Celebrity Big Brother: Oh, Lucien

“I just hope my parents are proud of me,” says Lucien Laviscount, gazing at the camera with the serene confidence of one whose parents have been proud of him since he was in the womb. I don’t actually know anything about Lucien’s family background, but his general demeanour would certainly indicate a boy who’s been brought up surrounded by love and support.

But there are things a teenage lad is supposed to get up to ideally without his parents watching. These include cack-handed chat-up attempts, unconvincing efforts to look like a regular and seasoned smoker, chasing anything female and with a pulse, and mildly drunken behaviour generally. He’s not done anything especially wrong in the Big Brother house (apart from that cringingly misjudged quip to Tara during their meal together), he’s just being a normal lad – but it’s all a bit embarrassing with several million viewers watching. I can’t help thinking that, if I was his parent, I’d be prouder of his work on Corrie and Waterloo Road.

Posted by PLA          (more Big Brother here)

Celebrity Big Brother: Kindergarten clots

I can see why pretty-boy model Bobby Sabel has flipped, and most amusingly, on Celebrity Big Brother and started spouting Truths to camera. All the other housemates are like children? Yes they are. Kerry Katona a nice person, but a moron nonetheless? Yes indeed. Suddenly he’s become a lot more fun. I feel too old for this CBB and am still a bit of a butterfly viewer. Jedward and Kerry Katona were the only people I’d heard of, well apart from Sally Bercow, but none of them were people I particularly had an interest in watching. Not like the year Germaine Greer walked in the house in a steely grey dress (not that she managed to stay for very long).

I still have no idea who Darryn weird hair/bizarre sixpack implant ‘Paparazzi’ Lyons is. I’m vaguely aware of My Big Fat Gipsy Wedding, but only remember vast pink fairy light lit dresses, not the formidably hard looking Paddy Doherty, a man who talks about ‘servicing’ his wife as a substitute for any housework (although to be fair, when he spoke to her and their daughter on the phone in the diary room on their anniversary, he was very tender with them). And I’d seen The Only Way is Essex once, so I’d heard of Amy and her vajazzling technique (from which she’s been dropped as the ‘face of’ I read here). Having been brought up in a household where saying ‘fart’ brought a stern telling off for mentioning bodily functions, I quite enjoy her straightforward attitude to bodies and sex, with frequent references to her ‘ninny’. Paddy doesn’t quite embrace this openness tho’, and his face was a picture when she was patiently explaining to him what a ‘camel-toe’ was. Afterwards he told the other lads that women ‘just shouldn’t talk like that’. I’m guessing Mrs Doherty’s ninny only comes out to be ‘serviced’.

Celebrity Big Brother: Bedding in

Daaaay One, and what are we learning about our captive band of zelebs?

1. Jedward’s “people” really know how to pack a suitcase. The amount of clothes that unfurled from those Pandora’s boxes on wheels! Jackets that lit up, more shoes featuring animals than you ever knew existed, enough sequins to decorate a Liberace memorial event (note to younger readers: google). I loved the way Jedward gleefully spread their clothes everywhere and showed them off to anyone who was passing. I love the way they do everything together, and are being treated as one entity: “Jedward are runnin’ themselves a bubble bath,” says Marcus Bentley, sounding like Jimmy Nail on Mogadon while describing possibly one of the campest things ever seen on British television.

2. Sally Bercow is not as much fun as she would like to us think she is. All it’s taken is a nomination from Kerry “Fck a Duck” Katona, and she’s gone all bitter, twisted and needy. Oh well. At least she isn’t sitting around in her pants demanding Diet Coke.

3. Lucien can’t understand Amy – it’s a north/south divide type thing. Amy doesn’t “get” Lucien’s sense of humour, whereas Kerry (also northern) apparently does. All I’ve managed to pick up re Lucien’s sense of humour is  that he doesn’t like being compared to Marvin off of JLS, but has no problem about being compared to Lewis Hamilton.

4. Sally thinks that Paddy’s presence in the house will correct the nation’s misconceptions of gypsies. Paddy thinks a woman’s place is doing the washing up in return for being “serviced” by a man occasionally. My misconceptions are being shattered by the minute.

