Top Ten Best Big Brother Eviction Moments

With the latest series of Big Brother soon to start, here is a list of my top ten all-time favourite eviction moments.

10) Sallie Axl car crash interviews (BB14)

Emma Willis was certainly thrown in at the deep end for her first eviction interview as main host of the series. In Big Brother 14 the first evictee was DJ-Glamour Model-Fire eater-Ninja-Pirate-Zombie-Robot Sallie Axl. Sallie demanded food and drink, and shouted to the crowd what saddos they were for queuing up since the afternoon just to boo her. The obligatory OMG! SHOCK!!TWIST for the first week was that they hired an actor to be a mole and do stuff to wind up the housemates. The actor they got, a carrot-topped slice of Ham and Cheese named Michael, got an “eviction” interview himself on the same night, but this seemed to be just an excuse to have get more out of Sallie, as they had her stay hissing and spewing acid like the Xenomorph from Alien throughout his interview. It was perfectly planned car crash TV, but entertaining car crash TV all the same.

9) Heaven falls down the stairs (BB12)

Heaven from Big Brother 12 completed the Holy Trinity of eccentric celestially named female housemates along with Angel in BB10 and Sunshine in BB11 who all were evicted in week 3. They were each regarded as one of the most fascinating housemates of their respective series, despite their frustratingly short stays. It’s particularly annoying that all three might have lasted longer too. Angel was up in a head to head against Freddie, the fan favourite at the time, Sunshine was apparently very close to staying, and Heaven was extremely close to staying, with less than half a percent sealing her fate. Still she managed to go out with a bang. There have been many slip-ups on the stairs over the years as Big Brother contestants leave the house, but nobody managed to do it as elaborately as Heaven, who nearly fell through the staircase. She laughed uproariously, before going up and almost falling down a second time.

8) Stuart’s Epic Stage Dive Fail (BB9)

Big Brother 9‘s Stuart wasn’t a particularly memorable housemate. He was a generic gym-obsessed “hunk”, with the only difference between him and any of the others that have been on Big Brother was that he liked to wear guyliner in lieu of actually having a personality. But he almost made up for it with his exit. When he was evicted he decided to stage dive and threw himself into the crowd hoping to crowd surf, but instead they moved aside and let him thud on the floor.

7) Shabnam’s Thriller Dance (BB8)

Shabnam made no secret of the fact she only went on Big Brother 8 to become famous, and even asked the other housemates to nominate her so she could be evicted and get magazine deals. This obviously made her unpopular with many viewers, though in hindsight a lot of people thought she should have stayed a bit longer. Still, she at least gave us a memorable eviction night. She wore a short skirt with no knickers, and hearing the boos outside said “Why are they booing me? I’m fuuuuuuuun!”, and when the doors opened yelled “SHAMONE!” and broke into a Thriller dance. After the show she had the worst ever attempt for a Big Brother contestant to try for a pop career (which as you can imagine is against some stiff competition) when she unleashed a truly horrendous cover of Lulu’s ‘Shout’.

6) “Mint Banter” Kris is booted out (BB10)

Big Brother 10 had a problem of too many of the more interesting housemates up against each other in a head to head eviction battle, but it had one of the most satisfying eviction results too. Kris was a vacuous douchebag, the kind who probably uses the wanker from that “Everyone knows a bloke like Mickey” advert as a role model. Kris thought that his “mint banter”, bullying of eccentric fop Freddie and tedious showmance with ditzy glamour model Sophie would make him popular with viewers. It didn’t. He was evicted the first time he was up with 63% of vote against four other housemates.

5) Benedict takes a chair with him (BB13)

Benedict, who had been a teacher and a porn star before appearing on Big Brother 13, went far too early, only lasting 3 weeks, but he made sure he had a good exit. He decided to take one of the house chairs with him. As he left he casually told vain bodybuilder Luke S that he had put curry powder in his protein shake. Then he sat on the chair with his back to doors and spun round as they opened, before carrying it over his head as he walked out.

4) Emma and Michelle’s fake eviction (BB5)

At one time, this would have been the number one choice, but while it’s a good twist the secret room/fake eviction has been overused so much everyone just shrugs it off now. It’s more of a shock when a series doesn’t use it. But the original is still the best.

