Big Brother Sent to Room 101

So, the news that most of us have been hoping to hear for years came this week; Channel Four will cease to televise Big Brother, and producers Endemol will stop making it if they cannot find another buyer. Please join me in a collective prayer that Channel Five can’t fucking afford it.

According to The Guardian, C4’s three year, £180m deal with Endemol will cease to exist next year. This means one last summer of forgetting it’s on, until you wonder why you haven’t seen the same two episodes of Scrubs every day for two months. I genuinely had withdrawal symptoms from their cheesy moral lectures on life, death and race.

As a ‘cost-cutting measure’ next year’s season will not be streamed live through the idiot box; which is a start, as surely the last 9 seasons would have worked much better with this format? Only massive sad cases and the mentally unhinged enjoy staring at people sleeping during the small hours. Imagine them sat there daydreaming of what perverse acts they could perform if the laws of physics allowed them to climb into the TV screen with some chloroform and KY jelly.

And KY jelly leads me neatly into the challenges undertaken by the contestants in the house. Marathon karaoke sessions, Giant baguette eating competitions (with recommended purging), and biscuit dunking are but a few of the highly inventive dignity sapping spectacles we have seen over the past few years.

I think it is now only right, as it is the last series, to take these shit tasks up a notch. The last two house mates not to have exhibitionist sex directly in front of the cameras will be stripped naked and stuck together with shrink wrap until nature takes its course. This will raise interesting moral questions, like, if neither person consents to sex, which of them is committing the act of rape? The producers are not committing it, as the legal definition demands penetration by the perpetrator. I must ask a lawyer…

Or how about subjecting the housemates to excessive noise torture that the British and American armies are so keen to use on terror suspects? 48 hours of James Blunt’s whimpering lyrical diarrhoea at 125db (the point at which sound brings pain) should sort the deaf from the drooling zombified idiots. Instant voting immunity for whoever who still likes ‘You’re Beautiful’ by the second day.

So what about the Z listers created by the show? Are we really going to miss another self-absorbed little bollocks stumbling out of a Soho club shitfaced? Conveniently forgetting to wear knickers and developing rickets as they get out of a cab? Or how about some gold digging Essex blonde telling the tabloid what a tiny cock an ex-housemate has? Yeah, we’re better off without that shit.

What’s more, there are plenty more sources for these knuckle fucking idiots to come from, there are other reality shows around to start new pointless careers or revive ailing ones. If only there were some way we could mentally torture these idiots, then at least we can gain the grim satisfaction that these people genuinely want their tiny speckles of fame so much that the lifetime need for psychiatry is a worthwhile sacrifice.
So here’s to the end of an era. Thank fuck. End.