5. Bobby the stubbly jeans model has no discernible personality whatsoever.

6. Amy has met the Hoff. “The Huff?” repeated The Hoff’s former wife, Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff, not understanding who it was that Amy had met. “Hoff,” repeated Amy. “The Hoff. Your Hoff.” “Ahhh…” replied Mrs Bach-Hoff. “I called him David.” Well, yes, you probably would. We never discovered what Amy’s impression of the great man had been.

Posted by PLA          (more Big Brother here)

Celebrity Big Brother: The wonderful thing about Tiggers

Big Brother is back on our screen, and summer can officially begin! A tad late, obviously. And it was pouring down. But the sound of Marcus Bentley’s voice and the Paul Oakenfold theme tune made me feel like reaching for the sunnies and the factor 30.

No Davina, of course. She’s been replaced by an Irish, male version of herself. Brian Dowling gave a fairly poised performance for his first live show – it must be a fiendishly difficult job for even an old hand like Davina, what with the crowds, the rain and having to wrangle a parade of egos on heels along a catwalk and up a set of stairs in the allotted time. I thought he did very well, even if he did sound a bit wooden occasionally and looked downright scared when Mrs Hasselhoff kept clinging onto him from different directions.

The biggest non-surprise of the night was Jedward – people had even come equipped with “We Heart Jedward” banners. I quite heart Jedward, too, in the sense that they’re madder than two boxes of frogs and they are the last thing you’d want to wake up to – which is why they’ll be perfect housemates, from a viewer perspective. I’d love them just for their Tigger jackets and panda shoes, and I can’t wait to see what their hair looks like under normal circumstances. 

Waterloo Road: And the bride wore handcuffs

(Series 6, Ep.20) Another term almost over, and head teacher Karen Fisher sat back in her chair to reflect just how well the term had gone. Both her daughters, Bex and Jess, had been saved from the clutches of a nasty pornographer and son Harry seems to be over his own “issues;” the teacher who’d been caught having an affair with one of her pupils was safely on bail and awaiting trial (and motherhood); Tom Clarkson is healing nicely and is over his agoraphobia; a nasty racist incident was swiftly dealt with; Waterloo Road’s first openly gay couple are doing very well; no-one died; and, most importantly, exam results are improving, single sex classes are working, and there’s the end-of-term gender-bending pantomime to look forward to!

You could forgive her for cracking open a Bacardi Breezer and toasting a job well done, but, as devoted Waterloo Road watchers will know, the end of term is not the time to relax. It tends to be the time when Something Dreadful Happens.

It usually happens in front of a visiting dignitary as well, so perhaps it was a mistake inviting the chair of governors along to the panto. It was certainly a mistake casting Kyle Stack as Cinderfella. He may have all the dance moves (how Holly Kenny kept a straight face when George Sampson was required to execute a “seductive” body-popping routine in front of her I don’t know), but his greatest skill is in winding up Finn Sharkey. Hence the panto didn’t go at all to plan, what with Finn and Kyle going toe-to-toe over the lovely Sambuca, Kyle being dumped from the production and Sam going all “you’re not a real man” at understudy Finn during the actual performance, when she was meant to be falling for the blinged-up prince.

Jonah (you didn’t think I’d forgotten him, did you?) used the panto chaos to escape from the school and rendezvous with Cesca to head for a wedding at Gretna Green. Chris Mead almost managed to stop them, but Cesca persuaded him to wait a crucial few minutes before calling the police: “We love each other and we want to be together – is that so wrong?” “Technically, yes,” said Chris, wearing his best sorrowful “Don’t do dis” expression.

Waterloo Road: Cesca and Jonah – the secret is out!

(Series 6, Ep.19) The thing with Jonah Kirby is, one minute he looks like quite a plausible boyfriend for a 20-something year old teacher (saving her from scary dogs, being a lovely shoulder to cry on after a hard day, being ever so supportive generally and a bit of a hunk). Then the next minute he’s kicking a football against the wall, or scrapping with his mates, and he’s just a seventeen year-old schoolboy again.

