So let me be one of those happy few (currently less than 2 million), to say that not only am I still watching Big Brother, but I’m enjoying this series more than perhaps any in the last three or four years.  Outside the house, the show’s luck seems to have completely run out, but get past the camera runs and the opposite is happening.  Fate has decreed that storylines such as housemate Noirin’s ability to infatuate all the heterosexual males in her company, have been allowed to twist and turn to their fullest extent.

Let’s take Noirin, for example. Her first admirer was bullied out of the house by Marcus, who swiftly became admirer number two.  This led to an entertaining and protracted period in which Marcus’ ego was able to inflate to such an extent that not only had he convinced himself  Noirin reciprocated his lust, he also started referring to himself as in mythological terms, labelling himself Captain Cool-As-Fuck and the Dark House.

As a viewer you were desperate for his comeuppance to be delivered on screen, but in classic Big Brother style as soon as it came, your allegiances began to shift and Marcus suddenly became a sympathetic figure. And that’s how it has been this series – it’s been a year of shifting allegiances, slow-burning storylines, and at least a few genuinely intelligent housemates.  Plus, the show can still deliver some excellent and insightful editing by the production team.

Listening to the radio the other day, Mark Kermode said of the controversial Lars Von Trier film Antichrist, (and I’m paraphrasing here) anyone who slags it off without having first seen it is an ignoramus.  It would be good if the same rule could be applied to Big Brother.

So, without further ado… press release!

The wait is nearly over. Tomorrow at 9pm live on Channel 4, Big Brother will celebrate a decade on the air with the arrival of 8 men and 8 women who each have a plan to entertain us over the summer months and leave the house victorious (and £100,000 richer).

Those entering the house could potentially spend up to 13 weeks in the Big Brother house but in true Big Brother style they won’t be allowed to get too comfortable. Within minutes of them all arriving, Big Brother will reveal to viewers and those in the house that they are not yet official housemates and will not get access to the full Big Brother house.

All hopeful housemates will have to individually earn their housemate status over the next three days by completing tasks set by Big Brother. Each task has been designed to challenge the hopefuls’ fears and pride and some will require them to go head to head against one another in a bid to become a bone fide housemate.

Only once the ‘hopefuls’ have successfully completed a task and been granted housemate status will they be allowed access to the ‘real’ Big Brother house. Until then they will only be able to access the living room (void of any creature comforts), a toilet and the garden.

Hopefuls won’t get access to their suitcases and will be forced to spend their first night sleeping on the living room floor. Bathing will be a bath in the garden which can only be filled by carrying cold water in a hole-ridden bucket across the garden.

All 16 people entering the house have been in hiding for the past few weeks. All that is being revealed before the launch is that the 16 are the most diverse group yet, with hopeful housemates from a wide range of countries and backgrounds. The eldest is 40 and the youngest is 18.

Tune in tonight at 9pm to see Davina McCall reveal the identities of the new potential housemates in the Big Brother launch programme direct from the house.

Many parties can look at the Sussex singer with the tics and the trousers and feel grateful towards him. Fellow housemate Nikki, for realising that there was more to people than money and showbiz. His mother, for taking pride and benefit from her son’s universal popularity. Tourette’s and its sufferers, for seeing the positive end of the stigma of twitches and obscenities. But perhaps, most of all, BB itself, as a programme and a genre which Pete has almost been pushed into saving single-handedly.

BB ran for 13 weeks – a quarter of a year, if you like it to sound somehow longer – and involved no fewer than 22 different individuals. 14 entered the house at the beginning, two replaced walkers after a week, another was drawn in at random from a commercial tie-in, and four of the remaining five were sent in from a neighbourly side project, with the fifth never quite making the house. This made BB long, laborious, controversial, sometimes overpowering, and often too complicated or badly explained to raise authentic interest or debate. The risks involved with such a plethora of innovations and surprises meant that BB had to put all its confidence in its existing housemates to keep the dream and the figures alive. Pete led by example.

The favourite since bookmakers first quoted odds, the early belief in Pete was pinned down by his obvious ability in the early stages to amuse everyone and annoy no-one. Cliques were formed, arguments soon raged, and tensions built. Pete took absolutely no part in these developments at all, and managed to use his own strong personality, and facility to smile and energise, to make sure he alienated nobody whose side he didn’t join.

As the contestant numbers dropped, then rose, and then dropped again, Pete’s schtick never altered. Either blissfully happy and active, or worryingly reflective and lonely, he nonetheless had the whole house taking his side, asking his approval, considering his responses, checking his well-being, queuing for his affections. Although the Tourette’s could have earned him the status of sympathy vote in the earliest stages, the others didn’t use it as an excuse to leave him be as he was quite adamant he didn’t consider it an issue himself, and never did he use his condition to garner empathy or hugs. Indeed, all his Tourette’s ever did was make people laugh (with him, not at him) and have the E4 live feed censors working harder than ever.

BB‘s masters realised the invincibility of Pete early on and, given that his exceptional attitude towards his Tourette’s was earning the show its most positive publicity of the run, it was perhaps understandable that as the crescendo got nearer and his general demeanour about his future grew gloomier, they made an unsubtle and hugely contentious decision to crowbar his main soulmate, the high-maintenance Nikki, back into the mixer even though she had legitimately – if surprisingly – been evicted by the public a month earlier. This, along with a letter from his mother which reassured him that his antics had transformed her life, gave Pete the final impetus he needed to get his glowing smile back and goof around in the closing week up to finals night.

Actually, Pete goofed very little, except when BB forced him to. Nikki’s return to the house shortly after Imogen’s departure the previous weekend resulted in a sweet, if somewhat uncomfortable, week where the two of them barely took their hands off each other unless they absolutely had to. Nikki, fresh from photo shoots and TV deals, had her saintly boy back earlier than she imagined, and the public watched their courtship unfold and feel somewhat nosy, even allowing for BB‘s whole purpose of warts ‘n’ all voyeurism.

The first 48 hours of Nikki’s homecoming left Pete devoid of sleep, so goofing was the last thing on his mind when, having won a slow BMX bike task, he was instructed to take his reward – a Diary Room disco with cocktails and ’80s music – at a time when he was just dropping off to much-needed slumber. Eventually, the alcohol on offer livened him up (oddly, it has the opposite effect on me) and by the time the slow dance song began (Spandau Ballet’s True, natch), Nikki was listening on the other side of the door, desperate to join Pete in his personal nightclub for the six minutes worth of cuddling and tonsil hockey which Gary Kemp’s girly backing vocals always spur. For his part, Pete turned his back on the camera and pretended to smooch with himself. Goofing at last.

Upon his fatigue-ridden, inebriated exit, he put a lounge pouffe on his head and began crashing into things, much to everyone’s obvious regalement, although the frolics could have turned catastrophic when Pete, drunk and in an enclosed receptacle, jumped deliberately into the pool, with lifeguard Glyn realising the danger as he freewheeled towards the water and following him in. He got a stern earful from BB for that, although his safety seemed to be less of an issue to them – in contrast with Glyn’s idiocy on the surrounding walls a week earlier – than the fact that he had left the pouffe in the pool and bust an expensive microphone. Pete, perhaps in hope that he’d soon have £100,000 to help him, offered to pay for a new mike. And finally, he was then allowed to sleep.

So, with Pete back in fully-fledged gregarious mode, the result of the final vote was again in safe hands. Only his self-imposed exile prior to the big night would change matters, and with Nikki stroking his head and making girlish chuckling noises, that wasn’t going to happen. Therefore, the placings of the other five became the big talking point and the subject of much fluttering by a watchful public. A whopping 16 housemates had seen their chances scuppered, from shapely Loughborough droner Bonnie back in May (May! I’ve married, honeymooned and watched a World Cup since then) through to Welsh dullard Imogen last week. So, with Pete and the resurrected Nikki we had taff teenager Glyn, gay Canuck waiter Richard, complex London ghetto girl Aisleyne and breezy Scouse latecomer Jennie. The initial odds showed that Richard’s record-busting six eviction escapes had not hugely prompted a swathe of admiring votes his way as people’s attentions switched to picking one winner rather than five losers, while the hopes of Aisleyne and Jennie were extremely limited. If anyone was going to usurp Pete, it was Glyn, whose genuine journey of life through a lens had earned him many supporters, some on the celebrity sofa next to Dermot O’Leary on Big Brother’s Little Brother, while the ever-important provincial Wales vote – especially for a lad so valiantly nationalistic – was always going to help him.

As for Nikki, it seemed clear that for all her brilliance in the house first time round, she wasn’t going to retain her support due to the discomfort and bad headlines generated by the decision to concoct a scheme which would plant her back alongside Pete for the finale and generally make a mockery of the public’s say. Good money was spent getting her out – albeit in a convoluted and inconclusive manner which was BB‘s own fault to begin with – and therefore the show’s disciples felt it was wrong to have her back as a candidate. Jon Tickle was never allowed to win BB4 when he was voted back in (although he probably would have done, an irony that does the current BB no favours) and Nikki should have been likewise.

As entertaining as it was to see her there, the familiarity with Nikki’s ruinous personality meant that the protests about tasks and temperatures were not met with the same mixture of bemusement and mirth by the public. They were misplaced. The other housemates, equally as accustomed with Nikki’s habits and how to deal with them, just laughed at her. For all the solace she took to Pete, ultimately her reunification with the house didn’t work. Jennie was bored, while Pete felt the daggers nudging into his back. The public were simply not going to vote for her to win. She became in serious danger of having all the goodwill of the masses drawn away from her, especially in the final 24 hours when she evidently couldn’t disguise her envy at Pete’s ease alongside Aisleyne.

As Nikki’s revival ran cold, the final week was, by contrast, a hugely significant one for Aisleyne. Her curate’s egg status in the house – everyone has praised her or slagged her off at some point – meant that she couldn’t confidently predict that she wasn’t a pariah outdoors as well, as her only test of the public’s faith came when burpy Jayne’s crimes put everyone up, forcing Nikki out via a massively split vote. The fact that a considerable number of others were up against her meant that Aisleyne couldn’t take great comfort from survival, as she didn’t know whether she came second or 10th. Her days ever since have been made up of emotional extremities – either positive and femininely jovial, or in deep, depressive paranoia that the proles were itching for a proper chance to get her out. Her fears and hopes were never conclusively proved either way, and so she would simply have to wait to see how long she could hang on through the last night. However, perhaps unwittingly, BB helped Aisleyne’s cause for a good last hurrah no end.

A task was set whereby housemates, in the privacy of the Diary Room, had to guess which of their fellow room-mates had used various quotations in their final audition tapes prior to entering the house. The rest were fairly innocuous, but Aisleyne was horrified to see herself on the plasma screen 13 weeks ago, in baseball cap and street clothes, wearing lashings of hard make-up and in possession of – as Richard put it – a “trout pout”, claiming that if anyone crossed her, she would “fuck you up”. She came across as crass and ignorant, and Aisleyne saw that as clear as day. She was acutely embarrassed by her words and image, rightly, but immediately there was a ticking in public brains about how the BB experience had fundamentally changed her for the better, with Aisleyne still confrontational and brassy, but with a softened edge, less make-up and – after a mickey-take too many in the house – fewer “black” expressions in her dialogue. Within 24 hours of the video being shown, and of Aisleyne’s mortification (and apologetic tears in the toilet and Diary Room), the votes were stacking up and the official bookies made her a sudden second favourite.

On went the week, with more games and tasks given to the housemates in an effort to free up their tensions. With the exception of Jennie, who was feeling an outcast since Nikki’s return, the housemates felt freer than their compatriots in previous BBs have in the final week of their stay. The day of judgment was barely mentioned until Pete happened to tell Richard he wondered whether his achievements over the 13 weeks would count for anything were he not to win. This could have been a final piece of cynical vote-winning, especially as Pete had made it clear that his industrious mother was to be the sole beneficiary of any monies he picked up, but one feels that he earned the benefit of any doubts at all.

Glyn, Aisleyne, Richard and Nikki also talked of winning. Nikki’s mention of it seemed shallow in her situation, but although Glyn talked down his chances, certainly others in the house seemed truly convinced that it was him or Pete who would walk out last and that it was too close to call. I doubt they were being polite, as everyone recognised his entertaining life journey over 13 weeks as much as those outside did. It culminated in BB revealing his A level results on the penultimate night, with an A in art and E grades in English and Welsh (so low because he’d only half-completed his exams prior to entering the house) prompting a belly whoop of delight from the future undergraduate of Bangor University. His aims to be a teacher, a Plaid Cymru politician and the bloke who dethrones Prince Charles’ position as the Prince of Wales, remain on course.

As for Richard, he kept his glory ambitions for the Diary Room, reminding himself and us all that the money was just that, and with a sick mother waiting for him, he knew where his priorities lay, irrespective of where he was placed. All noble and befitting of a decent guy, described by Aisleyne as the “backbone” of the house, whose mischief and monologues have kept the nation regally entertained.

So, the final night arrived. Davina McCall, mere weeks away from her third child’s debut, did her regular patter of relentlessness when it came to the voting lines, squeezing every last drop of coinage out of an exhausted but loyal public. After some final brief house events (including a round of endorsement speeches for each housemate, which Aisleyne failed miserably to manage on a forgiving Pete’s behalf, incurring Nikki’s exaggerated wrath), we went through the traditional “housemates take a bow” routine. The still awful Shahbaz turned up, in Scottish motif shirt and tie combo and without lingering thoughts of suicide, while it was nice to see Bonnie come back, looking well but undoubtedly still browned off at the emphasis on her pronunciation (Davina: “Say your name for us one more time!”) and the way she sustained the first eviction through little of her own doing. George, the bescarfed posh lad who split because he didn’t like the idea of fame (and was missed for every subsequent day he wasn’t there), presumably thought he could still risk one more night of flashlights by coming along for the bunfight. Only the legally-barred Sezer and airbrushed fraudster Dawn did not make the trip, while Davina magnanimously made sure that Next Door outcast Jonathan got the cheers the Cumbrian doorman’s low-key eviction didn’t produce.

Then to business as the first eviction was announced. While Aisleyne began a verbal crusade, believing she would be out quickly and painfully, the announcement was for Jennie to say her farewells. Everyone knew that her time would be up before any of the more settled quintet around her, and her own discomfort in the last week over not being able to embrace Nikki’s return seemed to wrap her in too many chains for a final push towards voters. Less than 1% of the public thought she was a winner.

The pretty teenager had curled her hair and donned a businesslike white skirt (“I’m dressed as a girl!”) for her departure and smiled sportingly at the crowd, who gave her a warm response as the doors trundled open. In her interview under the big, ugly dome stage which adorns all BB finals, she made it clear she felt left out and ostracised by Nikki’s re-arrival (“All I felt that I did was make the butties and the good brews”), even though she regarded her closeness with Pete in the same way as she would with a girlfriend, and therefore wasn’t specifically jealous on a romantic front.

