People ain't no good: Big Brother 2008

You have to hand it to Big Brother for doing what very few British shows can do nowadays. It gets people massively obsessed. It goes beyond being water-cooler TV (a terrible term, but there's no UK equivalent, as whoever coined it clearly underestimated our demand for cold water) like the Apprentice. In it's ninth (NINTH!?! This means I was ten when it started. How terrible.) year, there's still people watching the nightly shows, the seven million spin-offs (coming soon- Big Brother's Big Crotch: what the housemate's genitals say about them), and the live feed. For thousands, hearing birdsong on a summer's day doesn't mean you're having a lovely day out, it means that some twat just said 'fuck' at 3pm, and E4 don't want their, frankly, insane viewers to be offended.

The most obvious sign of what a 'cultural phenomenon' BB is can be seen on Digital Spy. For those of you unfamiliar with the entertainment news site/FamousMales offshoot, for 3 months a year they go whacko for Big Brother. Every news story, no matter how trivial, is reported and given more space than, say, the death of Antony Minghella. Let's put that in perspective, in terms of how much coverage a story receives, the death of an award winning filmmaker, behind some of the most loved pictures of the last few decades, is deemed as important as Barry and Jen having a row about whether they want mushroom or tomato soup. And to top it off, there's the constant live news feed, with such highlights as '01:27: Dale is trying to make porridge with water and enlists Alexandra to help him. She says it's "rank"' or '23:17: Lisa and Mario are lying on the sofa talking about the birthday surprise earlier. Darnell is talking to Dennis about chicken and cooking.' There's so much coverage, so much pointless, useless, ultimately meaningless information to take in. It's become less a TV show and more of a grueling endurance test designed to find out how much irrelevant trivia one person can absorb before their brains start to dribble out of their nostrils.

To be fair to Endemol, this year's housemates at least seem like they're an interesting bunch. Among the least punchable are toy demonstrator Mohamed, whose key reason for wanting to enter the house was to show that not everyone called Mohamed is a suicide bomber. I'm sure that in week 6 when you get so hammered off White Strike that you end up plunging your face into Rebecca's bosom, you'll still be considered a great spokesperson for Muslims everywhere. And there's massage therapist Kathreya, whose dreams don't extend far beyond her next box of cookies, but doesn't seem to have a cynical bone in her body, which is nice when all the other contestants are talking about previous series and how they're planning to 'play the game'.

The ones who you'd gladly push through a blender than spend five minutes in their company include walking Gaydar profile Dennis, a cross between Perez Hilton and an accident in a Cuprinol factory, who seems to scream and bitch, but not much in between. He's the kind of person you almost wish was molested as a child, just so he'd have some kind of justification for his strange, vile behaviour. There's also Rebecca, who, upon entering the house saw her fight against millions of years of human evolution and revert to a series of excitable yelps and odd high pitched noises that made little sense, if any.

The rest are a mixed bunch- not outstandingly likeable, but not obviously smackable either. They're humans, basically. And whether, for the ninth year in a row, people being people is enough to keep viewers watching is still to be seen. Whether it's worth using up three months of nightly airtime on sixteen people in a house rather than airing US shows like The Wire, or home-grown productions like Boy A is up to Channel 4. But figures talk, and everyone's got bills to pay, right?