The Jonah/Cesca romance has been interesting in that it’s seemed to be a perfectly mutual, completely genuine thing – no coercion, no power games, just a mature young man and an immature older woman getting together against the odds. Proper Romeo and Juliet stuff. Except that we knew it couldn’t last, and we knew that Cesca was very much in the wrong in letting her heart rule her head and take her into a taboo relationship with someone who was supposed to be in her care. “No-one was hurt!” she protested to Karen after everything unravelled this week. On the contrary, Karen told her, Jonah has been hurt.

He only started to understand the extent of this in this episode, as he realised that taking his girlfriend on cosy camping trips with his dad and his sister is never likely to be an option. That he may never have the glittering career that everyone predicted for Waterloo Road’s star pupil as he has to leave school early and get a McJob to support his imminent offspring. Ronan told him that Cesca looks like a woman who appreciates the finer things in life and wouldn’t find life on the dole with Jonah all that attractive. Though PLA Jr pointed out that Cesca’s mobile phone is rubbish so maybe she’s willing to settle for reduced circumstances after all.

So, considering they’ve been ever so discreet and only ever had sex in cupboards and the art room in broad daylight, how did the secret romance become public knowledge? Well, it was mainly due to that famous lack of discretion, and Chris Mead having a diploma in body language. He can spot the difference between people discussing Spanish homework and a lovers’ tiff even through a fire door. Add this to Jonah’s odd behaviour generally, and Cesca’s shock resignation (she told Karen her father had had a heart attack and she was going back to Spain, when in fact she was bound for Gretna Green and a quickie wedding with Rochdale’s most eligible schoolboy). Chris got the final proof he needed when Cesca fell off a ladder and went to hospital for a check-up, and Chris pulled back the cubicle curtain to find her in a clinch with Jonah, and after that it was a short step to Jonah’s father and the police being called and Karen wearing her very best “I’m so disappointed in you” expression (though she always seems to be smiling at the same time, which undermines it somewhat).

Waterloo Road: The Ronan Burley collection

(Series 6, Ep.18) It was nice to see attention shift away from the Fisher family and on to one of my favourite Waterloo Road characters, the magnificent Ronan Burley. I love Ronan. He’s a cheeky chancer, always looking for a money-making opportunity (which quite often fails) and he’s a show-off, witness his marvellous striptease in the school uniform debate. But he also has a more serious side – facing up to his bullying criminal of a father, or being responsible about contraception.

This week Ronan showed a flair for makeup and fashion design, in a bid to capture the heart of Vicky McDonald. Ok, so she snogged him last week, but this week an apparently more tempting prize appeared in the form of Ronan’s work mentor Dan, played by hunky Will Mellor. A series of misunderstandings, mainly by Vicky and Adanna Lawal, who is turning out to be every bit as pious as Pious Kim Campbell, led to Dan being accused of taking advantage of a schoolgirl. Dan, however, said quite firmly that he “doesn’t date children,” which makes him quite rare among the adult population of Waterloo Road these days.

While Dan had been busy entertaining Vicky with an innocent pizza and a glass of wine (Wine? During a school day? Dan hadn’t wanted to appear “tight” when Vicky said she always liked a glass of wine with her lunch), Ronan was back at school fashioning a piece of haute couture out of a tartan picnic blanket. He wanted Vicky to have something to wear for the fashion show, little realising that she was already wearing a nasty-looking red halter-neck frock that Dan had given her. Ronan’s blanket dress was actually quite stylish, and I expect Stella McCartney was sitting at home with her sketchpad on her knee, scribbling away furtively.

Waterloo Road: But we’ve both been so careful!

(Series 6, Ep.17) Remember what first made Spanish teacher Cesca Montoya notice schoolboy Jonah Kirby in the romantic sense? It was when he rescued her from Kyle Stack’s nasty Rottweiler. “Hola,” you could see her thinking. “He’s all buff and brave and tall and dependable-looking and serene and dazzlingly smiley and that. ¡Ay, caramba!”