Bright, eloquent and tenacious, Jennie achieved much by staying until the end. She brushed off the distinct disadvantage of being one of the four housemates voted in from Next Door by Aisleyne, and gleefully broke the pattern (or the “curse” as she accurately described it) of turfing out the newbies by clinging on to the limit, surviving nominations with affluent ease. As Davina rightly pointed out, she was infinitely more mature than her 18 years (something from which Nikki, Grace and Lisa, all older, could learn) and her feistiness in argument was complemented by her ceremonious attitude and willingness to muck in, have fun, smile a lot and not be fazed.

Jennie’s basic problem was that there was nothing specific in her personality for the observant viewer to grasp on to, and ultimately everything she achieved was eclipsed by someone else doing it better. Her gatecrasher status, at a time when the housemates were settled in punters’ psyche, added to her barriers, but for all that, she could feel proud of her stint. While some of the long-gone tenants on housemates’ row were nonplussed by her as they’d never been introduced, she got generous applause from those who did make her acquaintance.

Five left. Aisleyne’s face suggested she couldn’t bear the tension as the big screen showed everyone back on the sofa, waiting for Davina’s next notice to quit. And, as if to prove that BB‘s manipulation of the public would only ever backfire at voting time, Nikki’s name was announced after only 6.5% of her former devotees felt she was a winner. She seemed shocked – and Aisleyne’s hilarious hungry-guppy expression flaunted her own incredulity that she had beaten Nikki – but quickly offered her cheek pecks, put her handbag over her shoulder and headed for the exit, as if she thought she had it sussed after her last go.

“Why are they booing?” she wailed, loudly, as she heard the banner-brandishing cretins issue less than complimentary sounds prior to the slide of the doors. The boos ultimately didn’t outstrip the more acclaiming noises from the live audience, but Nikki was aghast and rooted to the spot. Not for the first time, Davina had to take her hand and soothe her.

The interview was a disaster, both for the viewing public and the production team. Nikki was a fish out of water, bewildered and hurt by the reaction, and very simply wouldn’t listen to Davina’s patient effort at questioning, nor barely even acknowledge her existence. We got one cogent answer only (“scared”, when Davina asked Nikki how she felt) and the hostess, despite being three weeks from motherhood again, even knelt down in front of the ludicrous figure to try to cajole her, but this wasn’t happening.

Nikki wasn’t getting her own way, and didn’t have the charisma, intelligence or emotional strength to cast aside the jibes and get on with it. Although her brain doesn’t contain too much, you could see every cog trying to work inside her, probably struggling with rust as she failed to suss what was happening to her. “Can I go and sit over there with them?” she asked, pathetically, looking at the dual rows of ex-housemates. Davina gave up and let her go. Now the bedraggled anchor had to fill some time; almost 10 minutes had suddenly become available, and therefore an eviction not scheduled until the later screening was due to take place sooner.

From what I could work out, the third eviction was to be announced prior to the ritual half-hour interval to allow Jimmy Carr and Dave Spikey to be unfunny and get paid for it, but the person in question was not to leave until the return to Borehamwood afterwards, just like an average run-of-the-mill heave-ho. However, the truncated interview with the wretched Nikki left Davina with a gap to plug and, clearly performing the difficult talkback trick as she sifted through her script cards and spoke to the masses, she worked her way back towards the big screen and prepared for another departure.

With four left, it at last felt like the proper final. Usually it’s a quartet of finalists who face the blackball game and now we had them. I’m chuffed to say they were my final four of choice too. Pete, Glyn, Richard and Aisleyne probably couldn’t have predicted for sure which of them it would be, although Aisleyne remained convinced through her sound-offs within Davina’s set-up patter that each eviction would be hers. However, it was Richard, with 9.2%of the four-handed vote, who got this call to stairs.

Richard’s first thought was to bolster Aisleyne’s confidence further by pointing out where she now stood (“You see, Aisleyne? Third at least!”) prior to his stroll to the doors. Donning his favourite naval hat – the bald Richard always wore some sort of headgear except when in bed – he climbed the stairs with some nerves, but had no need to be concerned when the exit flung open.

The reception this layered, captivating housemate received was deservedly explosive, and he lapped it up. Two mock-plays for the physical attentions of the pair of beefcake-types guarding the door and balcony were followed by an almighty hug from Davina and an excellent interview.

Richard’s original BB profile included a morbid fear of pregnant women, which made the situation potentially troublesome for his interrogator. “When I was a boy, a woman’s water (sic) broke in front of me”, he explained, as Davina told him to look up rather than down, adding nicely, “You probably haven’t looked down there for a while, have you?”

On to business, with Richard enjoying a montage of daytime TV-esque “advice” clips from his many efforts to counsel housemates with problems, and the one-liners in the nomination process, which probably was the main key to his constant survival. Then he explained carefully his “plastics” theory (“The great thing about the plastics is that they can be reformed … they are very good people … have you not seen Mean Girls? Imogen was Gretchen Weiners, Grace was the queen bee, she was Regina George, and Nikki was the one who couldn’t remember her name!”) and his adoration for Nikki, Lea and Susie, plus the three still cocooned in the house. Clearly, as a more mature figure who has been through far more damaging life troubles than mere spats with potty-mouthed Lisa or insipid Imogen, he was happy to take all the ribbing with a pinch of salt and seemed delighted with his placing of fourth and his new BB record of six eviction escapes. He was a quite brilliant housemate, a high-value exponent of the Diary Room art, an exquisite but not evil wind-up merchant and a tidy mixture of caring and cunning. He made enemies in the house but even those who couldn’t stick him for much of a moment – Michael, Imogen, Grace – had to acknowledge that he was efficient.

Three remained now, and part two of proceedings would begin with someone coming straight out. The time alterations via Nikki’s dumbness dictated that the third placed housemate could be told of their impending ousting now but would get a 30 minute stay of execution while some surveys were read out in a disinterested manner and Sean Lock considered sacking his agent. As we grabbed the beers from the fridge and sent out final texts, the result of the whole of BB now seemed clear. Despite the huge deluge of extra votes for Aisleyne which had prompted a sharp slicing of the odds and a brief rise to second favourite, it seemed sure that her time was due after Richard’s departure. Sure enough, the London ghetto girl falsettoed her name over and over again during Davina’s regular, erm, pregnant pause prior to revelation, and at last she predicted correctly. Her defeatist nerves had gone; she now knew that beyond the jealous adolescents giving her shallow hell in chant form outdoors, a huge amount of public endorsement had come her way. The 22% of the vote she received suggests she was close to finishing runner-up, but at the very least she had poked some eyes out by ending as top female and was set to walk out humble and radiant to a good reaction. Half an hour later, she did just that.

Where did it all go right for Aisleyne? Well, probably from the start. My guess is that while her chameleon-esque status in the house riled the ill-educated knee-jerkers shouting her name week on week, the more watchful TV viewer saw someone not for a moment trying to cover up or suppress herself. Whether she was being amiable or awful, it mattered not a jot to her and the public noted this. Her battles with the likes of Grace and Lisa – who motivelessly castigated her in horrendous terms almost as soon as she arrived via a giftwrapped box in week two – were sometimes tough to watch, but always she stood her ground. She cried a lot, she wailed dramatically, she laughed eccentrically, she showcased her buttocks, she teased Spiral and Glyn and she used her obtuse “black” soundbites and got pummeled for it, but she learned, and she gained motivation from every good and bad event which encased her.

She also had quite a rough time through circumstance and the fate of the rule book where others didn’t, and I’m sure that the way she beat herself up over the Next Door device and harrowingly decided that Jonathan was not a worthy housemate earned her many fresh sympathisers. Her embittered but temporary run-ins with Nikki and Lea, and her obvious horror at the noxious individual on show as BB made everyone revisit bits of their final audition tape, all gained her ground. I also think some women took to her because, despite the make-up and clothing giving her a superb photogenic appeal, she looked refreshingly rougher than anyone else when the morning alarms sounded.

I initially underestimated her, but by week six I was telling a gambling friend of mine, who didn’t watch BB, to get something on her for top female. Jennie and Nikki’s final exoduses earned him £117, and I too felt pleased with myself as Aisleyne bounded out, looking relaxed for the first time all week, and ready to face her doubters head on. Quite a few of these were sitting in housemates’ row, and it was notable that anything which gained approval from the audience during a good interview with Davina was rebutted via stony, expressionless faces from some of the sorer losers on parade. As well as being the bitchiest BB for some time, it was also the most partisan, and Aisleyne had been in the thick of it.

“I don’t get it Davina, I don’t get it!”, she bellowed in some hysterics. Two weeks was the threshold she set herself after arriving as one of the replacements for Shahbaz and Dawn, but the complexity of her character kept her foot in the door as she watched montages of her different facets – hard Aisleyne, emotional Aisleyne, flirtatious Aisleyne, caring Aisleyne. She also scolded BB – correctly – for making her be the judge of five other people’s destinies which led to Jonathan’s unenviable status as the housemate BB never quite had.

With Aisleyne gone, the two safest presences in the house remained. They were both in a jumpy mood on the sofa (later we discovered this was because they both needed to expel some nervous urine and BB had banned them from leaving the lounge) and practised their shoulder choreography to pass the time. Though Pete’s status as favourite was secure and still likely to be borne out, Glyn’s many supporters could point to a dramatic voyage of discovery in their boy, as he arrived a wastrel sixth-former and lifeguard who’d ditched half his exams for the BB house and possessed no worldly experience at all. His first seven days were virtually wordless (not to mention suitcaseless) as he adopted the demeanour of a startled cat. Now, first or second, he was about to leave as an A1 grown-up and a credit to his parents who had learnt about women, catering, decorum, fashion, the perils of binge drinking and the need to appreciate different cultures. He had also done Wales a great service, and had the Cameron-like factor of a sizeable geographical block vote which Pete couldn’t call upon. And he was funny (his tricking of Nikki into saying, “I need a good arse whipping” in Welsh this week was absolutely priceless), never unlikeable and always a thoroughly good sort. Was it all enough?

Not quite. Pete took the prize and the title after the most drawn-out gap of tension Davina could muster, and the magnanimous, applauding Glyn managed to hug his dancing partner prior to watching him systematically wrecking the furniture in celebration of his achievement. Pete’s dreams had come true. And with 61% of the crucial last vote, they had come true relatively conclusively.

With a beanie hat hiding his unintentionally ginger hair and a dog tag round his neck courtesy of his main clothing adviser Mikey, Glyn took to the stairs, singing one of his favourite anthems, Here I Go Again. His grin was wide and his shouting was intense, especially when as Davina introduced him to his public, he noticed a Welsh flag being handed his way. Up it went above his head. He was as proud as anyone could possibly be of being a BB runner-up, and the assertion that he was, ostensibly, a nice, well brought up and perfectly normal young man was proved beyond doubt in his interview.

“Lea is the most attractive person I’ve ever seen,” he said, leaving the 35-year-old single mum in bashful raptures. Davina knew that some sexual awakening, albeit not in a graphic, physical sense, was important to Glyn’s blossoming in the house and needed to bring the subject up with him.

“I’ve spent half of this series apologising to your mother for bits we were about to show, including your lap dance,” she said. Glyn could only cheer. “[It was] awesome. I’ve never been to a strip club or anything like that. It was the best thing that could ever happened.”

But for all the minor irks and idiosyncrasies in Glyn’s make-up – frustration over Richard’s perennial (ie, completely deliberate) mispronunciation of his name, slowly learning to make spaghetti on toast with Lisa – it was the Welshness which made him open up to the crowd the most. “It’s important that we keep our language, so speak Welsh”, he cried, followed by the same statement in his own tongue.

“I just wanted everything to be Welsh, and just to stay in Wales, but now I want to see the world and everything like that, and different people,” said the reforming nationalist. A congratulatory message from Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of Wales, gave Glyn’s free plug for the province a major thumbs-up, though one can’t help but suspect that he saw precisely zero minutes of BB over the last 13 weeks on the grounds of always having something far better to do.

“You’re going to have the time of your life,” said Davina, as a pay-off. Even though Glyn was without £100,000 to spend, she was clearly right. But it was Pete, the Brighton singer, afflicted but never pitied, humorous but deep, frivolous but peaceable, who had earned the winner’s cash and sash. It was time for his public to greet him.

Pete had been steadily burning off his exhilarative energy during Glyn’s interview by rolling and kicking bits of furniture around the room. Now, his time had come.

Chatteringly incessantly to himself after Davina interrupted his impromptu assault course to tell him to come out, the bleached, mohawked singer was drunk on the excitement as the doors opened and the noise of crowd and fireworks hit him. Of course he milked it – this was Pete – and he ended BB as he started, by falling down the stairs to exit just as he had done to enter.

“No way!” he yelled as he hugged Davina tightly on the circular stage. A quick ad break later and we were ready to hear his reaction. Could a man whose Tourette’s was exacerbated by excitement and tension be satisfactorily interviewed?

After lots of tics and daft heckles, he got underway by telling of his premonition to get on the show and win it. “More than just the money, it meant a lot. Last year I went mad, completely bananas, and I was completely, absolutely at the end of my tether with life and all that, something bad had happened, and I had a huge visit from a mate in heaven …”

Before it got too tender, Davina introduced a montage of all the different squeezes, aside from his sweetheart Nikki, who had craved a piece of Pete over the 13 weeks. Lisa, Lea, Aisleyne, Jennie and an unexpected picture of Richard hugging Pete in mutual slumber all featured.

“I’m oblivious to it all, aren’t I? What was the question?”

The Tourette’s took over as Davina tried to probe his future plans with Nikki, while the issue of publicising his condition was also discussed. A fabulous hotch-potch of his best bits followed – goodness knows what was left on the cutting room floor – prior to the closure of the show for the final time, and Davina’s latest earnest preparation for one of her favoured home births.

BB remains a major player in Channel 4′s programming blueprint because a richly versatile and varied general public will always give the network confidence that this time it’ll be better. It’s coincidental that Channel 4 earned an earbashing from outgoing ITV big cheese Charles Allen as BB took its bows before a 7.7m audience, and then promptly won a gong for Best Terrestrial Network at the Edinburgh TV awards. Channel 4′s successes are always illustrated, in print or online, with a picture of the BB eye, sometimes with Davina or Dermot thrown in. The very name of Big Brother now defines Channel 4 in the way Brookside and Countdown used to. Anybody who believes BB is a spent force is watching BBC3 instead.

For all its strengths, this year was a real cocktail of highs and lows. The vetting of housemates can only go so far, and for every brilliant piece of recruitment (Pete, Nikki, Glyn, Aisleyne, Richard, Mikey), there was a stinker (Shahbaz, Grace, Lisa, Susie, Spiral, Sam).

