Big hello from the Big Brother house
Widdecombe
OMETIMES I am glad to be here and at other times I wish I had stuck to my “never, ever Big Brother” policy. They have respected my modesty but there is still enough vulgarity to fill a lifetime and I am not talking about the guys swearing. One task involved a statement so X-rated that I cannot repeat it in a family newspaper. If the TV bosses want to cast this as something different they need to re-think their own approach.
Why is it that young women these days think they have to show everything when they dress up? Why dresses so deep cut that the breasts are on display? Why so short that you can see…? Transgender housemate India copies this sort of style despite being middle-aged. Is that what she thinks being a woman means?
Most housemates get on amicably. We are after all in it together. The exception is the aforementioned India who takes offence and instigates rows. On Sunday night the boys put on a show for the girls. Wayne danced, John produced some rap and Shane J gave Andrew a makeover as a drag artist. We were all convulsed. Then India soured everything with a massive row about how drag artists offended her because they merely pretended to be women whereas she was a real one. It is by no means the first time she has chosen to give someone a row and the rest of us are getting fed up. That apart, we get along well enough.
Nevertheless in a programme about equality I despair. My idea of equality is just that: men and women have equal opportunity. Neither sex should have special privileges nor positive discrimination. Yet for the time being here the men are slaves and we have the power. That ain’t women’s lib. It is women’s revenge.
Then there was a task which involved the deliberate infliction of pain on men because there is apparently a stereotype that men can’t endure pain. Well try telling that to our boys who come home maimed from Afghanistan. Another task involved asking men to cry. Neither of these tasks seems to me moral, the first being more reminiscent of the Roman arena. Panem et circenses.
Yet others were fun. I am glad that I can still remember how to change a tyre, not having done so since the days when I owned a Morris Minor, a car so simple that I actually understood what was happening under the bonnet.
Now I lift up the bonnet and then say to any passing male: “Er… excuse me but do you know which is the brake fluid container?” Men and women are different. In the girls’ dormitory there are some fluffy toys on the bed (not mine). Can you imagine any man bringing along his childhood bear? Men are physically stronger whatever the dafter element of the equality campaigners may say. We should celebrate the difference instead of moaning about stereotypes.
What do we miss from the outside world? Inevitably most people miss their families and their pets. A few admit to feeling bereft of their phones but interestingly most of us do not. I miss reading and the cosiness of my Aga and log fires. Some miss the gym but give it another week and I think most of us will miss outdoor space. There is a small garden which we use as prisoners might use an exercise yard but that is it. I cannot stretch my legs by strolling across Dartmoor. We cannot wander down a high street or take a brisk walk to the shops. Being cooped up will get to us all eventually.
I thank heaven for Rachel Johnson, a sane and dignified journalist and, incidentally, sister to Boris. Indeed when I knew she was coming into the Big Brother house I did actually believe it really might be different. The young women are wonderfully kind and considerate and Amanda Barrie, the oldest contestant, makes us all laugh. Ashley has almost succeeded in overcoming my lifelong aversion to mascara. Yet we were all glad when the men came in. Being confined with seven other women was not my idea of fun.
Men are so much less introspective and I was running out of patience with some of the self-absorption that manifested itself in the conversations of the first few days.
“Have you noticed how everybody is talking about herself?” I whispered to Malika. “Constantly,” she whispered back. Most of the women in this house have never experienced real discrimination. Only Amanda and I came to maturity in an era where it was perfectly lawful to refuse a woman finance or a job simply because she was female. The others can have no idea how trivial their examples of “discrimination” sound. We women achieved equality a long time ago and it is now the men who face a playing field tilted against them.
Anyway what can it possibly matter who pays for dinner? As far as I know there is still a war in Syria. Watch Big Brother tonight at 9pm on Channel 5.