What didn’t seem to be uppermost in her mind, or just fleetingly anyway, was that she’s his teacher, he’s her pupil, so basically you just don’t go there (although of course Waterloo Road has already gone there several times, what with Davina and Brett and Chris Mead and Jess). Also she didn’t factor in that, despite appearances, he’s still ever so young.

This week, Cesca started looking a bit peaky in the mornings, and you know what that means. A pregnancy test confirmed that she is, indeed, pregnant with Jonah’s baby. Kids having kids, as Jeremy Kyle would tut. Because he’s ever so young and crazy in love, Jonah thinks this is all brilliant news, and he can’t wait to find himself a job and leave school and start changing nappies, and he really can’t wait to get very drunk indeed and almost tell all his mates everything.

Luckily (or not), the scene of this drunken behaviour (and I must add that Jonah is totally adorable when drunk) was an illicit warehouse party organised by Ronan and Finn, with the express motive of getting Vicky McDonald to snog Ronan. It was successful in that respect, anyway, but went a bit pear-shaped when some dodgy blokes who owned the vodka that had been conveniently left lying around turned up and demanded compensation. Despite them looking like proper hard men, they were no match for Tom Clarkson, who has recovered from his post traumatic agoraphobia and is now perfectly capable of taking on any amount of thugs if they’re threatening Our Josh and his boyfriend.

Meanwhile, the Bex/Hodge/Jess storyline finally resolved (thank the lord). When Jess went off in Hodge’s car to see Bex, Karen and Chris Mead failed to follow them, but then Hodge got nasty and made Jess wear totally the wrong shade of lipstick for her colouring, so Bex texted the address to her mum. When Chris and Karen turned up, Jess was there but Bex and Hodge had gone. They’d only gone as far as a nearby bridge, where they were fairly easy for Karen to spot from a window, given that Hodge was hauling Bex along by her hair. Luckily a bridge is an excellent spot to form a pincer movement with police at both ends of the bridge, and the evil Hodge was finally captured. Hopefully now Bex will be able to get back to school and getting those all-important qualifications.

Several points to notice: (a) Ruth Kirby is back, having mysteriously disappeared for several episodes. Let’s hope she’ll be able to knock some of her famous common sense into her big brother. (b) Finn Sharkey and Sambuca Kelly split up and got back together again, and (c) Finn looks very good in beads. (d) The party was in broad daylight, but what do I know about young people and their ways, or indeed about the problems of night-time filming which may make filming in daytime so much easier.

Next time: Ronan in false eyelashes. A treat, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Posted by PLA              (more Waterloo Road here)

Waterloo Road: This week’s sexist

(Series 6, Ep.16) You thought Kyle Stack was a little toe rag? Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Wayne Bodley (an impressively slimy Qasim Akhtar). Actually, ladies, you may not want to bother, since Wayne is a snivelling sexist pig. And the gentlemen may not want to bother either, for the same reason, and because Wayne is unlikely to be seen again as he seems to be this week’s one-episode wonder.

Wayne’s presence at Waterloo Road was mainly so what Bex got up to during her “lost weekend” could be spectacularly revealed. Part of Wayne’s activities as a snivelling sexist pig involve him having lots of unsuitable material on his phone, and this included a video of Bex. The bits we saw were obviously fairly innocuous, but we were given to believe that it was certainly not the sort of thing you’d want your mum, sister, little brother and the rest of the school seeing. And of course that’s exactly what happened.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and at least the truth coming out meant that Karen could stand by her daughter (after emoting a bit over Tom Clarkson), and Bex’s empowering speech at the Head Pupil hustings got her duly elected. To be fair the competition was poor: Ronan Burley, standing on a manifesto of bribery (with torches that didn’t work), stepped out of the contest early to give Jonah Kirby a better chance. He even printed out some leaflets with Jonah looking all buff. But Jonah was too distracted by the double burden of being in love with Ms Montoya, and having to wear a double-breasted cardigan.