I always despair of the innovations which go into BB – I want it to be stripped bare and handed over to the personality of the contestants for each week and then to the public for 24 hours of voting. Tasks and games are fine, but arbitrary decisions on whether someone can have their suitcase or not, enter the house through chocoholism or get an unethical second chance to win are not. If I’d ripped up a betting slip on the evidence before me of Nikki’s exit, I’d have been ready to sue Channel 4 when she went back in. It’s all publicity of course, but not of the type to stick on your press office’s walls or your official website, and not of the type which would protect the housemates involved.

Despite the lazy branding as a “freak show” which BB has received annually for the last three years, this was anything but. Nobody with any gravitas was absolutely extreme, nobody who made the grade did so through shock tactics or a political standpoint – there was no Kitten, no Marco, no individual with an axe to grind or an unrecognisable trait to leave viewers frightened or confused. There were bad housemates, but their shortcomings came predominantly through lack of intellect or inbuilt character flaws; the type which will never change no matter what intricate customisation to one’s beliefs or appearance one makes. The quality of the housemates was sound. The quality of BB‘s methods of shaking them up and whittling them down was not, although at no point did I want to stop watching, and the winner was the correct one. Enough housemates overall outmaneuvered the negatives, and I want to end on a high because I’ve enjoyed far more than I haven’t.

One last thing – Davina is always magnificent at BB. She’s on the tabloid “wanted” list thanks to that abominable talk show and her general presentation record away from BB, but to me the show is forever going to be stamped with her name. Her ability to empathise with each housemate and whip up a crowd cannot be underestimated. It’s live, it’s got a full press corps watching and it’s always prone to unpredictability thanks to the wannabes hoping to make their mark. Davina handled everything impeccably this year, and whatever projects fall by the wayside on her future CV, she will always, hopefully, be called back for BB.

Pete’s doing a gig with his band in my home city next month. I’ll let you know if any of his songs feature “sugary love”…

Dreams can come true. Imogen is out of the Big Brother house at last, and by some idiotic quirk Nikki’s found her way back in. I’m disgusted, but only on principle.

I’ve got the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Whatever my head and its ethical, rational cogs may tell me, my heart is delighted that the best female BB contestant in years will be in situ for the final night. Logic and that infamous shield of British fair play says she shouldn’t be in there, and certainly shouldn’t be in there as a contender for the main prize. But stuff logic, or at least, do so until she actually wins. She won’t, but it gives us an opening to clear our consciences and kick the stink up.

Nikki’s easily predicted return began after Mikey and Susie’s dual eviction when Davina McCall confirmed the usual tabloid spoilers that one ex-housemate was eventually going to go back in to the main house, via a shortlist of four in the Next Door extension, and regain the opportunity to win. As the weekend came and went (during which time the remaining tenants spookily talked about which ex-housemates they would love to see again), the bookies immediately returned Nikki to her slot of second in the running, behind Pete, which she had clung on to effortlessly until the votes split and she was chucked out, to BB’s horror, on just a 37% mandate four weeks ago. Frankly, even though on Tuesday night Davina also announced the names of three other ex-housemates of varying credibility whom the public had chosen to pop Next Door for a few days, it was a stark non-contest from the word go.

The very thought of having to watch Lisa, Susie, Spiral or Sam again was repellent, but they and most of the others were there, waving dutifully to the cameras, hoping forlornly for a second grab of the spotlight. The much more worthy Lea, Grace and Mikey were the ones who also took a place alongside the shoo-in Nikki, and although I could have done without the unpleasant Grace getting whiff of a reprieve and would have quite welcomed Jayne’s return (Bonnie or Sezer too, had they been able), this was pretty much the predictable outcome when one looked at the general mediocrity and desperation of the others in the shop window. Into the Diary Room they went via the camera run while Channel 4′s viewers went to the adverts, and upon the return to programming, we were watching the four homecomers gathering on the gold chair while those still in proper contention looked on aghast on their plasma screen.

So, here’s the deal. Viewers voted for this quartet to go into the Next Door house (where only Mikey had fleetingly been before when it was a prison, and never as anything more than a visiting guard) via a vote which saw all proceeds given to charity and prompted more than a thousand complaints to Ofcom over the idea of an evicted housemate being eligible (if highly unlikely) to win once again.

They settled in quickly and eventfully. Grace proved very swiftly that she has learned nothing from the large sackloads of vitriol thrown her way since her deranged exit after four weeks, returning quickly to slaughtering Aisleyne and patronising Glyn (who is a mere two years younger than her), while Nikki too had harsh words for Aisleyne – in fact, it’s hard to get harsher than “I hate her”, really. But that’s what she said.

Nikki’s old issues with Aisleyne lie with typical female self-consciousness and competition in the looks and conduct stakes, plus the ever-dominant Pete factor. Therefore, while Nikki distributed her brickbats at an unwitting Aisleyne, it was ironic and quite touching to hear her, through the joys of editing, telling the authentic housemates that she’d happily welcome Nikki back. That’s a blessing to us all. Ultimately, only Glyn wanted anyone else (Grace, oddly, rather than his big ally Mikey or infatuation figure Lea) to return, while Richard, Pete and Jennie joined Aisleyne in supporting Nikki. Imogen, true to form, said nothing, but perhaps had a reason for once – the reason being what Grace might do or say to her over Mikey if she ever got back in the house again.

This was entirely coincidental stuff, as by this stage nobody had told the remaining housemates that it would be up to them, at the end of the week, to decide which of their evicted colleagues they would wish to rejoin them for the 13th and final week. Those wandering Next Door knew and chose not to speculate, probably because their own excitement at a second chance was being tempered by the knowledge Nikki was streets ahead with the public, and probably with the remaining sextet through the wall (although only five would make the choice, as one had to be evicted as normal first). Nikki probably knew it herself but for once some modesty took over.

So, the four comebackers settled into their new digs for the night. Lea, who had seemed the least overwhelmed by her return, and the ever-crabby Nikki climbed into their big comfy beds, while Mikey and Grace nuzzled together again and resumed a heavy-petting arrangement last seen sometime in June. Before all this, there was the drama of a loony Glyn climbing on to the roof and risking his life (and all of BB‘s phone line profits in the shape of one big fine) as he leapt down the other side into what he assumed was the Next Door garden, as enjoyed by Aisleyne and the second wave of housemates, or the old Secret Hideaway beach which he and others had surreptitiously enjoyed during the week in prison.

He found bricks and mortar and some heavy-duty perspex. No door, no window. No access. So he hammered hard on the perspex, making enough noise to frighten Grace and concern Mikey, who had to convince his bed partner that it wasn’t him kicking the side of the bed as a gag. Glyn realised he was chasing rainbows and so climbed back on to the roof, as his housemates searched frantically for him. Eventually, with the aid of the leporine topiary in the garden, Glyn shinned back down and was immediately summoned with some sternness to the Diary Room. Aisleyne went with him and BB threw her out again, wanting Glyn to receive his health and safety lecture alone. He was in trouble and knew it. “I want to see my friends. I think I’m up this week and you won’t tell me, so I wanted to see them,” he whined in his strongest Welsh enunciation.

“Big Brother will get back to you,” was the reply. “Oh no, don’t do that,” beseeched Glyn. His appeals came through Next Door’s walls and Nikki opened the door – accidentally, as it happened – and heard him. He also heard gossipy whispers. “Grace? Grace, is that you?” he yelled, unwisely. Next Door now had their confirmation that the housemates knew of their return, and BB was very unhappy as Glyn received no response and left the Diary Room, unaware of his fate. Richard and Imogen scolded him for risking his life and his chances of victory for the sake of 10 days. Nikki received a telephone admonishment for “forcing” the back door to the Diary Room, which she argued strongly about.

Ah, Nikki’s back. It’s never dull again. Let Grace and Mikey re-acquaint their tongues with one another, let Lea dream of Pete and look forward to her Dolly playing house with Dicky again. Only one of them was actually going to see the finalists and be part of BB7′s nexus next week, and everyone Next Door knew deep down who it would be. And, as a fabulous two-in-one, not-to-be-beaten offer, Imogen was on her way out at the same time.

A blessing to the housemates and the public for finally combining properly and giving Imogen her cards, and just in time. The travesty of such a colourless, inarticulate, uncommitted and dull housemate reaching the final week through luck and fate would have been a serious lowlight of what has been generally an excellent, if divisive, BB run.

Imogen’s survival has always been based upon the proviso that she would be no emotional threat to the girls and the provider of common ground and unflaunted physical appeal among the boys. Her self-awareness came through because of a desire to be cautious and leave herself uncommitted in debate, while still taking in every word. I doubt, however, that this was a conscious game plan. Ultimately, I think she was so quiet and so unconfrontational because she wasn’t intelligent or daring enough to be anything else.

She snuggled up to Sezer, then rolled over without a backward glance to Mikey when the sardonic stockbroker got heaved, while playing the attentive big sister to Glyn and using their mutual Welsh tongue as a clever tool of making sure he at least had one massive reason not to nominate her. When she went all girlish with Susie in “best friends” week, one can only imagine the indignant cartwheels turned by Grace and Lisa on the outside, having previously supported Grace’s stance on Susie while never allowing herself to believe it in real incidents. Finally, it took one disagreement with Aisleyne and a proper bust-up with the brooding Mikey to make people notice her flaws, and the nominations started coming out.

Her prime nemesis, Richard, had been nominating her for week on week, progressively bemoaning her routine survival each time he was prompted into uttering her name again. He claimed she was vain, dull and not half as attractive as her use of femininity and past title of Miss Wales led her to believe. Befitting the genuine brilliance of all his stints in the Diary Room, he was cutting, mildly callous and slated her for laughs, but ultimately he wasn’t far wrong. Yet as the new final nominator following Susie’s dismissal, he very nearly cooked his own goose by admitting he had found this week hard due to a slight improvement in his relationship with Imogen. With Jennie exempt, and having already picked Aisleyne (who was nonetheless safe) he would have been forced to then nominate Pete or Glyn and, due to the votes they had already each accrued, would have automatically faced that person with the public vote. Consequently, Richard would have been evicted without any question at all. But by putting Imogen’s name forward again, he equalled her tally of three with his own. He wasn’t to know this, of course, but you could feel the tension as the nominations took their course and it seemed, for a little while, that Pete could be going up via the housemates for the first time, and that Imogen would be saved again.

However, as it was Imogen he was facing, Richard was apophthegmatically going to survive this one and his arduous run of avoiding eviction was extended to six times over as Imogen took the lion’s share of the vote and came down. For all my long-term reservations about her contribution and gameplan, it’s hard to find anything really stonewall and credible to dislike about her unless one is unappealingly churlish, and those dervishes who attend BB evictions had seemingly little to hold against her as doors opened and she left to some refreshingly good cheers.

Imogen and Richard had been sent Next Door by BB for the final 48 hours prior to the result, leaving the remaining quartet of Pete, Glyn, Aisleyne and Jennie behind in the knowledge that they had not had the chance to say goodbye to one person properly. During this weird period, when we found ourselves watching a group of housemates who had more non-runners than contenders, Nikki let slip about Richard’s blessed “plastics” tag, which prompted a lot of hurried, awkward explanation to a confused Imogen, while Grace mentioned unmaliciously that she knew of Richard’s tag for her (Horseface Grace), thereby putting the Canuck into even more of a squeeze, this time with someone who had no right to be in the same room as him. This didn’t seem fair at all, and exposed the shambolic logistics of having evicted housemates cooped up with those who have remained cocooned. Suddenly, we didn’t know what was sayable and what wasn’t. It all got blurry and hard to watch. Richard was in all sorts of bother and could have expected a little more protection from BB, especially given his impeccable survival rate which should have earned him some respect from the masters.

Still, it ultimately wasn’t to be to his detriment, as when Friday came, Davina announced Imogen’s name. The Welshwoman’s gleeful reaction – she had made many weepy noises about wanting to see her mother – was in stark contrast to that of Glyn, who was seriously disappointed at losing his linguistic partner, and Aisleyne, who burst into the sort of sobs only she can emit. Imogen went to the exit directly from Next Door, with an extra doorman on parade to make sure neither she nor the competing housemates left behind could gain access to her via the traditional leaving route.

One thing that irritates me about some BB contestants, past and present, is the way they can change upon release from the house, either for better (Adele, Gos) or worse (Spencer, Federico). The adrenaline of a favourable reaction, the joy of seeing her family and the relief of knowing the public scrutiny was over brought out a sunny, talkative side to Imogen in her interview with Davina which was totally alien to the sour, silent, conformist, uncommitted robot who had been on the telly for a dozen weeks.

Davina had the foresight to scold Bonnie when the Loughborough care worker changed from a moody grouch into a grinning chirper in the short time between eviction and interview, when she was the first to be chopped back in May. Davina’s reasoning was that the new Bonnie could have survived had she had that persona in the house (although in truth, the then-shirtless Glyn would still have won that particular vote, even though it was the first week and he’d barely said a word). However, clearly Imogen’s achievement in doing 12 of the 13 scheduled weeks, avoiding a couple of evictions and emerging to an unlikely heroine’s welcome overhauled any thoughts in that direction. And, in the interview, I liked Imogen for the first time as she happily shrugged off the “plastic” label, endorsed Glyn, praised Mikey and generally came across as engaging and, well, nice. Grrr.

Imogen’s chief role in the house was as decorational matter for two of the alpha males – initially Sezer, then when he was ditched conclusively after a fortnight, along came Mikey. It was notable therefore that even though her liaisons with these two were her most memorable contribution to the watching experience, her best bits featured barely a shot of Sezer at all, even despite the further issue of her disqualification from nomination for the first fortnight due to conspiratorial rule-breaking with the London stockbroker. This was BB continuing to juggle the prickly issue of Sezer’s right to status as an innocent man with a need to put a discreetly safe distance between him and the programme and keep the PR bods busy.

With Imogen gone, BB instructed Richard to return to the main house instantly and stop in the Diary Room on the way. He collected an envelope from the chair and followed instructions to read the contents immediately to the other real contenders as soon as he returned. By now, Glyn had received his punishment for his spot of zealous abseiling, banished to a locked bedroom by BB, and so when Richard read the instructions that the housemates had one minute to decide which of the four exes they wanted back, Glyn was barred from taking part.

Glyn’s peccadilloes meant it was curtains for all three outsiders Next Door, although even with him involved, Grace was still toast, as the prospect of Aisleyne (who hated her) and Jennie (who had never shared the house with her) voting for the gobby dancer was a non-starter. Any chance Grace had to endear herself a little to Jennie was lost when, having turned 21 during the week and been given 21 minutes with her old housemates as a present, Grace promptly ignored Aisleyne with great deliberation and did little more than say “hi” to Jennie, instead choosing to explore the house, talk to a thrilled Glyn and check on Pete’s well-being on behalf of Nikki. Grace, whose shameless bitching and complete lack of self-awareness had been her ugly downfall first time round, had learnt nothing. Indeed, she seemed to be playing on her status as a hate-figure. Either that, or she knew full well that she had no chance of beating Nikki in the quest to become fully-fledged again and therefore just used her time to create mischief and amuse herself. After all, until BB told Grace to return, a ferocious-looking Aisleyne had no idea how long Grace would be staying, and Grace was in no rush to tell her.

