Why?:Did I Decide to Audition for Big Brother?
“I can now reveal that the winner of Big Brother two-thousand and twelve is…”' Davina McCall’s voice bellows into the house. I’m one of the final two contestants and I’ve had one helluva time this summer here in this fish box. Literally, it’s been hell. The dramatic pause continues.
Of course it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m not going to win, I’m the slightly amusing one that no one hates enough to vote out but who no one likes enough to remember. My competition, Dane, sits across from me picking his nose and eating it. I sigh as the pause continues.
"The winner is…"
I continue to fiddle with my Rubik’s Cube. I stare at Dane and he looks at the camera as it moves along the rail in that same fascinated way he did back on Day One. Even when the others were here it was still a pain having Dane around. Making sure he got fed and didn't throw his drinks around the room changing his nappies, we were basically babysitters. Honestly I really think that entering a chimp is taking diversity to the extreme.
“DANE!!!” I’d almost forgotten she’d started a sentence and was momentarily confused. “Commiserations Craig! Make you’re way to the door, I’m coming to get you!” I ignored the paradox.
In the ad break I had time to wonder yet again: why did I decide to audition for Big Brother?
The Audition
It was actually a joke that backfired big time. I mean I figured it would be funny to go to an audition and “like totally be like myself the whole time and like not fake and like tell everyone exactly like what I fink of them and that, like cos that’ll like get me like all famous and that, like.”
I stepped into the booth, ending my sense of self respect for a very long time. I introduced myself as Craig Woods (that’s not my real name, my name’s Jeremy Thornton but after saying Craig I couldn’t go back on it) and then I lost my nerve. The words I’d planned to say abandoned me. Instead I was just, like, myself.
“Tell us a little bit about yourself, Craig.” The generic female voice encouraged.
“Well I’ll be honest I’m actually quite shy. And I lack confidence. I’m not really a people person...” I rambled and it was the most cathartic minute of my whole life.
Of course I got through. Again and again at each round. All of it led ultimately to my voluntary imprisonment. I was just too shy to say no at my last chance.
My time inside
My reign of candour ended when I got into the house though. Inside I was all smiles, friend to everyone and always tasteful in my jokes. I was the shoulder the girls cried on, the ear that listened to sports commentary from nineteen-eighty-four, the eyes that saw the orgies, the nose that smelt the dishes, the hands that cleaned them, the one-sided coin and the carer of monkeys. I may as well have been invisible.
The whole thing trickled passed. It was all girls bitching, boys shouting and done-twelve-times-before-can-we-please-go-home-now?
Even now, as I stand just inside the door, I struggle to remember specific names and events I may need to refer to.
The Interview
The doors slide open and I step out to cheers of the sort you give someone who has just dropped expensive china and a storm of flashing cameras. I think about feigning epilepsy, really spice it all up by falling off the catwalk and crushing a little girl as I spasm. I don’t though. Instead I walk up to Davina. Naturally she’s pregnant. With twins by the look of her, unless she’s simply gotten fat after so many children. She embraces me, arm over my shoulder like we’d been chums since childhood.
As we walk along the stage to the studio area I notice one of the banners: “I [picture of a heart] teh monkey!” This angers me. For god’s sake they "painted it!" They don’t have the excuse of being too lazy to correct a typo! These people are worthless!
Before I can start my own personal Holocaust though, I’m being sat down in a giant chair and having more cameras pointed at me like missile launchers.
“Wow, I can only apologise, Craig. Loosing to a monkey, it’s a first.” Davina says as if this should be some kind of consolation.
“People voted for the one they most identified with, I guess.” I sigh as I look at the live screen showing Dane tearing up the couch, something he’s been dying to do for weeks. An “oooh bitchy!” kind of noise ripples throughout the crowd and I feel kind of ashamed.
As punishment I am subjected to a montage of my “best bits”. If I were to choose my best bits I would show a picture of my hair and my feet. Instead the producers decide that my best bits include that time Dane gave me a wedgie and week four when I talked the law student down from the roof. I should have let him die, to boost the ratings. Obviously.
The interview presses on and I’m asked questions. Most of which I answer in the most perfunctory of manners. I can’t risk making the crowd angry, they’re bigger than me and if past actions are anything to go by they’d rather see me dead than a monkey. Eventually it ends with the question:
“And what are you going to do in the future, lets be honest you’ll make loads in interviews and things.”
“Oh, umm. I’ll probably just go back home to my cats and feed them, they’ll be hungry I guess.” I realise I’m talking to a crowd of animal lovers, horrified that animals may suffer. “Unless Spike ate Gizmo…” I add hoping I won’t find his corpse by the door.
Future prospects
As it happens, it turned out much worse than I could have expected. Though Spike didn’t leave Gizmo by the door, he was considerate enough to leave the body on my bed.
My whole life is awful now. I can’t go to the shop without being harassed by paparazzi labelling me as the most boring – and therefore most sought after – housemate in all Big Brother history.
I do a lot of crying at nights. Why the bloody hell did I audition for Big Brother!?
To cap it all, the final insult, Dane's owners at the zoo contact me and ask me if would like a job looking after him, after all I did such a good job in the house. And he misses me. I say yes. I always say yes.
