Big Brother 5's one saving grace...

Nadia's victory.

Well, she won. I can't say I'm surprised, and she was the one I was rooting for all along anyway. This year was painful to watch at times, though. As my sister once argued, the personal substance of the group of characters diminishes with each successive BB, and this years' did nothing to buck the trend. I mentioned to someone I know that this would likely be the last time I would waste my time with it, but he replied that, as I was going back to studentdom for the next four years, I was most likely destined to follow it more than ever before. No way, Pat!

I could never offer a legitimate explanation as to why I followed this show any more than I could decisively choose to ignore it. I always seem to get sucked in at some point, and before I know it, I'm monitoring the housemates on a daily basis via articles on the website. This year was no different, although at some point I lost it for a while. Maybe it was because of the work I was assigned. Oh day-jobs! The inconvenience!

I remember the first time I got into it: the tail end of BB2. At the time of BB1, I was living in a house with no cable TV so I never got to see it. By the time I got into BB2, the number of contestants had been whittled down to about half of what it was when it had started. Brian Dowling had started to emerge as favourite, and The George (Dublin's legendary bastion of gay nightlife) eventually put up a big sign saying 'Good Luck Brian'. As we all know, he won, and to be fair, he was one of the more deserving contestants.

After that, my interest in the show started to follow a standard pattern: Indifference at the start, followed by eventual close study. Once I was reeled in, I stayed in, until the end, and this time didn't prove to be the exception.

In the beginning, BB had the potential to be an interesting experiment. It fell down over the people that they recruited. To give the characters their due, no-one could appear interesting to others 24 hours a day, and cooped up in a claustrophobic environment like that would bring out the venality in anyone's nature, but really! It does not augur well for humanity if those are the best candidates they can find. Also, to a lesser extent, BB suffered (like many a social concept) over the people who ended up following it. A few people like me excepted (!), the core demographic of BB is not a pretty sight. This show's real function is to act as an alternative to the topic of the premiership in conversation, and when it comes down to things like 'Becki did the washing up this morning, but she broke a plate!', it's about as interesting.

BB3 marked the start the start of the new era, where the presence of altruism in the overall group evaporated like a mousefart into thin air. The trend that emerged genuinely was towards housemates that didn't give a shit about anyone but themselves. BB3 is also noted for the fact that the contestant that came fourth (Jade) is still more famous than the one that finished first (kate), but for all the wrong reasons. In BB4, the footage of the housemates when they were awake was only marginally more interesting than that of when they were asleep, and it was hard to imagine anyone with a personality more bland than that of Cameron, the winner. Also, the show was tampered with to a ludicrious extent: Jon Tickle was evicted, but then allowed to come back in again, on the proviso that he couldn't actually win it, and Cameron was swapped with a South African BB contestant, 'hunky' Gaetano (A case for false advertising, if ever there was one), and then swapped back again. BB5, with the whole bedsit fiasco, went down a similar route. Then again, that fiasco resulted in Emma getting the boot, so I won't argue.

Anyway, now it's over, and here is what I think the characters really amounted to:

Victor and Jason: Quite possibly two of the most uninspiring people ever to be brought to popular attention. Victor talked constantly of playing 'the game' while in the Big Brother house, yet as soon as he was up for the public vote, he got the boot. I can see a brilliant career as a master strategist opening up for him. While he was in the house, he once spoke of the 'X factor' the housemates have of which others would be jealous. Oh, look up into the night sky Victor! It's our moon, Titan!

Jason, while looking good on the surface, quickly showed himself up as a sulky little teenager with arrested development, and higlighted the fact, more than a thousand articles on human behaviour ever could, that physical attractiveness will only ever gain you a finite amount of ground with people. His constant cries for respect quickly succeeded in having an effect that was very much the opposite of what was desired. His hissy-fit when he wasn't voted best looking housemate, what can one possibly say? His interview with Davina (He described his worst BB moment as 'losing to Nadia'. Oh grace in defeat!). How did he possibly get as far as second place? How? I'm genuinely mystified.

Also, he sanctimoniously advised one of the housemates against bitching at the start of BB5. So, Jason. What was it again that you spent so much time doing with Victor before he became the Flicked Man?

Michelle: Not so much a bunny boiler as someone who puts the Terminator's efforts to target Sarah Connor to shame. Will She and Stu end up together? Or will he enter a witness protection programme to get away from her? The nation holds its breath.

Stuart: Not much of a presence, for someone so supposedly intelligent.

Shell: Patronising weepy toff. She bawled enough to keep an amazon jungle in moisture for a year during that 'wedding'. For what?

Kitten: Attention-seeking Greenpeace-activist-gone-horribly-wrong.

Ahmed: Child in a man's body.

Marco: An irritation on a par with haemorrhoids.

Emma: NOT the brightest fairy light in the Christmas tree.

Vanessa: Tease. But then again it was Jason she was teasing...

Becki: If she'd been given a chance, she could have proved to be somewhat interesting. Now we'll never know.

Dan: Seems reasonably cool. Accusations of 'fence-sitting' leveled at him by Victor could be interpreted as 'Doesn't spout verbal diarrhoea 24/7', which is what Victor himself did. More than the rest of them put together.

Nadia: The coolest, relatively speaking. Anyone who goes through a sex-change operation deserves respect. And the way she went to pieces when deprived of cigarettes was funny, in a perverse kind of way.

Oh, and a special mention goes to the young, besuited goateed cunt (sorry, guest of Dermot O'Leary) on BBLB, who deserves to be bludgeoned to death.

I realise that this might come across as gratuitous moaning, but I am now firmly camped in the territory of those who feel that reality TV sucks a big dog's boner. Andy Warhol wasn't half right when he gave us that famous '15 minutes' quote, and his films predated some of the house footage, especially that film which consists solely of a man asleep for 6 hours. And most of the people in the house simply don't have the 'X-factor' (Victor!) to make their fame last beyond their exit from the house. They just sink without a trace, the best thing happening to them being that they get to present second-rate TV shows.

The most sobering thought of all is that the American ones (especially that one set in the hotel where all the guys and gals compete to pair off with one another) make BB look funny, subversive, and cutting edge by comparison. I am not one for trite Anti-Americanisms, but we are talking some of the most uninspired, insipid, self-obsessed whiners you will ever see in your LIFE! All you guys on the other side of this rock, you need to storm the TV stations that are broadcasting this and shut them down. They are almost as damaging to your national reputation as your invasion of Iraq.

I'm still glad Nadia won, though. The point was made by an Irish times journalist last week that she has done more for transsexuals than a load of earnest articles and campaigns have accomplished together. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but she was the most deserving by a long shot. The way some people associated with the show made an issue out of her gender re-alignment shows that however much Endemol, the makers of the show, have tried to push as many boundaries as possible with the people they choose, some of the more high profile associates saw her a freak show, including the pre-teen twit who shouted over the fence.

Whether BB pushes social boundaries or not is a moot point. I honestly don't believe it accomplishes much in this regard, but it came close this year. Even the shadow cast over the whole proceedings by Jason getting to second sodding place (let it go, Denis, let it go) was more or less removed when she fluttered her way out of the house.

So all the best, Ms. Almada. Good on you for kicking Jason's arse. Hope it all goes well for you. Yours is the last Big Brother victory I'll ever see.

I swear.