With Glyn involved, he might have made a case for his mega-crush Lea to return, as certainly Pete and Richard also loved her company and Aisleyne and Jennie were good compatriots of the chested one. But all Lea got was shouted apologies from the electorate as again the debate returned to Nikki, and the argument that Pete needed her. Those who viewed the reprieve for one evictee with disdain and cynicism saw BB‘s risk bear fruit there and then, as Nikki got everyone’s approval, and the other three were all asked to leave together. Needless to say, Grace got booed loudly again, and managed to call Aisleyne a “moose” one more time. If I never see that abhorrent woman in print or vision again I’ll be extremely happy.

Nikki was then ushered next door, and although she found a chance to embrace Aisleyne, Jennie and a liberated Glyn, it was obviously for Pete that she reserved her tenderest and longest greeting. Indeed, such was its poignancy, it felt really intrusive – bit of a problem when it’s not only being filmed, but it’s being shown live on telly and an enormous big screen outdoors – and prompted the other housemates to leave them to it and retire to the lounge. Then, in a fine bit of unplanned spontaneity, Davina entirely missed her cue as she too was transfixed by the reunion of Pete and Nikki on the big screen and had to make a mock-apology when she finally turned round to her camera. It was possibly deliberate, but it doesn’t matter. It worked. It was funny.

However, the issue of Pete and Nikki’s togetherness merely adds more fuel to the fire that BB chose to manipulate public opinion by planting Nikki back in the house as a riposte for its bread and butter punters having the nerve to evict her in the first place. Nikki, although still as entertaining, had proved during her stint Next Door that she was now entirely aware of the act expected of her, and a week would lay ahead of her where her knowledge of her own importance could make or break the chances of both herself – as a former second favourite with the bookies – and Pete of winning BB. Pete’s top dog status has never been seriously threatened, and now’s the time to see if it will. Essentially, BB has risked its priceless reputation to preserve that of one of its housemates. That seems careless and unsporting. No wonder Jennie, a bright and likeable girl but the clear rank outsider, looked so glum as Nikki’s reincarnation was completed. Bad enough was it that her own pleasure in Pete’s company had been eradicated before her very eyes, but now she has even less chance of winning BB than before – and before she had no chance.

Pete’s happiness has now been secured for the final week. It was helped by his much-craved letter from his mother awarded to him via Imogen during the lifesize BB board game which lit him up no end (and, for all the absolute joy one could share in Pete’s own elation, and the terrific television it made, slightly annoyed me again over this issue of outside contact), during a task where Richard had to sit in the pool while dressed as a banana and Jennie, as winner, received her free pass to the final. Gone are the chances of Pete deciding to do a runner and proving right the observers who assume that a Tourette’s tic equates to insanity and self-destruction. As the final week of an exhausting BB experience approaches, he’s still going to win. Glyn and Richard are still going to leave to enormous acclaim. Aisleyne will divide folk in both voting and reaction, and Jennie will be first out to cheers of appreciative sympathy.

The main question now is whether a second dollop of the Nikki tantrum-and-tiara schtick will still charm the public, or whether – like a joke being told to you twice – it’ll get a little tiresome once you know too much. My feeling is that Nikki might not be in as strong a position as she hopes. BB‘s decision to dismiss the public’s decision and pass her off as a bona fide contender is likely to cause consternation for many a week ahead, long after Nikki and the rest have gone back to obscurity. Meanwhile, it will be fun watching and finding out.

It’s been an atrocious week for Mikey, and his sudden, grievous demise and eviction sums up the ruthlessness of Big Brother. After 10 weeks of relatively effortless surfing of the wave, his fall into the drink was quick and spectacular.

The Iranian-born boy adopted by the north west had already been put before the nomination panel of several million pairs of glazed eyes by the time he went through the two arguments which ruined his chances.

Suffering from a hangover and a hang-up, he turned Scouse adolescent Jennie’s simple inquiry about some missing wine into a multi-layered accusation about lies, stupidity, interruption and thoughtlessness. The bright teenager was unafraid and stood her ground well enough for Mikey to look like nothing but a bully and a grump afterwards.

Later, in a straightforward conversation with Glyn and Imogen about evicted Mancunian cat-lover Michael, Mikey claimed Glyn was being “not very nice” about some observation the Welsh lad had, and Imogen defended her countryman.

Now, the way both Mikey and Imogen allowed a very strong and flawless flirtation to break down so rapidly over the next hour or so was extraordinary. Mikey wasn’t in the mood. As Imogen tried to make him see reason, about both his comment to Glyn and his generally volatile mood, Mikey had little inclination to listen. He snapped back and then toddled off.

A later attempt to sort out the muddle led to a further argument between the two kindreds, which began while Mikey still had his semi-apologetic arms round Imogen’s neck. They didn’t stay there very long. Mikey’s pay-off line of, “you’re just trying to look good on TV” was priceless, given that is literally all Imogen has opted to try in 10 weeks. Maybe he knew it all along; that Imogen’s brand of self-awareness tactics were a good thing to cling on to, taking his chance effortlessly and effectively the moment Sezer and Grace were out of the picture. Now he has had to face the music.

He was nominated in a four-hander with Imogen, the ever-unimpressive Susie and his prime nemesis, Jennie. Of his three fellow nominees, only Susie had gone for him herself, with Canuck waiter Richard and stargazing London ghetto girl Aisleyne the others putting a vote his way. They all had an issue with Mikey’s one-dimensional nature of argument – his manner of shouting someone down without any sense of guile was no more prevalent than when he made Jennie feel very small over an otherwise numb makeshift game of rounders in the garden. Nikki, albeit in a semantically different manner, summed up Mikey during a task several weeks ago when she said, “you are impossible to argue with”. Imogen and Jennie – and to a lesser and sillier extent, Glyn and Aisleyne – have discovered it to their cost this week and not liked it, but ultimately Mikey felt the cost himself.

Those on his side aimed their nomination Jennie’s way instead, while Susie and Imogen both got the brunt of feeling over vanity and caution. Four-handers are rare, and I felt smug when I saw whom the nominees were, as the remaining quartet – Pete, Glyn, Richard and Aisleyne – were my bold tip for the last choices on the final night. Had I not lost my bottle and done a massive sub-editorial cull of the last review prior to submission, you’d have seen it for yourself. True story.

Susie was installed, rightly, as favourite to go, but the two major rows which showed off Mikey’s darker side led to serious betting which in turn prompted a wholesale slashing of the odds. And Imogen yet again escaped unscathed, with the BB audience seemingly unaware of her complete lack of a discernible contribution. Richard, having described her previously as, “like herpes – she won’t go away” among other things, once again bemoaned her status as chief mirror-hogger and waist-shaker whenever a smidgeon of music belts through the speakers. He’s tough in his language and does it for effect, but he’s right. Imogen has made zero contribution since the first day – even in arguing with Mikey she failed to develop any viewer sympathy, for all his indiscretion – and yet she’s managed 11 straight weeks with barely a sideways glance at the exit. She and Susie were very, very lucky to be still in the house at this latest eviction stage – and neither seemed remotely grateful for the fact that they’re there at all. Imogen stares, says “babes” a lot, and watches debate rather than instigates it; while Susie does the housework, whinges at the younger housemates and uses annoyingly mature instincts and an obvious awareness of her own image to maintain decorum, even when BB tries to open up her personality and enforce a reaction.

The closest to this occurring came at the start of the week, as BB left a bidet-sized postcard “from” Margate on the lounge floor, claiming to be on a break there, and setting up an automated message system, with a keypad of a size Dom Joly would have been proud, in the Diary Room. Housemates had to press one to leave a Diary Room entry, two to make a request and three to leave. As if to ape all automated communication systems, the female voice was slightly too reassuring, soundbites were followed to the letter (“Your Diary Room entry is important to us and will be answered shortly”) and in the event of someone randomly being put on hold, insipid muzac would be played, rather loudly, for a length of time deemed suitable for the housemate in question.

Susie, when she heard about this, declined to visit the Diary Room until she was obliged to at nomination time. As the last housemate alphabetically, she had heard everyone’s stories of how one was to be pressed prior to the first nomination, two prior to the second, and three for confirmation. Straightforward, it seemed. But Susie, on pressing one, was told she was in a queue. On came the muzac. At first she laughed and expressed her amused dislike of such systems in the real world. But the music went on, and on, and on, until she got genuinely rattled, especially when the message system interrupted and told her she was seventh in the queue, then sixth – and then sixth again, and again, and again …

“I was sixth last time!” complained an agitated Susie. She was cross, but wasn’t letting her guard drop. Despite the pre-broadcast surveys claiming she was the least intelligent housemate (which we found out at the start of the week; we also discovered Aisleyne was the most Machiavellian – an expression she misunderstood but took to mean deceptive and fraudulent, causing sobs in the Diary Room and a full explanation from all news outlets on what it really meant), Susie was wise enough to realise that BB was trying to de-shell her, get her to show a more emotional side beyond mild grumbles about hygiene, tea-making and bedtime discipline. It was entirely deliberate.

What on Earth was Susie ever doing in the house? Her history, dug up after the Golden Housemate’s sacred path was opened before her, suggests that she has tried and failed numerous times in the past to get on BB. Yet upon finally achieving her ambition – at no little expense to a husband who sounds awfully henpecked – she spent her rolling weeks of televised incarceration displaying regimented housekeeping skills, condescending attitudes to the more youthful attitudes about their habits and noise and a quite appalling tendency to turn up her nose at anything which didn’t interlock with her own lifestyle choices.

She was an awful bore, a person whose complete lack of humour and empty outside existence pulled naggingly at the stances of the other housemates, who couldn’t express themselves fully whenever she was in earshot. She didn’t deserve the dreadful treatment the immature Grace gave her in her first week, but afterwards she unwittingly helped the atmosphere crash down over her head. Lisa, not necessarily categorised as deep and perceptive, got it right in her own eviction interview when she moaned that all Susie does is, “drink tea and got to bed at half 10.” Susie never used the pool, took to tasks begrudgingly, never swore (even mildly, except in a brief spot of man-bashing with Aisleyne), barely offered sympathy at lower moments, exposed appalling middle-class snobberies and was sometimes spineless and cruel, not least when a foolishly drunken Glyn was being very, very ill and while the humane Mikey desperately tried to nurse his young buddy through his copious retching, all she could concern herself with was the smell and the carpets.

Still, in a latterly revealed twist via the Friday tabloids, she’s now out too. A second consecutive double eviction was something I’d prayed for when I saw the nominees, although I was looking more at Imogen and far less at Mikey. The Welsh statue might still be in there, but at least Susie is out.

But so too, of course, is Mikey. The most believable and seemingly straightforward of the seven males who entered the house, he remained the most believable and straightforward of everyone, females included, by the time the public opened the trapdoor. Mikey’s nomination came before all his major rows – Aisleyne and his close ally Glyn also felt the receiving end of his irritable disposition – and so the housemates put him before the public not believing for a second that he was going to be ripe for a fall.

Like Sezer in the second week, Mikey’s facial reaction upon hearing his name at crunch time suggested he was not expecting to go, but unlike Sezer, at least he’d acquired 11 weeks of gravitas and propriety to enable housemates and public alike to believe him when he said “I’m cool, it’s fine” as the others rushed in to comfort him. His immediate call to the exit jumpstarted Susie’s underused brain cells as she worked out that eviction night wasn’t going to be over the moment Mikey emerged from the sliding doors and into the abyss of flashlights and catcalls. He quickly and unfussily said his goodbyes to everyone, paying special attention to a distraught Glyn and a flummoxed, suddenly unsafe Imogen.

His reception was mixed – frankly, the idea of Mikey being booed by this bunch of cretinous turnips who go to BB eviction nights stinks to high heaven – but he took it all in his stride and gave a candid, sporting interview to Davina McCall, who clearly liked him and admitted herself that she thought he was going to be there until the end.

“I had a bad week, I know,” admitted Mikey, as the sequence of arguments was shown back to back. Of course, it’s worth pointing out for the purposes of impartiality that his arguments were largely justified, with the notable exceptions of his over-sharpness with Jennie and his ridiculously excessive tirade at Glyn during a game of pool. In the past he has certainly emerged as a champion for putting Richard in his place over his obsequiousness to Susie, and his rightful admonishment of Susie herself over her vocal mistrust of him, not to mention her misconduct when Glyn was vomiting everywhere.

Mikey was never a winner, admittedly. His star quality didn’t quite come through in the way which made Pete and Glyn the more obvious contenders for the BB crown and the £100,000 in readies. But he was a very consistent housemate and also – as even Susie admitted – a highly conscientious figure. He appreciated the blood and guts nature of nominations and never bore grudges, even when Richard was at his most bothersome, and beyond the minor tiffs, emerged through his 11 weeks with barely a scratch on his reputation. Though in interview he said he was happy and proud of his time – as he should be – one can’t help but feel he is cursing his sudden change in temperament which probably cost him a place in the final. Lastly, it’s also worth adding that he did not deserve to go when looking at the three who faced him, and the survival of Imogen at his expense galls those of us who believe in the original BB ethics of promoting human nature. One can only assume that Wales is voting en masse.

Now Susie. Evicted 45 minutes later without any formal pomp in the lounge, she emerged to a similarly mixed bag of responses and, true to her conduct in the house, she didn’t care a fig what anyone else thought of her. I can’t recall anyone who has gone into the house for “exposure” purposes quite so blatantly and publicly as Susie has, and though one can, on balance, admire her candour, it doesn’t ultimately do her or BB any favours. One now can see more than ever why she kept being turned down for BB‘s passim. Enigmatic wasn’t the word for her, despite her deliberate tendency to cut herself off from the general hustle and bustle of the house except when it was absolutely necessary to be involved. She played mother, but the sort of nightmareish, symbolically-driven, over-proud mother who hears but never listens, and judges but doesn’t understand. Her barky instructions to the hyper teenager Glyn to not mess about in the garden because she was sunbathing was scandalous, while her general lack of humour, guile and life skills was thrown into the mix for everyone to see on so many occasions. She didn’t swear and put on awfully disapproving faces when someone did; she tried to commandeer the garden necessarium as, “her own personal toilet” even after she’d ended her golden stint and no longer had exclusive rights; and the reaction on her face when Jayne – a mother and a mature lady like Susie – arrived and promptly burped, swore and broke all the rules told a million stories about who she really is.

In her last week, during the intriguing University of Big Brother task, she and Richard (the only housemate who had any long-term appreciation of her) were told to learn some rudimentary Welsh, and everything I knew I disliked about middle England came to the fore when she described it as, “a false language” and, “tedious”. Glyn would have gone ape at her, and quite rightly, if he’d heard, especially as he was chuffed at the thought of two non-Welsh housemates learning bits of the tongue of which he is so proud and did all he could to help. I visit France a lot and speak my best stab at French all the time I’m there – Susie reminded me of the many Englanders who visit or emigrate to Europe and make no effort to blend in or learn even the very basic local terms.

