Day 20

So, Stephanie has been evicted, and Alexandra has been ejected. As usual, we’re two weeks in, and we’ve lost two girls. This is actually an improvement: this time last year, we had lost Emily (ejected), Lesley (walked) and Shabnam (evicted). The year before, we had not only lost two girls in the first two weeks – Dawn (ejected whilst in the process of walking) and Bonnie (evicted) – but also three boys: Shahbaz (walked), George (walked) and Sezer (evicted). Not to mention Celebrity Big Brother 5’s trio of walkers: Donny (who climbed over the wall), Leo (who smashed his way through the wall), and Ken (who left via the conventional route, but might have given us equally memorable exit if he’d been twenty years younger).

You’d almost think people weren’t having fun in the Big Brother house.

Big Brother 9 might not be the most exciting house ever, but at least the housemates seem happy to stay put for the moment.

The only thing I don’t understand is why, having lost two girls, Big Brother decided to put Stuart into the house. The only interesting things that have happened as a result of his entry are Jennifer’s huge smile (I didn’t know she could do that) the moment she laid eyes on him, and Dennis’ subsequent eagerness to show him the bedroom.

The fact Sylvia seems to have fallen in love with Stuart at first sight does make me feel a little bit more sympathetic towards the lying bitch, although I can’t say I’m impressed by her taste. But most of my sympathies lie with Sylvia’s boyfriend, who can’t be enjoying watching Sylvia cry over another man – although the fact she has shown herself to be a lying, scheming bitch might well have put him off her some time ago.

Mohamed and Sylvia face the public vote this week. I have no idea what anyone could have against Mohamed, who is a nice, kind and principled young man whom Alexandra would do very well to look up to. But the housemates obviously have a problem with him.

Dale finally did something interesting last Friday when he started to cry. Jennifer gave him a big hug, but her words were a lot less kind. For once, I think I’m on her side. Dale, I think it’s very sweet when guys cry because they’re scared of being evicted (if only Sezer hadn’t waited until his name had already been called). But Dale, like next time you want to like cry about like being up for eviction, why not like wait till you’re actually like up for like eviction like? Just a, like, thought.

I like Darnell. He’s not afraid of an argument, but he can make a point without sounding aggressive. He seems to be doing amazingly well considering he’s partially sighted – I never would have guessed he was. He and Mikey are both very brave, and if Mikey wants to use a cup to wash his naughty bits, that’s fine with me. He’s only using it for pouring, and he does keep with his belongings, rather than taking it back to the kitchen. I can understand why Jennifer wanted to clarify this point, but the patronising way she went about it – not to mention the very rude way she walked away from him when he was still talking to her – is far more disgusting than peeing into a cup, which Mikey wasn’t doing anyway.

Dennis is a bitch with a game plan, but he is an interesting character. The Highlights suggest he’s not very subtle about stirring things up, but he manages to get a reaction out of his housemates that doesn’t seem to have backfired on him as yet, if the nomination results are anything to go by – although perhaps the other game-playing housemates see him as too pathetically obvious to be a real threat.

Kat is still the favourite to win, but I don’t understand why. She does seem to be very nice and genuine. She’s usually very cheerful, and gets over any upsets quickly. But she doesn’t really have anything interesting to say. This doesn’t make her a bad person, and I do like her a lot. I just don’t think she’s entertaining enough to win a gameshow where personality plays such a big part. I can see that someone like her might win if it got to the end and there wasn’t anyone nice left – that’s pretty much what happened when Anthony won BB6, his only competition being a geek, a gameplayer, a bottle shagger and a deranged stalker (although I think the geek should have won). But he wasn’t the favourite in Week Three.

Lisa and Mario, having dominated the action in Week One, have now faded into the background a bit, and only appear occasionally to make a negative comment on one or more of their housemates. Mario’s claims of “I’m not going to be evicted” sent a lot of people to the phone to dial his number, but most voters felt there were more important things to worry about than wiping the smarmy smirk off his face – not that I’ve seen the smarmy smirk for a while. Mario got enough nominations to face eviction last week, and he’d probably have gone against anyone but Alexandra (who had 87% of the vote so far, and I bet she’d have ended up losing by least five percent more if she hadn’t been ejected). But this week, the fairly meek and mild Mohamed has beaten him to face the public vote against two-faced Sylvia.

Rachel continues to be very nice – so nice, her housemates are becoming suspicious. There are people in the world who are genuinely that nice, including people who have been on Big Brother, but Big Brother doesn’t usually trouble to show housemates in the best light possible. Even Luke (who is very nice himself, to people’s faces) and Rebecca (who is nice all the time, and I want to kiss her every time I see her) are starting to doubt her. Apart from crying when Alexandra had a go at Rebecca, Rachel doesn’t seem to have shown any weakness at all. She even says she doesn’t usually cry. A beauty queen probably needs a lot of strength and determination because it’s quite likely she’ll come in for a lot of criticism, both from those who disagree with beauty pageants and those who were competing against her. Rachel’s experiences as a child star in films might have helped her to develop this strength, and to grow up fast. Rachel has certainly shown she’s not as fragile as she appears, and her determination to win Miss Wales led her to enter the competition not once but twice. It has even been alleged that she cheated by wearing heels under a long dress in a part of the Miss Wales competition where heels were forbidden, although I’d have thought the judges would have noticed if their smallest contestant had suddenly grown an extra four inches. I think Rachel probably is a very nice girl, but she’s also a determined character with very high standards, and it would be a mistake to underestimate her.

Big Brother fans predicted that Sylvia would face eviction this week, alongside either Mario or Rex. After an increase in popularity last week, Rex is now being condemned by many viewers as bossy and cruel, and I’d say he has a definite tendency to put words in other housemates’ mouths.

So why is Mohamed up for eviction instead? Maybe he is a lot more irritating than he appears to be. Maybe some of Alexandra’s friends (if she had any) blame him for her departure. Maybe they see Mohamed as a likely winner, and are stupidly hoping he might lose to someone as active as Sylvia. Or maybe they used their intelligence, a rare trait in the Big Brother house, and voted for Mohamed to help ensure Sylvia leaves.

If this is the case, it’s surprising they’ve all chosen the same housemate to be Sylvia’s rival. But it’s probably a lot easier to influence nominations that you might think. Sezer and Imogen got banned for discussing nominations in BB7, but two of their friends made exactly the same nomination choices as they would have done. Vanessa in BB6 was also able to influence nominations in such a way that Big Brother didn’t notice, and, despite rumours that one housemate had been breaking the rules in this way, they weren’t sure who it was until Derek gave her away three weeks later. And not forgetting Nasty Nick, who smuggled pen and paper into the house back in BB1.

The housemates in BB9 don’t seem that bright, and Big Brother has presumably learned from their experiences with rule-breaking housemates. But I’m sure there are always going to be Big Brother housemates who are interested in cheating the system, either in order to help themselves win, or just for the fun of deceiving the all-seeing one.

LOVE: Mikey, Mohamed, Rebecca
LIKE: Darnell, Kat, Rachel, Luke
UNSURE: Dale, Lisa, Dennis
DISLIKE: Jennifer, Mario, Rex, Stuart, Sylvia

EVICTION PREDICTION: Sylvia to go with 70-80% of vote