Sadly Bex won’t be taking up her post, as she’s gone off with that nasty Hodge again. This is because Hodge, having slept with Bex’s sister Jess last week, now has compromising footage of Jess, which he was prepared to put on the internet if Bex didn’t go back to him. But Hodge reckoned without the cunning of Jess, who has finally worked out that the nice man who takes her to hotels and refuses to meet her family (alarm bells ringing, anyone?) is none other than the Hodge who has been threatening her sister. Hodge can expect the combined wrath of a whole load of Fisher folk descending on him… eventually.

It was a better week for Sambuca Kelly. According to PLA Jr, Sambuca is officially the luckiest girl on Waterloo Road, because she’s previously snogged Bolton Smiley, and this week got to snog Finn Sharkey. Finn has swerved from bad boy to being quite the gentleman since Kyle Stack arrived, but it took Sam a little while to notice this. Her mates had spotted that Sam had a love/hate attitude to Finn, and they proved that Tom Clarkson’s educational efforts have not been in vain by using Shakespeare to illustrate their point. “Beatrice always gurs on about how much she hates Benedict,” said Lauren.

Next time: Who’s the daddy? Is it that lad in the double-breasted cardigan? Uh-oh.

Posted by PLA               (more Waterloo Road here)

Waterloo Road: Karen Fisher – thick or what?

(Series 6, Ep.15) The thing about headmistress Karen Fisher is that she doesn’t listen. People (her family, mainly) start to tell her things, important things, and she changes the subject, cuts them off, thinks they’re talking about something else. She’s completely preoccupied with her own stuff, and those around her suffer. So this week the person who probably suffers most of all, son Harry, took it upon himself to cause a bit of mayhem by taking her phone and using it to send messages to her colleagues at the school. By lucky coincidence – or else he’s a Machiavellian genius – his emails were all perfectly designed to unsettle their recipients. For example Ms Montoya received an ominous note telling her that a grave matter had come to Karen’s attention. Cesca naturally thought this must mean her relationship with Jonah had been rumbled – unthinkable, as they’re so discreet. No-one will notice anything as long as it occurs in the bike shed, the art room that is always mysteriously empty, or the cleaning cupboard. Actually, since they only had a caretaker for a day, and they don’t seem to have school cleaners, there’s probably not a lot of use for that cleaning cupboard.

The messages Ruby Fry and others got had them so upset that Grantly Budgen summoned a union rep, and it was all a good chance for people to tell Karen what they thought of her. Everything got sorted out eventually, and Karen and Harry had a mother/son bonding moment on the stairs and went out for that classic peace-making snack, the pizza.

Meanwhile, as Karen sorted out the problems of her youngest child, middle child Jess was checking into a hotel room with the sleazy Hodge, who is using her to get at sister Bex. It’s going to take more than a pizza to sort that lot out.

The plan of segregating boys and girls in lessons is not going well, with the boys falling even further behind. Even a cunning scheme to motivate the boys by getting a local businessman in to run a kind of Dragons Den workshop ended in humiliation for Kyle Stack and a small invasion by the girls, led by Sambuca Kelly, who were angry that they’d been left out. Sadly the best invention they could come up with was a dating website. I know it’s worked well for Sarah Beeny, but honestly, girls, there’s more to life than romance, particularly when Jonah Kirby is already taken, Bolton Smiley has left, Josh Stevenson is gay and Kyle Stack is thick and unpleasant. That only leaves a choice of Ronan Burley and Finn Sharkey, and even if they concentrate full-time on romance it’s not going to be enough to keep a dating site busy.

Grantly Budgen and Ruby Fry went on a date, in the sense that they arranged to have lunch together and Grantly said “It’s a date,” as you do. But when Janeece told Ruby that she thought Grantly fancied her, Ruby went all awkward and made a huge point of telling Grantly how much she loved her husband and how she soooooo wasn’t looking for a relationship. After her little racist blip last week, Ruby was back on form, and I hope that this little double-act with Grantly keeps going because it’s very funny.

Next time: We find out what Bex did in her two-year lost weekend when pictures are discovered on the internet. And she wasn’t backpacking in Thailand.

Posted by PLA                     (more Waterloo Road here)