Susie was treated to the “exposure” (her word, in her Davina interview) she wanted but I find it impossible to believe that any company in television will want to help her fulfil her ambitions to become a presenter. She’s witless, boring and has considerable inexperience of the real world for a woman of her age. Give her an autocue and an earpiece and she’ll fall to bits. Once the spite of Grace had been removed from the equation, the other housemates found it tough to dislike Susie (not least because of her domestic skills) but suddenly the element of fun and relaxation and hedonism had evaporated. People checked for Susie’s presence before telling a dirty joke, talking about sex or generally extolling youthful attributes. Susie’s whole conduct was flawless when measured against her own personal values, but she doesn’t have much left for the real BB viewer. She’s no Nigella – and I don’t mean on a catering front either. Domestic goddesses have to be likeable as well as picturesque and coherent.

Susie defended her conduct as Davina had a bit of a rip at her. “Well, what was I supposed to do?” she asked with genuine incredulity when Davina questioned her generally dormant actions beyond the basic housekeeping she fulfilled during her weeks. It became a distinct possibility as Susie told of her dislike for the drinking, skylarking and teasing culture of BB that she may well have never bothered watching the programme at all. Either that or she was even more thick than she let on – only a seriously deluded individual would go on to BB with a stark disapproval or ignorance of everything it involves and naturally provides. Future housemates with Susie’s gameplan should bear in mind that it’s about entertainment, as without viewers tuning in, all your starry-eyed ambitions will remain unfulfilled. Susie’s final observation was that if it didn’t work then, “okay, I’ll go back to being a housewife”. I think she’ll be back in housewifery quicker than she imagines. If she gets a job on telly then we might as well cut the electric off.

Six remain then. Imogen’s continuing survival remains a great mystery, and certainly I’d have been at my most cock-a-hoop following a BB eviction if Imogen and Susie had been slung out. But she’s still there and has to be dealt with. Of the six, she’s surely sixth. But maybe she’ll end up seventh. Yes, Davina looked straight at the camera and announced, without a hint of resigned desperation in her voice, that the old Tickle trick of BB4 was being repeated, with one old housemate eventually going back into the mixer, via the house Next Door (presumably no longer a prison then), to reacquaint themselves with BB. The three housemates not evicted by the public – insane Shahbaz, cheat Dawn and the splendidly noble George – were ineligible, as were Sezer and the unfortunate Bonnie, who were barred for “legal reasons”, of which the issue over Bonnie certainly remains a mystery. Cumbrian bouncer Jonathan was also not deemed entitled to be in the running after not making the main house from Next Door.

So, let me remind you – splenetic dancer Grace; half-completed transsexual Sam; sweary million-a-day-smoker Lisa; scaffolding-bosomed manipulator Lea; royally spoilt new E4 star Nikki; belching gob-on-stick Jayne; uptight gay apostle Michael; and world’s worst rapper Spiral, plus the just-out Mikey and Susie, all now have their names attached to phone and text lines again, and four will go Next Door, without the remaining housemates knowing. What a choice. One of these housemates (or, to put it another way, Nikki) will then win a public vote to return to the main house – and be eligible to win the whole shebang.

This is the sticking point for me. If someone whom the public has fairly chucked out then returns to the house and usurps those already inside to collect the loot, then yet again – after the letters from home fiasco of last week – BB‘s basic principles have been compromised. Actually, more than that – they’ve been sliced apart. Although only Nikki has any real hope of this mammoth achievement, nonetheless BB would be turning its back on the public who paid money to vote her out (albeit when they shouldn’t have) in the first place. And anyone who laid a bet on Nikki’s success and not unreasonably tore up their betting slips after she got the boot will be surely seeking legal advice.

Nikki’s return, like that of Jon three years ago, will only benefit the house. Everyone inside and outside will be hugely glad to see her. But that’s where Jon’s remit ended, beyond some deliberate mischief-making which his brain allowed him to do. He wasn’t under pressure to conform, as he couldn’t win and therefore was free to shake up the remaining housemates who were all in one large clique.

Nikki isn’t anywhere near clever enough to carry out a similar remit, so why does BB feel the need to put anyone back in? There are only two weeks left, and those still in the house have really earned the chance to fight among themselves for the prize and the pride. All the proceeds – not 28p in the pound, or whatever the normal rate is – from the phone and text voting will got to charity, said Davina. Fine. But they could have done that with another proper public vote next time round, instead of ripping up the statute book first.

The quintet of Pete, Glyn, Richard, Aisleyne and Jennie is still a varied, interesting, well-rounded set of housemates to contest the business end of BB7. Imogen’s prolonged residency is regrettable, but not terminal. She isn’t going to win, as Wales will surely side with the splendid Glyn if ultimately it goes that far. Novelties aren’t needed at this late stage of BB, especially if 13 weeks of isolation, patience and anxiety all get ruined at closing time because of someone who spent part of the term securing TV contracts, meeting bona fide celebs and getting blotto on far more expensive champagne than that which the house shopping budget would allow.

Pete and Glyn certainly deserve to be treated better for the decorum and entertainment value they’ve brought individually to BB7; Richard also for his impeccable, exhausting record at avoiding the axe. They’ll greet Nikki (it will be Nikki, of course) with shrieks, hugs and warm embraces.

But by the time they all leave, their attitudes could be different, and that’ll be down to BB. It wouldn’t be a question of responsibility, but a question of blame. I hope they know what they’re doing, and I hope Pete, who is getting more reflective and solitary, doesn’t meanwhile throw a wobbler and quit, as he remains the mainspring of making sure that a topsy-turvy and controversial BB7 at least ends with a proper winner.

Big Brother is a daring old stick, it has to be said. A programme which exists purely for being live and unpredictable, and still it chucks innovations our way without any cast-iron proof that they would work.

Well, the latest twist, as teased by Davina McCall as she completed her interview with evictee Jayne last week, worked exceptionally well.

Firstly, it led to some dramatically real and yet often tender moments between housemates which the humanists among the audience could openly appreciate without feeling the need to protest.

Secondly, it got rid of Spiral.

“I’m not normally like this,” whined the sacrificial Dubliner in the Diary Room as he struggled to accept that the odd person in the BB house hadn’t taken kindly to him. Clearly he’d forgotten the insults, outbursts, furious rows, overreactions and misogyny which he had instigated over previous weeks.

He might have been unfortunate when one looks through the nomination process, but as much as the rules can be bent to suit a housemate’s own needs, BB can subvert those rules to put a less valid housemate through the boundary. Spiral only got one nomination, but is now out of the game.

After starting the week by waking the tenants with Queen’s unmemorable Friends Will Be Friends (to which only uptight Mancunian Michael knew the words), BB asked the 10 housemates to pair up with their “best friends” in the house. Spiral and Michael ended up together, largely because the instruction brought it home to them that they had struggled to cling on to the coat tails of any one individual since nipping through the Diary Room from next door. As they watched the others beetle around and pair up easily – Imogen and Susie, Glyn and Mikey, Pete and Richard, Aisleyne and Jennie – they were left with Hobson’s choice. Both seemed shruggingly content with each other, possibly due to a basic sense of solidarity since the Next Door project ended with Jonathan leaving via the front door and Spiral receiving a warm welcome from the main house as executioner Aisleyne fled in tears.

And it all ambled along very nicely. Each time music was played on the speakers (comradeship songs like You’ve Got a Friend or I’ll Be There For You) housemates were required to hug. The female duos and Pete and Richard had no problem with this; Glyn and Mikey preferred a type of hug which involved moving around at high speed doing a playground-esque Star Wars movement, mainly so they could avoid any jibes about homoeroticism from wind-up merchant Richard. Spiral looked uncomfortable at first but soon accepted that hugging a man, even a gay man, was not a compromising or dreadful thing to do on television. Sometimes the music would start during sleeping hours, leading to the oddly unwelcoming sight of people dancing unrhythmically in a state of undress, which allowed Richard an easy stab at the other men. All very sweet thus far.

A member of each couple had to write a song for the other which would then be performed, serenade-like, for the rest to watch and squeal at, with the aid of a random musical instrument. It proved that if the decorative but entirely uninvolved Imogen (unbelievably the last surviving female from the original seven) wanted a recording contract out of the BB experience, she wasn’t going to get one. Even under ironic terms would her musical dreams not be lived, so bad was she as she sang something gruesome at an embarrassed Susie. Spiral, who wrote his song for Michael with a kid’s xylophone and lots of cursing, proved that the description of himself as a rapper was pushing it at best. Later he confirmed it by trying to make up raps on his own about anything which had happened, as if attempting to showcase his talents, succeeding only in showcasing the fact that he is completely talentless.

Spiral, already coming across as graceless and awkward by now, killed any lingering sympathy from the public when Pete – already in a band in the real world – used a basic synthesiser to write a musical billet doux to Richard which was crude, funny and came with both a hook and scanning. It got wild applause. Richard loved it. Spiral had a face like a bashed crab while the others guffawed. Maybe he was angry at himself, but we could still add jealousy to his ever-expanding list of defects.

Later came the gifts. BB asked each housemate to suggest a gift or gifts at no more than £10 in total for their best friend to receive. While Susie enjoyed her pink frilly cowboy hat and hardline Welsh nationalist Glyn saw the joke in the England T-shirt, Spiral was distinctly underwhelmed when Pete’s gift to the predatory Richard was unveiled – a smiley picture of the Dubliner in a heart-shaped frame. Richard proceeded to wear it from the V of his zipped top for the rest of the week, and Spiral’s face fell further and more earth was scattered on his grave.

Then Monday arrived. Nomination day.

BB hadn’t mentioned nominations and although the natural inquisitors like Mikey and Richard had wondered out loud whether the “best friends” outlook would include nominations in some way, nothing had been explained by the time Aisleyne and Jennie were called from the garden (not via the ritual method of formally gathering everyone in the lounge beforehand) and told in the Diary Room that they were now to nominate one housemate and could discuss and decide together there and then.

They plumped for Spiral as Jennie’s reasons for disliking him (a real tension and obvious mutual ignorance) was harsher a reason than Aisleyne’s desire to pick Michael, although Spiral’s inability to accept that Aisleyne was not sexually interested in him made this choice easier for her to take. Ultimately, the newfangled nomination laws would make this specific decision immaterial, but immediately Spiral’s goose had been cooked. Glyn and Mikey chose Susie for old-hat reasons of bossiness and mumsyish tendencies; Imogen and Susie chose Michael on hygiene grounds; Michael and Spiral themselves aimed at Richard because of Michael’s clear disquiet at the Canadian waiter’s attitude towards him (although again Spiral had good reason to elect Richard too, though didn’t want to come across as a bad sport by saying so); and Pete and Richard went Michael’s way, almost exclusively at Richard’s behest (“He’s got a fat ass you could serve dinner for eight on”).

All done with some difficulty (except with Pete and Richard, who have never taken themselves too seriously and therefore loved the idea) and the results were announced straightaway with BB making it plain that the nominees would be put up for eviction along with their best friends, and one pairing would be dumped by the public together. The announcements were made of three couples affected and suddenly it dawned on some of them that they’d nominated their closest allies. Mikey was back in the Diary Room quickly, expressing his sadness that he’d been tricked into nominating Imogen, his occasional bed partner, while Glyn’s face similarly made it clear he didn’t like the idea of prompting the departure of his “big sister”. Similarly, Spiral and Michael were horrified at the thought of losing Pete through their choice of Richard, though it’s long dawned on the housemates that Pete is pretty much invincible. For their part, Pete and Richard seemed to like the idea, even though it gave Richard – whose unpopularity within the house (only Susie, Pete and Aisleyne have no issues with him) is greatly contrasted by his clearly large following among the voting public – a massive fifth exposure before the lions’ den. He had expressed a desire to be free of nomination this week, although it was obvious he’d worked out that for as long as he was paired with Pete, he was going nowhere.

BB did this extremely well. The public knew what was happening from the start, although from my viewpoint I didn’t realise the pairings were going to nominate individuals rather than other pairings, and I had wondered how on Earth each duo would be able to agree on a pairing when so many had close relations with one and had declared war on the other. The expressions of disbelief, anger and sadness were immaculately captured as the results and final twists were announced, and Spiral hindered his cause further by looking really forlorn at the prospect of nomination. Honestly, you wonder sometimes whether these wannabes read the rule book. It isn’t a holiday. It’s a game. And as the Irish xylophonist-in-waiting mooched to the bathroom, ignoring the reassurances from best friend Michael and the ever-candid Mikey, he then shuffled to the Diary Room to show once and for all that he cannot take the prospect of people not liking him.

Of course, only one duo nominated him and this is where the real injustice, if there was ever one, truly lay. Michael had his issues with others but they were largely superficial by comparison with Spiral’s fierce temper and lecherous efforts towards a vastly disinterested Aisleyne. Yet it was Michael, because of bad underpants and bad karma, who got the lion’s share. Had he changed his pants and answered Richard back a bit more, he wouldn’t have been nominated. He made mistakes in practice; Spiral made mistakes in character, and that was why ultimately they were both in the forefront of three sets of minds when the nominations came round.

Although one could personally wish for the departure of Susie and the desperately listless Imogen due to active and passive reasons of boredom, there was little chance that a spot of toilet-roll hoarding and librarian-esque muteness (and saying the word “babes” in every sentence) was going to spoil the viewers’ party. Spiral and Michael were runaway favourites for the chop the moment their names came out of the lounge speakers, and four days later out they came.

The reception was tremendous. Neither housemate chose to hide behind the other, and Michael – in symbolic pink T-shirt – chose to take along his manky feline toy Scruples to accept some of the adulation. We didn’t get much extra interview time to allow for there being two of them, but Davina got to work nonetheless, concentrating on the respective difficulty Spiral had with Aisleyne and Michael with Richard (whom he described as “rude, vile and objectionable”). Although Davina was on fine form throughout the eviction airtime, and a simultaneous departure from the house for two people was a first, ultimately the pair of exiting housemates didn’t matter enough to the overall fabric and progress of the show, and they won’t be missed. Spiral especially so.

Although the flaws in both Spiral and Michael brought out the best in Richard’s goading personality, their exodus also won’t affect the Canuck on a personal level so much. He has the intelligence, courage and now a sense of the public backing which will allow him to continue his sly digs, unsubtle innuendoes and general faux-sleaziness which has made him such a fun watch in recent weeks, although his only realistic target for them now is Mikey, who backpedals from Richard’s teasing and reacts with thorniness but has never been afraid to answer back or start a battle when absolutely necessary. The early days saw Richard in more of a protective, patriarchal role, especially prior to Susie’s arrival, as he grappled verbally with the cocky Sezer – and won – and previously talked down the ludicrous Shahbaz – and won there as well. And once he was given a prison officer’s uniform with shocking pink trim and tie for this week’s eventful shopping task, he was in his element – telling fellow officer Michael how good he looked, prior to instructing prisoner Spiral to bend down and tie his shoelaces while renaming him “Hot Stuff”.

