Celebrity Big Brother - TV review

Viewers who tuned in five minutes late to the first episode of 2012's most vacuous TV show could have been forgiven for thinking they'd picked the wrong side.

A gracelessly aged woman with peroxide hair, plaster-thick make-up and what looked like a pair of faux leopard skin devil's horns and unflatteringly tight pink leggings.

It was like tuning into Hammer House of Horror. In fact, it was the start of Big Brother and Julie Goodyear, AKA Coronation Street's Bet Lynch, was being led along the catwalk by a model naked other than a pair of gold lame hot pants.

Odd. Very odd.

Cheryl Fergison was next, the actress famed for playing Heather Trott in EastEnders. And we watched Julie and Cheryl make small talk.

At that point, 19 minutes in, I had a shocking realisation. Two hours of my life were about to be pointlessly and purposelessly lost to manufactured, arid, desolate, messing-with-our-minds TV.

The evening ahead promised dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator, unintelligent pap masquerading as entertainment. Well, it would make a change from writing my dissertation.

Next up were Mike 'The Situation', an American reality star with good abs; Julian Clary, TV's campest entertainer who infamously made a joke that I'm too bashful to repeat about Norman Lamont; and undomesticated, sex-texting Page 3 glamour girl Rhian Sugden, whose CV – and I checked my facts – includes an appearance on a programme called Bamma Ring Girl on Brava. I'm unfamiliar with Bamma Ring girl, and it's probably just as well...

I turned to Twitter for support, to find messages like: 'I've just turned #cbb on, and part of me has died.'

So Solid's Harvey followed. His inclusion was based on having got into an online 'he-said, she-said' squabble with Cheryl Cole.

Next was a journalist called The Brick, who became one of Britian's most hated people for writing a self-serving, egocentric and undeniably fatuous 'think piece' entitled: 'Why Women Hate Me For Being Beautiful'.

Contemptibly, the odious brick said that the tens of thousands of negative responses from haters around the world simply proved that she'd been right. Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the vainest woman of all?

Prince Lorenzo followed, a no-nonsense aristocrat used to a gilded, silver spoon life – though his entrance was played out against the Big Brother pantomime's first ruse.

Soap actresses Julia and Cheryl had to throw tears and tantrums to freak out other new contestants.

Next came a woman called Danica, a lingerie model who likes to walk around naked while at home.

She was booed into the house, though it was hard to understand quite what she'd done wrong. Unlike The Brick, she was genuinely pretty, which seemed to annoy the audience.

Housemate number ten was Olympian judoka and all-round bad boy/hard man Ashley McKenzie, who suffered a quick loss in the 2012 Olympic games.

But let's cut to the chase. Big Brother was once turn-on TV, now it's turn-off TV; a car crash of a programme for those who live vicariously through Heat Magazine.

Three more tenants joined the freak show – Coleen Nolan, Jasmine Lennard and Spandau Ballet's Martin Kemp – we will doubtless read about their heartbreaks, heartaches, heroism and despair over the next three weeks.

Frankly, though, there's no reason why you should believe a word they say.

Television is capable of great entertainment – Celebrity Big Brother is the polar opposite.