretty weird.On the one hand, the show is offering a snickering ironic ‘hurrah’ to acts of public self-destruction, and on the other…well, the clips ARE funny.But that’s alcoholic abandon through and through.It’s funny watching someone twirl round with a traffic cone on their head.It’s less funny when they shit themselves and punch you.And it’s miserably unfunny when they continue to do it until their liver conks out and they turn yellow and die.Unless they do it on a chat show.Then it’s hilarious.London’s village idiot[6 August 2005]Foul and unsettling? Yes siree! As per tradition, let’s put all human decency to one side, hold a pistol to our collective temple and celebrate the approaching finale of Big Brother 6 (C4) with a pointless little awards ceremony, coming to you live from an As piece of newspaper held in front of your eyes right now.First up, the prestigious Most Sickening Housemate award, which this year goes to a couple: Maxwell (London’s village idiot) and Saskia (burly, wrathful harridan with a face that could advertise war).Their daily routine consisted of bullying, bellowing, cackling at their own dismal non-jokes, glaring, sniping and discussing their imminent ascent to the topmost peaks of stardom—until the last week, when, faced with eviction, they settled for sulkily rutting like doomed livestock.The latter surely ranks as the least sexy thing ever broadcast on television.I’d get more aroused watching a dog drown in petrol.Next, it’s the Stupidest Single Statement award.This year’s show contained dumber utterings than ever before.There was an early classic from Anthony, who, while frolicking semi-naked in the pool, carped ‘What’s the matter with youse, you’re sitting there like you’re watching a television show’ to a disapproving Science.Sadly, that’s ineligible because it was immediately followed by the year’s wisest rejoinder (Science: ‘I am.’)Which means it’s a race between Craig’s frank admission that ‘I aren’t too familiar with the rules of the English language’ and Anthony’s claim that he’s ‘more developed than a plant’—both of which are beaten by Saskia’s jaw-dropping assertion that the Second World War started in 1966.The award for Most Alarming Behaviour goes, inevitably, to Craig—a high-risk FBI profile made flesh.When he wasn’t proclaiming his own brilliance, weeping, masturbating, or shrieking uninformed opinions at a uninterested world, he was mindfucking his beloved Anthony—a man so profoundly thick you could sell him a pair of his own socks for £500, even if he was already wearing them.Their relationship reached its nadir the night Anthony got paralytic and Craig sensed an opportunity.A bleak farce ensued—Anthony vomiting and crying for his gran, Craig frantically cuddling him while shouting, ‘I’m your only friend in here.’ It felt more like an extended out-take from Deliverance than a reality show.How Craig passed the psychological vetting process, and why he wasn’t quietly removed from the house and given some gentle guidance, is a deeply worrying mystery.The Cheated Winner award is a close call between two acquired-taste housemates.Only a heartless warlord couldn’t warm to Eugene, a well-meaning human pylon whose ineptitude and timidity meant he was out of his depth from the off.But he’s narrowly pipped by Science, a bull-headed, one-man belligerence engine who delighted in provoking Maxwell and Derek to breaking point.For services to torture alone, Science should’ve won.Just time for a few parting gongs.The award for Snidest Conniving Prick goes to Derek, a man so devious he probably pisses cobra venom; the Ugliest Body award is split between Sam and Orlaith, for poking their fake, motionless tits in the viewer’s face (presumably to attract the sort of person who’d like to screw their way through the plastinated corpses at Professor von Hagens’ Body-worlds exhibition)
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