It was a terrific task, taking housemates to troughs and peaks in quick succession. Next Door had been converted from Aisleyne’s home-from-home (or yard-from-yard, maybe) into a prison – bars, hard mattresses, uniforms, the lot – and each of the Best Friends had to decide who would be prisoner and who would be officer. Aisleyne, Glyn, Imogen, Pete and Spiral all became convicts and their other halves donned the garish uniforms, sorted out rotas and plonked themselves in front of the security monitor. The prisoners’ despair and forced tearfulness from a task of peeling a thousand onions in three hours was soon alleviated by a splendid, Crystal Maze-esque challenge of finding instructions and a map in a huge cake (although foodie Glyn was more interested in the actual cake) and quickly the cons were tunnelling from behind one of the beds into a luxury secret hideaway complete with jacuzzi, robes, rich chocolates, cigars and various beauty products. They had to remain quiet but found it very hard, skipping about in glee while cheering in whispers and having to shush each other in case those in black ‘n’ pink heard what was going on. Back on the watch, the prison officers were trying to work out why the security monitor was only on prior to a planned “inspection”, although not even the conspiratorial Mikey could guess there was a shrouded den of hedonism for the recidivists to exploit, including what looked like the world’s largest lollipop which Glyn’s tongue promptly got to work on.

“Prison life ain’t so bad,” quipped Pete, undoubtedly apeing the middle class viewer’s opinion that proper institutions were pretty much like this anyway. The quintet found a beach and cocktail bar in the outside area – previously the Next Door garden – and set about enjoying the wares while taking it turns to keep watch back in the cell for when the Diary Room phone rang to warn of an inspection. Meanwhile, a bouncing, gleeful Glyn – whom we have watched grow from a petrified country boy into an energetic and thoroughly decent young man before our very eyes – told the Diary Room it had become his favourite week in the house. His respect for his family – which exuded through his well-chosen words throughout his time in the chair – meant he was doubly determined to win the task, just like when, on a week of basic rations, he took himself through the pain barrier during the walking task on the promise of a proper feed at the end of it. For all the approval which the viewer had for Glyn’s sentiments, this highlighted the problem which BB had brought upon itself – the reward. It spoilt this particular innovation.

Beyond the shopping task (prisoners passing job-related tests, officers correctly carrying out inspections), the prisoners were further required to hide the secret hideaway’s existence from the officers and, on successfully doing so, would each receive a letter from home. A relevant prize to prison life maybe, but this is a game and BB is not prison. I remember thinking that some shark jumping had gone on when PJ and Kate got video messages from relatives in BB3 as a reward for something or other; and later the same series Tim was allowed a 30-second Diary Room telephone call from his mother. It goes against the very principles of Big Brother to have contact with the outside world, and BB is never afraid to tell us and the housemates so. They can vet the contents of the letters, of course, but this would then defeat the object of receiving them.

BB is entitled to make and change the laws of the game, but every housemate was put before the public when Jayne said too much about the outside world, and Nikki got the boot. A fortnight later, and suddenly contact is deemed passable under BB’s own terms. This kind of inconsistency does the show no favours, although one suspects Jayne and Nikki, who suffered from BB‘s previous tough stance on breaking the third wall, are too busy with proud daughter and new E4 show respectively to give a toss.

That said, for all the sense of disapproval I felt on principle for the reward, it couldn’t be denied that it served as a timely reminder to baying crowds and loathsome tabloid critics that these people are real. They’re human. They have families, they have issues and they have emotions. No more stark was this forget-thee-not than when Spiral began reading Richard’s letter to him (BB stipulated that all letters should be read out loud by another housemate) and was unable to continue after realising that the word he had struggled to pronounce in relation to Richard’s mother was “chemo”. The tears welled up in Spiral’s eyes as much as they did in Richard’s, and Aisleyne had to finish it for him.

In the main house, the five prison officers watched the readership take place, with Michael’s religious streak giving him a beating for not being more forgiving of his nemesis Richard over previous weeks, and Pete showing obvious despondence that his heartfelt but manic request for parole had denied him the right to his own letter. Pete had reminded us why he was so respected from all angles, as he emphasised his dislike of segregation and conflict by announcing his wish to return to the main house, sacrificing the luxury surroundings of the BB prison’s hideout. BB responded by offering one prisoner, to be chosen by the officers, parole and a return to the main house, and the rest acted their way through half-hearted attempts at pleading prior to Pete doing a stunning Billy Whizz-style effort around the Diary Room which had the watching prison officers in tears of laughter.

Pete got their vote, but the twist then came when Richard, his “best friend”, was called to the Diary Room to collect him – and was told instead he would be replacing him, much to the disgust of Imogen and discomfort of Spiral. The man-hungry Richard’s BB profile included the nugget that his ideal day would be spent in prison. Now he was there, kind of.

In truth, he wasn’t there for long enough to make a difference or create some incarcerated mischief. There was, apparently, a task which involved sewing mailbags (so dull that it didn’t make the edit) prior to the announcements the housemates had incurred the four fails which meant next week the shopping budget would be basic, but the convicts had passed their task of keeping the hideout under wraps, and so their letters had been delivered. Pete was distraught, hiding his tears in the Diary Room as BB informed him his parole had eradicated his right to some mail.

As the envelopes were opened, it all came flooding out. The other four letters were largely expressions of pride and luck, with Glyn offered the role of godfather to a new family arrival, but Richard’s letter – which he wasn’t ever going to get until his unwitting swap with Pete – stole the thunder entirely.

It’s obvious to state straightaway that one can only express huge sympathy and goodwill to Richard and his mother. That’s the priority point. But what of the BB audience? Richard, thankfully, is already a well-rounded and secure housemate with a huge block vote and a guarantee of a place in the final week, barring him going up against the two other obvious big hitters. But what if this had been one of the less likeable housemates, such as Spiral or Imogen? Had their star changed as a consequence, then critics could have justifiably said they had been a success not because of their conduct in the house, but of the conduct of BB and those waiting for them outside the house. If that ever happens on future BBs after a reward like this, then all credibility has gone. Nobody would dare wish Richard’s family plight on anyone, and therefore any task which threatens to reveal a family secret – sympathetic or otherwise – which could dramatically alter the standing of that housemate through no direct action of their own, needs to be avoided at all costs.

Richard, who to his credit never mentioned his outside difficulties (save for a quiet chat with Susie which I can’t recall ever being in an edit), will not have his place in the public’s pecking order greatly altered by the wave of sympathy now aimed his way. His enemies in the house who have no backbone might refrain from nominating him this week, and still they exist despite the double eviction thanks to the continuing presence of Mikey and Imogen. However, with the other two market leaders as I see them – Pete and Glyn – unlikely to face a housemate-prompted public vote again, any further efforts to dump Richard will be in vain. One hopes that Mikey and Imogen maintain private sympathy for him but continue to air their grievances and keep their principles in the Diary Room. It’s still a game, and it’s starting to get to the ruthless bit.

As Glyn’s journey via the cameras from boyhood to manhood was discussed by that plonker Russell Brand and his audience on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, there were claims that Glyn was closing in on Pete as a bona fide contender for the big prize. But, before the week was out, Pete’s conduct re-established his own high quality seemliness and integrity, as he returned to the main house. His swap, unwitting though it was, with Richard made little difference in the end, although Richard was truly enthralled by the hideout and Pete reveled in his renewed access to the vast BB garden, summoning all his nervous energy which couldn’t be used in the confines of the prison to race around with a few gymnastic movements and Tourette’s tics thrown in. He became happy again for a while, and in ignorance gained more ground through being honest, sacrificial and pious. How on earth can even Glyn match this man?

So Michael and Spiral took the bullets, and then there were eight. I haven’t checked the listings, but my guess is we have a month or so to go, assuming BB returns to a policy of booting out one per week until a traditional quartet remains for the raucous final night. Predictions are coming in thick and fast, but I’m absolutely convinced, beyond anyone’s ability to articulate doubt, that Pete, Glyn and Richard are there until the end, barring a mutual eviction contest in the meantime.

The remaining quintet need to wisen up – their own experiences of these three housemates might not tell the whole outside story, but certainly the magnetism and humility of Pete, plus Richard’s exceptional record at avoiding eviction, should provide a clue that these guys are highly regarded outdoors and therefore, in a game situation, need to be elbowed. Few BB contestants in the genre’s history have ever had the guts to sacrifice their mates in favour of winning a stack of cash, and one simply cannot see Pete going before the public through housemates’ voting alone. The likes of Mikey, Aisleyne, Jennie and Imogen don’t appear to have the bottle or intelligence to sit in the Diary Room and say “I’m nominating Pete, because I want to win and he’s the reason I won’t.”

As for Glyn, he is the dark horse on the inside, as his occasional lapses (usually in drink) and lack of real eviction danger since the first week (when he was nominated by default with Bonnie over non-membership of the Brotherhood, and not through Diary Room submissions) has made it tough for the rest to assess where he really stands on the outside. Plus he too is now universally popular, despite Susie’s odd bout of sniffiness over his teenage hi-jinks and Richard’s concerns about his temper. He certainly has fierce defenders in Mikey and Jennie, who will assist him until they’re no longer there, and the maturing he has done before our eyes has also vastly benefited his cause, as has the sheer joy of some of his antics and his background, which will guarantee that North Wales will come out in force as one for him when it matters.

All that said, he has had some touchy comments aimed his way in the big chair – Richard and Susie have nominated him in the past – and therefore maybe he needs to survive a proper eviction contest against an also-ran for the housemates to take him as seriously as the public does. If that happens, then it might even become a proper two-horse race, with Pete’s followers looking nervously towards the small town of Blaenau Ffestiniog for a challenger.

Cruelty is something Big Brother likes to administer on its housemates if there is a danger of the series becoming a little too unremarkable in mid-run.

Granted, the maverick windypops Jayne had made BB’s capacity for unkindness easy by breaking every rule in the pamphlet, giving the masters a simple opportunity to create tension through sanctions, but sometimes that extra edge of meanness is required.

It’s been a watchably pigeonholed week in the house. With the fabulous Nikki gone and an enormous gap left behind in both entertainment and cliqueyness, the production team needed to don those thinking caps again.

The housemates had already been punished by Jayne’s random, reckless (but one feels, slightly intentional) snapping of the laws, but it wasn’t enough. The point was that the Slough recruitment consultant wasn’t gaining too many enemies. The odd tenant had a whinge behind her back, but nobody confronted her and nobody had a serious go in her direction over her mindless crime wave.

However, Jayne felt the tension spread like wildfire when Nikki departed. Everyone except Jayne herself had been put up for nomination as a consequence of her enormous mouth, and Nikki got the chop. For all her foibles, Nikki was popular in the house and certainly the likes of Pete, Richard, Imogen and Mikey had reason to be dismayed at her sudden demise. Therefore, they had reason, should they have wished to use it, to deflect their frustrations back in Jayne’s direction, and Jayne – who herself was close to Nikki and accepted the blame – could feel some of the daggers drawing.

Nikki had gone, and a week on basic rations (alienating more food-centric housemates like Glyn) was ahead. Jayne’s antics had turned her not quite into a pariah – she was apologetic and sociable enough to maintain her relationships – but certainly into a target, which was brought closer by another offence which rendered the pool and bath out of bounds, and the hot water on a one in 24-hour rota. For the housemates who loathe or can’t cope with the process of nominating their peers, they had an easy choice and a straightforward reason, and therefore only one piece of soul-searching ahead. Although runaway favourite Pete surprisingly avoided choosing Jayne (despite being the one most affected by Nikki’s farewell, and enduring a tiptoeing Jayne trying to close in on the bed left empty by his soulmate afterwards), a big chunk did for reasons of behaviour, selfishness and, naturally, burping.

Canadian wind-up merchant Richard, who is fantastic to watch and clearly a nightmare to live with if not on his level, also picked up a lion’s share. His clashes from one end of the gay spectrum with Michael, the Mancunian newbie with a cuddly toy cat and less of a reliance on his sexuality, at the other end have been fascinating and discomforting at the same time. While it’s certain that Richard has a propensity, instilled by his own obvious confidence and pride in his status, to go a little too far in his terminology and innuendo, the younger and more deep-thinking Michael is struggling not to react, and has consequently become a rather self-conscious and passive figure. He is right to point out that there is more to him than his sexuality, but he needs to stop rising to Richard’s bait. The bully which some have previously described Richard to be, through words and confidence rather than force, is being given a chance to emerge again. By the end of the week the two had come to a grudging understanding, but it’s all likely to hit the fan again now the public have extended Richard’s stay.

Jayne and Richard, pals together, faced the vote and gratifyingly it was Jayne whose name was announced by Davina McCall. It was time for a newbie to go, if only to reassure the remaining originals that their hope of success remained, and keeping Richard in was always going to affect more people than the more superficial issues which hindered Jayne. She could have buttoned her trap and everything would have been sweet, whereas Richard, providing he doesn’t break the rules, will have no intention of keeping quiet, especially when subtly goading Michael on the outside and unsubtly destroying Imogen from within the Diary Room. The looks on the faces of Michael and Mikey when Jayne’s name was announced made their feelings abundantly clear.

For all the vindication Richard must feel as he re-empties his suitcase for a fourth time, it’s fair to say that he is unwittingly bringing out the more human qualities in second-string contestants. Certainly the role established by Mikey in recent weeks has been to defend the pressured or back the underdog, confident in his own debating skills and general integrity with those around him that he has the gravitas to do so. That said, it’s also likely that the near-Scouse chiller chose to back Michael up because his assailant was Richard, someone whom Mikey publicly dislikes and frequently nominates. This, however, continues to be Mikey’s only role in the house. The rest of the time he’s happy to relax, play fiddly fingers at night with decorative Welsh mute Imogen and give the splendid Glyn pep talks on life after school. It’s his way of avoiding nomination, but it might not work forever, and this is where the interesting housemates will always, ultimately outweigh the well-mannered ones. If you happen to be both – Pete, Glyn – then all the better.

As Mikey has unfinished business with Richard and the confidence to turn on him at appropriate moments, it will perhaps do him good in the longer term to endure another week or more with the Canuck stirrer as a room-mate. Although Jayne was witty and certainly real, she wasn’t exceptionally pleasant, either in attitude or manner, and the abundance of shade over light – plus the obvious block vote for Richard saving his bacon again – made her a goner. Out she came to a reasonable reception and her interview with Davina was the best of the series so far as she treated it with the deference it deserved, answering the hostess’s questions thoroughly and politely and laughing heartily as medleys of her peccadilloes and burping were shown. Housemates like Jayne remind us that Davina is good at this Big Brother lark providing she has a switched-on contestant to work with.

Elsewhere, it’s been a fractious week. Spiral, the teetotal Dublin rapper, has come across as an argumentative, inarticulate and largely imbecilic piece of work as altercations over next to nothing provided discomfort for Aisleyne, Michael and Jennie in succession. The last two both said they didn’t wish to talk to him again, while wannabe “biatch” Aisleyne was rather more clever in her retributive measures by merely massaging the bruised ego which had caused their spat. Spiral needs to stop treating her like a sex object, which is admittedly a strain when she is forever in clothing which shows off the washing instructions on her underwear. He hasn’t learned the golden rule of looking without touching, and is coming across as a nasty, vengeful piece of work with little charm or lighter side. His bouts of fury – and his roots – are not unlike those of Ray Shah, the Dubliner who finished runner-up in BB4, but Ray always had the excuse of alcoholic refreshment on his side. Spiral’s abstention make his outbursts more distressing to watch.

His arguments with Michael and Jennie were more down to basic differences in personality and certainly the two seem to have nowhere to go. There is a lot of support building for the teenage Scouser but I can’t quite see what she has just yet, even though the number of nominations she picked up suggests the other tenants see her as a threat or a nuisance, and she fought her corner – and won – with Spiral with points and oxygen to spare. She has a palatable and gentle rapport with fellow adolescent Glyn, the sort which is unflirtatious enough for her dad to enjoy, and has some great T shirts (“I KNOW WHAT BOYS WANT” was one).

What did the boy Glyn want? Well, it was Welsh lamb and chips, with some garlic bread on the side and raspberry pavlova for afters. This brought Spiral to the boil again, as BB assigned the housemates a walking task, with pedometers attached to their persons, having already asked the ravenous rabble what meal they would like as reward if they won. Glyn went for his localised lamb, won the task by managing more than 15,000 steps, and found the meal in liquidised form in the Diary Room as the nauseated others watched on the plasma screen. Glyn, whose desire through hunger had been so prominent that he evoked the greatest sympathy from the equally underfed housemates, ate the side order of garlic bread, tasted the mush (as if to prove a point), called BB “shitheads” in Welsh and departed. He was angry but understanding of BB’s facility to be in total control, fairly or otherwise. A raging Spiral was not so, and the rest turned on him when he protested that they didn’t have the nerve to fight back. Idealism gets you nowhere when you’re locked up and fighting the same battle, and Spiral lost a lot of ground.

It was a week to admire Glyn, and pity him too. As an inexperienced drinker used to home cooking, his meals were hugely important to him. Who else could give the humble and controversial black pudding market such a huge lift as he did? So, having begged BB later for secret food to be passed to him – he was naturally refused – he ended up trying to make himself some nocturnal porridge and succeeded only in burning the pan. He was hungry, and hunger affected his sunny disposition. He didn’t quite turn on anyone – he did well to check his temper – but he became a morose, solitary figure at times, only lightening up when Susie served up the meagre supplies and then at the end of the week when the group passed an assault course task and were rewarded with an ’80s party complete with costumes, wigs, wine, a brief soundtrack from Yazz and – most importantly for them all, including Glyn – a substantial buffet.

The return of a luxury shopping budget will restore the smiles to the BB housemates next week. Lady of the manor Susie can quietly re-distribute the stash of bread, preserves and tea bags she hid in her bed without the need to inform others – only the exited Jayne knew about them – and the housemates can start redefining their stays after a poverty-stricken week on chickpeas, rice, carrots and strictly limited drinks.

Pete still holds the key and has finally come to realise it, such was his sudden change in mood via the Diary Room at the end of the week. It’s still him they have to usurp, and they’re unlikely to do so. The confidence of the Tourette’s lad has been low, and on numerous occasions he has preferred a tranquil corner of melancholia with only his thoughts for company, but gentle moments like shouting, “I’m pissed off!” prior to sobbing toddler-like upon Nikki’s exodus, and then later wanting to nominate Michael’s stuffed cat Scruples for eviction, keep him in line for the swag. However, Davina tells us now that the coming seven days will see the housemates pairing off – resulting in a double eviction and the business end finally in sight. If Imogen and Spiral end up in a duo, then do the nation a service and get voting…

I’m not a betting man. This isn’t down to any inbred principle (unless my mother is reading this) but more down to a lack of knowledge. I have neither experience nor inclination to gamble my limited funds on some otherwise inconsequential event. My mum’s proud of me.

However, while sifting through Big Brother and coming to my various undercooked conclusions thus far, I have taken it upon myself to look, occasionally, at William Hill’s web site (linked via the official BB site, natch) and stare at the odds for each contestant. Helpfully – as I have no idea what 11/8 or 8/11 actually means – they put the housemates’ varying potentials in order, from graceful certs to three-legged nags.

Pete has always been top, rightly, Nikki and Glyn have flitted around the other two places on the rostrum, and the likes of Mikey and newcomers Spiral and Jennie seem to be outsiders with still half a chance in the event of a split nomination or double eviction.

So, when all bar one of the housemates were put at the mercy of the masses this week, how come Nikki was suddenly favourite to go? Ahead of Susie, Aisleyne, even the dreaded Imogen? Three evictions survived, with ease too, and yet when the odds (by my ill-educated logic, but logic all the same) should have been stacked in Nikki’s favour as there were 10 other eviction candidates with her instead of one, she’s suddenly in the bookies’ firing line.

I don’t get it. I’m clearly thick. Or as innocent about these things as Nikki herself would be. If bookmakers put the shortest eviction odds up on Nikki as early as Tuesday night, 72 hours before the lines close and the votes are “counted and verified”, are they doing so with evidence? Is there an Endemol mole? Or are they trying to go the other way, making it seem nonsensical for people to bet on Nikki, therefore also making it pointless to vote for her as well?

I don’t get it.

Nikki’s now out, and I’m gutted. The housemates will miss her massively, if not always for positive reasons. It’s going to be duller. Pete won’t flirt with anyone else. The intelligentsia of the Borehamwood institution have nobody to talk down to. Mikey won’t make anyone else melt with one single smile. Aisleyne won’t fight and make up and fight and make up and fight and make up and … (got the picture?) … half as well with anyone else, not even the feisty Jayne, with whom there is always either a grudging truce or an all-out hatred of real dynamics.

Occasionally, I am conscious that reviews can sometimes be more like overviews – ie. a lot of flowery plot summary without enough subjective comment or argument in the mix. So, allow me to try to add a little more opinion.

Nikki was a spoilt, selfish, two-faced, arrogant, devious, prejudiced, whining, blunt, inarticulate, gobby, obnoxious, high-maintenance, hateable, narcissistic, dishonest, spiteful, jealous, fragile, cruel, paranoid piece of work.

She had breathtaking double-standards and a scowl which could warp floorboards.

She was a liar, a charlatan, a loner, a stirrer, a headcase, a thief and a world champion hypocrite.

And I loved her.

She was the best female in there by any distance you care to name. Any at all. Stand the remaining women next to an ablaze candle warehouse and you still wouldn’t see anyone with Nikki’s star quality.

Is that opinionated enough?

And now she’s gone.

Not for one moment do I believe she ever deserved to win. If someone with so few positive facets can walk away with £100,000 and an offer from OK! to photograph them clinging to their mahogany banisters, then we might as well just pack up and ask those with access to the red buttons to press them and end it all. Belief in good over bad could be extinguished forever.

But she made great telly. I gnawed through the cushions of my settee with the anguished addiction I developed for watching her dig huge holes for herself or somehow climb out of one by luck or one-eyed editing. For the less inspirational highlights programmes, there would always be Nikki doing or saying something amusing, ridiculous or spiteful. Even her background involvements were made watchable by her brilliant habit of over-enunciating every word. Much of the activity revolved around her, usually because she made sure it did. When she was up she was up, taking the housemates and us with her, and when she was down, the earth’s core was within touching distance for every damn one of us. I was certain, especially after my own instincts were matched by her straightforward survivals from eviction in past weeks, that she was there to the end. She might have walked, or Big Brother might have chucked her out (first one possible, second one unlikely) but I was rock solid in my assertion that the public wouldn’t get rid unless similarly sized hitters (ie., Pete or Glyn, maybe Richard) were put up against her. She would become the stuff of legend as the country’s only 24-year-old child.

Wrong again. But why has she gone?

I wish I knew.

The obvious answer, and one I prefer to go with, is that the number of candidates prompted a split in the expected strugglers, and as a result the likes of Imogen and Susie played votes off one another. Somebody, as a consequence, was going to sneak through the gap and it turned out to be Nikki. It could have been anyone else. I wish it had been just about anyone else.

Alternatively, an eighth week of moaning, screaming, paddy-throwing, sulking and sniping finally got too much for the unforgiving viewing public. Nikki’s too skinny by some distance, but otherwise she’s a smart-looking girl who got a fair bit of flirtatious attention from the straight lads in the house, and that would also be a contributory factor in the eviction warrant being signed. After all, BB‘s core audience of 15-25 year old females hate and envy people of their own gender and age who have the nerve to do exactly what they want to, and look half decent for it. Think of the history – Sophie, Tania, Michelle …

I’d curse my TV screen when Nikki did or said something which further confirmed the numbskull status which our ever-charming tabloid press awarded her. But I loved it too. It made every episode watchable. Her antics during tasks and games – most of which involved throwing down an appropriate piece of required equipment and storming off to the Diary Room or her bed, muttering “I’m not doing it!” – was a scream. Uncomfortable yes, embarrassing yes, compelling definitely.

Immediately the housemates realised the effect Nikki’s departure would have beyond their own forthcoming quieter life by the deliberately sad, disconsolate voice of Davina McCall as she announced the evictee’s name. For the first time in her four trials by telly, Nikki was clearly not expecting to go. She’d survived against Sam, Grace (a big result) and in a four-pronged vote which saw Lisa removed, so with no less than 10 others against her, she seemed to think – as I did – that she had a better chance, with her impeccable antecedence, of staying put. So when her name was announced we got a classic Nikki expression of disbelief. The camera zooming in on her got its timing spot on. If ever a contestant’s face displayed a thousand thoughts, it was at that point (assuming Nikki’s brain is capable of a thousand thoughts).

Davina was obviously sorry, and the more switched-on housemates used this tone of delivery to reassure Nikki, while at the same time showing genuine shock at the public’s decision. Ask any of the others privately who they thought would go and a handful of names would have come up. Nikki would not have been one of them.

Pete, who lost his other main admirer and confidante Lea seven days earlier, was devastated. Imogen, who should have gone instead, cried. So did Jayne, whose rule-breaking antics (talking about the outside world) prompted an over-zealous BB to punish the others for her actions and throw them all open to the public. Richard and Susie expressed real disbelief. The others all rallied round. Nikki pleaded through sobs for a lucky silver belt from BB before the rest of the housemates began to work on preparing her for the outside reaction. She needed it. Not since Jade had their been such a wealth of anticipation of how a BB housemate would cope with the stress and pressure of eviction. Was Nikki strong enough?

She was, kind of. Half-an-hour later she was climbing the steps and, having lost an earring and gone almost loopy at the thought of facing the cameras with an earring missing, she was still desperately trying to put it back in when the doors pulled back. As Davina rightly said a few minutes later in opening the interview, it was a reaction akin to a finals night. Maybe that was a dig at the decision to get rid of Nikki so quickly. If so, I felt it. I hope those who voted for her ahead of Imogen did too.

Nikki seemed to go rigid as she took in the cheers and the chanting of her name. Her head has gone frequently askew during the last eight weeks, but heaven only knows where it was as the crowd did its bit. Forget the noise mixtures of previous weeks and the verbal slayings handed to Sezer and Grace – this was an authentic welcome ceremony, the sort of reception for a departing housemate I’ve craved. Davina, despite being considerably pregnant, had to do all the steps herself because Nikki would not budge from the exit, and only when she took hold of the statuesque housemate’s hand did Nikki reluctantly step forward, her face still aghast.

It took an ad break to calm her down and we got a fabulously idiosyncratic interview, packed with incident from the archive. Brilliantly, Nikki offered an embarrassed acceptance of how awful she is. The tantrums about tasks, new housemates (“Who is she? Who is she? Who? Is? She?”), the water, the food, her clothes, her other housemates, her sleep deprivation and the air-con were put back to back. Like Lisa’s major Diary Room swearathon of a fortnight ago, this housemate realised on one short clips session just how spectacularly abysmal she was. And she didn’t care. The public – despite 37% of them choosing her to pack up – loved her.

She went in the house to become famous enough for a footballer to fancy her. There may well be the odd reserve at Yeovil Town or Wycombe Wanderers who’d take her out, but any Premiership player of even the remotest intelligence (thank you for thinking immediately of a punchline) will stay well clear. She’s trouble. She knows she’s trouble. She somehow established and continuously cultivates a reputation on being troublesome and vulnerable. And for the next few weeks, she’s going to have some real fun, milk the moment and put the noses of all the other evictees still in the nosebag (Grace, that’s you) firmly out of joint. One is almost tempted to reserve the next issue of Heat, but not quite. And one secretly hopes she might wait for Pete (“He has nothing but good in him”), even though it’s obvious that she wouldn’t have looked twice at him if they’d met prior to BB.

But will the housemates she left behind cope without her now? And as a consequence, will we? I remember feeling very empty when the public got rid of Jon Tickle three years ago, as Jon seemed our last hope of a consistently entertaining and divisive presence. Nikki’s departure doesn’t quite have the same effect, I believe, as there are big enough personalities in there to regroup and start afresh. However, most of them have established a fair chunk of their in-house personalities through a connection, positive or not, with Nikki. Pete was her love interest – albeit a reluctant one – and his silliest and most endearing moments came with her, sometimes on a poignant level. Aisleyne was her nemesis, vying for the same demographic attention and, to an extent, the same bloke, although I suspect Aisleyne worked out long ago that Pete has no romantic interest in anyone and she has therefore snuggled his way purely to try to strengthen her own public position. Mikey was Nikki’s main safety valve, the one who found it easiest to calm her down. His amiable attitude towards her increased his standing after a number of eventless weeks. Richard’s best rows were with Nikki, notwithstanding his exchange of words with Mikey this week over a rat and Susie’s bottom (not worth the explanation I’m not giving) but he also saved his kindest gossip for her, and summed it up in the highlights prior to Davina’s piteous announcement when he said: “The house would be so dull without Nikki.” I suspect BB‘s edit suite personnel would not have included this throwaway comment had Nikki’s voting position not looked so precarious.

So, where are we at now? A massive, massive eviction at the end of an otherwise plodding week which saw more rows (Aisleyne and Jayne, Mikey and Richard, Spiral and Nikki, Jennie and Jayne, nearly everyone else with Jayne, Imogen with nobody, as usual) and the usual mixture of bitchy gossip, tiresome garbage about who fancies who, and an entertaining prize game based on tennis which even the housekeeping Susie seemed to enjoy. Less so the burping task, inspired undoubtedly by Jayne’s natural aptitude for oesophagul gas expulsion, and also designed to try to get some gross-out sentiments from the prim and still predominantly pointless Susie. She nearly vomited, Imogen also nearly vomited. My guess is that some of the viewers did so too. Thank goodness this was the pick of the three reality shows simultaneously on terrestrial telly this week, eh?

Further misdemeanours from the shameless Jayne means that the housemates are on basics next week, without a shopping budget. Susie will no doubt still rustle up plenty on what does emerge in the larder, as is her wont, while Michael claims to be on a diet anyway. Wowee. Hardly the mutinous reaction some would have staged. It’s not as if Nikki’s there to steal anything any more.

Everyone is faced with the daunting prospect of not having to comfort, cajole, becalm or scold Nikki. BB is at its crossroads for the year. Aisleyne is now the obvious candidate to be the highest-placed female contestant, although Pete is still the one they all need to chase. Glyn and Richard now have their best chance ever of making the last week. And Nikki, despite our saintly shoulder telling us her exodus is a good bit of respite for our minds and sanities, is out having some fun at last, and we feel robbed. The beginning of her fun could mark the end of ours. Meet me here in a week or so and we’ll see…

In past Big Brother series, it was an exception rather than a rule for a departing housemate to be greeted unfavourably by the gathered crowd, no matter what they had got up to in the house. In BB3, for example, only Adele and Tim picked up a poor welcome as they pushed the door open.

Now it’s commonplace. Of all the housemates dumped, only the latest one, Lea, managed to achieve anything resembling an appreciative audience when she left, and even then the most flattering word one can use to describe her reception is “mixed”. Bonnie, the first evictee, got horribly booed on the strength of an accent and the not unreasonable stink she caused when she wasn’t give her suitcase; Sezer was controversial but hardly dangerous, and certainly not boring; Sam barely got a chance to speak before the housemates allowed the crowd to get at her; Grace had cause for concern but ultimately was destroyed outside for having a relationship with the alpha male; and Lisa collected baying noises for little more than a prolifically sweary trap.

Voting folk out is one thing, but who are these people arriving at Borehamwood for little more than a shouting match and to laugh at Davina’s comic asides? Females, predominantly, aged 16 to 26, at a guess, and therefore the very, very jealous types. I want housemates to come out to cheers. They may have gone in to serve their own purposes, but they garner an audience and prompt folk to turn up at their ejection ceremony. Most deserve to be returned to their monosyllabic, eventless existences after doing the BB thing, but at least they deserve some mild appreciation for going through it in the first place. I remember when BB4‘s Jon Tickle came out of the house the first time (then went back in, then came out again) – now that was how to treat a housemate.

The only consolation is the knowledge that when Pete, Nikki, Glyn and – hopefully – Richard come out on the last day (in reverse of that order), the crowd will take the sky out with their noises of appreciation. I’m sure one of these days the reaction – be it booing or cheering – is going to prompt Davina’s growing baby to make a live entrance. Now that would be voyeuristic telly.

So, goodbye to Lea. Numerous nomenclatures have been thrown at her in her seven silicone-enhanced weeks in the Big Brother house, but the description of her by housemates as the First Lady of Big Brother is the most befitting. And the most flattering.

The woman with Britain’s biggest breasts and a dubious “adult” past has been on a proper journey, the type that too many inane attentionados of BB‘s passim claim to have made when in truth they have rarely got beyond the passenger door.

Once the flurry of early withdrawals and ejections was done, everyone had a reason to dislike or not trust Lea at one point or another. She had real enemies, but she also had people who fiercely trusted in her, accepted her motherly wiles and adopting begrudging admiration. Her breasts might have been the biggest, but she wasn’t the only housemate to have endured enhancement surgery, and so three other women found themselves unable to press that particularly easy button.

The return of a standard eviction process was gratifying because it has been a relatively turbulent and busy week for BB. Aisleyne’s eviction-that-wasn’t got mixed responses as she was shunted into a colourful but restrictive House Next Door and joined by five more wannabes. Although BB tried to keep an element of one-upmanship going on, Aisleyne was not to be outdone, and her new, unjudgemental crowd of co-tenants allowed her ample opportunity to assess her own character in the main house and also examine the proper reasons as to why BB had done this. She initially took the news that she would eventually go back to her old housemates after evicting four of the newbies with incredulity; but once she got rid of the first, the task got easier thanks to a slipshod BB.

BB was a fool to itself. For all the itinerary to ask Next Door housemates to keep the noise down in the Diary Room, or to ensure the two gardens were occupied strictly on a rota system to avoid audio from the neighbours, soundproofing indoors should have been the main priority if the plan was always to keep Next Door secret from the main house, especially with a new housemate like Jayne. Thirtysomething, loud, bluff and refreshingly unladylike, Jayne’s incessant chattering and comic burps rendered her likeable but in restricted doses, and Aisleyne got rid at BB’s behest after 24 hours because she couldn’t sleep in her excitable company. Seconds after a massively annoyed Jayne shut the exit behind her, a high-pitched scream came ringing through the walls and ventilation. Jayne had gone next door, Nikki had found her and the world knew. Most importantly, the neighbours knew.

BB refused to confirm Aisleyne’s suspicions but the Next Door occupants weren’t to be fooled. The conversation about BBs hatchet plan on Aisleyne got deeper and – without confirmation – more accurate in its findings. Aisleyne therefore deliberately chose positively rather than negatively when she was asked to ditch two more. This was a result for the gracious Mancunian Michael and lairy Scouse teen Jennie, both of whom had said more vigorously than the other pair that they had high ambitions to get into the main house. Off they popped through the Diary Room to sit at a grandiose dining table in the garden while their fresh roomies were shielded in the bedroom. Eventually, the curtain came up and all hell broke loose, with Jayne following instructions to keep Next Door a secret by also introducing herself to them.

By now, the main house was also getting suspicious. The off-peak timing of the new arrivals, plus the lack of thrilled animation which one would normally expect of a brand new BB housemate, had got cogs turning in even the less active brains. Nikki had her stern, deep-in-thought face on. She produced no theories, but she was trying. Only Richard, in the end, expounded his thoughts and was almost entirely accurate when he pointed in the general direction of the wall between the Diary Room and the exit door and claimed there was a secret room where people were living.

Michael and Jennie said nothing, as instructed, and nobody thought to ask Jayne, who’d only been there for 48 hours, although she had became big motherly buddies with Lea, had terrifically entertaining camp gagathons with Richard and visibly annoyed the prim Susie with her outlandish burping. There’s one immediate nomination you can put your house on.

Amid all this, the regular housemates – Jayne excepted – had been through the nomination process. Still in the belief they were shot of Aisleyne, they went through the usual procedure. Despite Richard’s weekly tirade against Welsh nonentity Imogen, she escaped with ease again. Pete got his first nomination, courtesy of Glyn, who mistook a Tourette’s lull of melancholia as rudeness, and Nikki managed to keep the slaggings down. Ultimately Lea’s manipulation of others – which Aisleyne pointed out so publicly a week before – and the chagrin some felt from Richard’s smart alec comments, put the self-styled “Dicky and Dolly” together. Big pals who had endured their differences, but who needed each other at that point. An interesting poll would be cast as the days went by, but the televisual highlight of the BB week was still to come.

BB gathered the housemates into the lounge for an unspecified reason while also ringing Aisleyne on the Next Door phone to ask her into the Diary Room. What followed was an excruciating, unmissable half-hour of television on so many levels, which began as Aisleyne was flicked on to the plasma screen and the realisation sunk in with the other original housemates that she was still involved.

For the benefit of the old guard, BB recapped Aisleyne’s week since the exit door had shut behind her and she had climbed the stairs, frantic and shuddering, only to be called back down by an aide with a headset and ushered into the Next Door complex (the “penthouse” as its newbies called it; the “yard” as wannabe coloured girl Aisleyne initially named it). As the recap continued, the housemates were aghast. Mouths were open, lots of “oh my God”-type expressions, interspersed with Nikki, as usual believing it was all about her, claiming over and over that Aisleyne would now evict her. Suddenly, it dawned on the housemates that Michael and Jennie had known Jayne from before, and it was Jayne who came to the fore here, bitterly insulting Aisleyne on the strength of one 24-hour period.

Aisleyne cried her heart out from this moment on as BB told her to evict, for real, one of the two remaining Next Door housemates. The other one would then join her in the main building. She took forever to regather her thoughts, such was her affinity with the newbies and her attempt to re-establish her own personality after hearing the boos from outside. Jayne yelled frantically and brashly at the plasma screen; many of the rest simply asked what the remaining two were like. Eventually, on the basic premise that he had said he didn’t mind what she did as he appreciated her difficulties, Cumbrian bouncer Jonathan – arguably the most level-headed of all the newcomers – got Aisleyne’s boot.

This was all screened live, with Davina McCall anchoring, and it was expertly directed as the viewer got right between Aisleyne’s eyes and saw Jonathan’s magnanimous, controlled reaction to seeing his dream die. Aisleyne spent the remaining time hugging him, sobbing loudly and elongatedly. Jonathan held her tightly, making no sound and giving nothing away. The saved housemate, Irish rapper and DJ Spiral (real name Glen), offered gentle condolence and reassurance but ultimately sat out of the grief. Although a soupcon of sympathy could be directed at Jonathan, ultimately there had been no journey for the viewer to take with him, and in many eyes he will be the one who had the lucky escape, in the same way that Bonnie and George will also be able to shake off the tag of unskilled greasy-pole climber. The real sympathy lay with Aisleyne, and the hardest of hearts in the main house, among those who argued with her, belittled her, bitched about her and nominated her, all melted at the grief she was going through. Except for Jayne.

Jonathan left in the usual way, except there was no crowd, and was graceful and co-operative when Davina interviewed him, even though there was little to talk about. What mattered at this point was getting Aisleyne back into the main house, with Spiral alongside her. This happened after Jonathan’s interview had been completed, and was made all the more dramatic and humanised by Aisleyne still in floods on the floor of the Next Door kitchen, with Spiral trying to comfort her as best he could, when the phone rang again. Now was the ideal time for the viewers, but the worst possible time for Aisleyne, to relaunch her. And that’s precisely what they did.

Aisleyne went from the Diary Room into the main house without announcement and ran in hysterics to the bathroom. Spiral followed her, politely saying hello to the people he’d not met as he went along, and with the ever-concerned Pete and – yes, maternally yours – Lea, hard work was done and old clashes were forgotten as the milk of human kindness got to work on reviving the old Aisleyne within the confines of the bathroom. It took a while, but she got there.

Not everyone was impressed. Jayne made it clear to all and sundry that she couldn’t abide her, while Nikki ran to the Diary Room and put on one of her finest 10-year-old-girl tantrums of mock tears and wails to scold BB for bringing her old nemesis back. Remarkably, the individual who finally dried Aisleyne’s tears was the scornful voice of the Diary Room that evening, who dryly mickey-took Aisleyne’s street slang as she tried to gain shelter from the others. She went in still a mess, and emerged with a smile. Everyone except Nikki and Jayne got a hug, and Spiral had done his share of introducing himself. Now we had 13 housemates, when seven weeks earlier we had started with 14. Time was long overdue to get one out.

In the last 24 hours before the votes were counted, Lea had a wobbler which forced BB to agree to her request to walk rather than be evicted, and give Richard a free run to the next week. Astonishingly, where the wisdom of Susie and Aisleyne in trying to dissuade the Nottinghamshire mum failed, the outrage of Nikki – herself more than prone to wanting out when on the verge of hurtling into the lions’ den – changed Lea’s thinking. Nikki, emanating a brand of astute ponderance of which she was previously felt incapable, reminded Lea that Richard respected her and would not approve in the slightest of being saved by anything other than the eviction process. And, she pointed out, there was less of a guarantee about Lea’s departure than there had been about any of the previously evicted housemates.

Nikki had nothing to back this up, but she wasn’t far wrong. Lea garnered 53% of the vote and Richard 47% in one of the closest calls in years. If Lea had gone up against a peripheral like Imogen, Susie or this week’s invisible housemate Mikey, she’d have stayed put, such was her complex nature which made her all the more fascinating and relatable. She was manipulative, and Aisleyne was right to say so, but very vulnerable, awfully insecure and comically uncouth and brazen. She was fun when she was up, and she generated viewer empathy when she was down.

Lea spent her half-hour stay of execution in tears, hugging her beloved Pete and ignoring Susie’s pleas to stop crying as it would ruin her make-up. Ultimately, Lea reconstructed herself, said her proud goodbyes and managed to issue an uncensored c-word at the sliding doors which will get Channel 4 into all sorts of bother. The reaction wasn’t perfect but it was largely an excellent and welcome one after so much out-of-context booing over the weeks, and Lea looked relieved and shell-shocked at not being pelted with tomatoes.

The interview wasn’t great but Lea had done what she set out to do; to prove that “big tits and blonde hair” didn’t mean an empty head. She tagged Pete as “gorgeous inside and out” and felt vindicated by her time in the house. Her departure at least equals that of Sezer for the major effect it will have on Big Brother, and many will miss her: Nikki for the advice, Jayne for the immaturity and swearing, Susie for the motherly chats (although Lea’s tune changed as she called her a “bitch” over and over in the interview for reasons never fully uncovered) and Richard for the silliness. Glyn will miss her for his nocturnal fantasies, but the return of his major crush Aisleyne and the arrival of Jennie – a girl his own age – will help him along there. The disbelief of Glyn at Spiral’s nerve when, on his first night, he asked Lea outright for a feel as the three shared a bed (“I’ve been trying to work out a way to ask that for ages!”) became another inspired Glyn moment which kept his own claims for victory nicely ticking along.

So with Lea gone, Aisleyne back and four new housemates settled in and eligible to win, we feel like we’ve just started. Shahbaz and his wild histrionics seem like forever ago now, but really BB should kick the innovations into touch and start thinking about getting more folk out. A double eviction or two must be in store, if only for scheduling reasons, unless they’re planning to have half a dozen or more in the house to count down on the final night. Back to basics again is the plea – tasks, games, nominations and all the fallout from them.

And the newbies? Well, Spiral and Michael (fearless and likeable respectively) have the characters to gatecrash the business end of BB; Jennie is in a similar position to Glyn in his first week as she tries to come to terms with these more grown-up people before her, and Jayne, as an acquired taste in humour and habit, could find herself on the chopping block before long. Although the Next Door project failed logistically, as both Aisleyne and Richard managed to work out, albeit without confirmation from within, that something was amiss, the actual quality of the housemates produced did contribute to something of a salvage job.

That said, there’s no history of latecomers making the last week and, while Pete, Nikki, Glyn and Richard all remain, it would take a split nomination to get any of them out and give the others, including the newcomers, a fighting chance. The main interest now lies in Aisleyne’s attempts at rehabilitation, and the need to get some of these damned people out!