In the second week of Big Brother 5 the housemates nominated as usual but instead of voting to evict the viewers were voting to send two of the nominees into a secret room, the Big Brother Bedsit. There the two would be able to spy on the rest of the housemates on a TV and be able to play pranks on them, giving them cold showers and chilli chocolate cake. Emma and Michelle were chosen, and their excitement was fun to watch, with them jumping on the beds and later icing their boobs. It also had a sense of identification, in that they were a bit like us viewers, watching the housemates on TV and commenting on them. At the time, a lot of people wanted it to go on longer. But they were put back in the main house after a week during a party, and, well, seeing what had been said about them while they were gone, plus resentment at their return from rival alliance the Jungle Cats Victor and Jason, plus of course alcohol led to the infamous Fight Night. Food was thrown, tables were overturned, shouting and arguments went on all night until the live feed was cut and security was sent in, ultimately ending with Emma being removed from the house permanently. Whichever way you look at it, the twist and its repercussions rank as among the most memorable events of Big Brother.

3) Deana & Becky beat Conor & Arron in the vote (BB13)

Switching to a vote to save is the best change the show made when it went to Channel 5. It helps keep the big characters in, but it also feels more satisfying when a favourite is saved, as it proves to the house that the housemate is popular, not just less hated as is the case with vote to evict. It’s also great to see mistreated housemates outlast their bullies.

In the fifth eviction of Big Brother 13, the four housemates nominated were Arron, Becky, Conor and Deana (which led to fans calling it the ABCD eviction because of the alphabetical names). The four housemates had a viewers questions round in the Diary Room, in which the two boys sat on the chair leaving the girls to sit on the floor, picking on the girls and generally being smug and nasty to them. The girls defended themselves well enough, but it was still satisfying to see the result of the vote, with Deana receiving the most votes and Becky second, and the two boys knowing they were in the bottom 2 and having to wait and see which one of them would be evicted. After weeks of being given a hard time by the in-crowd in the house, it was fantastic to see Deana get such a vote of confidence from the public, dancing and declaring that “Good has overcome evil!” in the Diary Room. Later Arron was announced to have the fewest votes and big, hard manly man Conor was left crying in the corner.

Like the BB5 entry, this eviction might have been the top one at one point, if not for how the rest of the series turned out. Becky sucked up to and become the sycophant of the same in-crowd that picked on her before getting unceremoniously evicted, and Conor got no real comeuppance, buggering off with half the prize money in that stupid White Room task. Thankfully Deana did alright out of it, her two closest allies in the house Adam and Luke A finished runner-up and winner respectively. She finished in 3rd place and as the last female housemate standing, the same as other controversial sassy diva cult favourite housemates Makosi BB6, Aisleyne BB7 and later Gina BB14.

2) Kat isn’t careful what she wishes for (BB9)

Kat was the favourite to win Big Brother 9 for much of this series, but she ended up having one of the most celebrated evictions of them all. Not only that, but it was an eviction where the viewers were voting for the winner, so she went because hardly anyone wanted her to win. How did her popularity plummet so much? Well, her persona of loving cookies and shouting “Cookie power!” seemed fun and adorable at first, but it got tiresome after a while. Then there was her terrible singing “HAPPY HOUSE HAPPY HOUSE HAPPY HOUSE HAPPY HOUSE!”, which was just one of the really annoying passive-aggressive ways she tried to control the house. The other ways were by bursting into tears whenever there was a slightest argument, or by sneaky late night plotting of nominations so that only her bestest bestie best fwiends would be the final with her. The show sprung a surprise double eviction, which first took out bogie-eating human dustbin Greedy Mo, and after his interview went back to the house announcing there’d be another eviction. Kat said “Don’t take any more of my fwiends away Big Brother”. Well, she got her wish, as SHE was announced to be the evictee, and after a lot of wailing and taking so long to leave Big Brother had to announce to the house that she “must leave immediately!”, off she went.

1) Sezer’s jaw drops (BB7)

Big Brother 7‘s Sezer managed to go off the scale in the Small Name, Big Ego stakes, even for reality TV. He was arrogant from the start, entering the house on launch night calling it “Sezer’s palace”. He was more of a scrawny ferret than the alpha male gorilla he probably saw himself as. He stopped short of trying to beat his puny chest, but he did some pretend boxing moves. He said he had a gameplan to at least last the full series, but it was never a great one. He bragged he would bully other housemates, which isn’t exactly the best way to make the public side with you. Then he openly discussed nominations, which led to him getting banned from nominating. That week he was announced as one of the nominees, and even then he acted like he was safe and would survive eviction easily as girls would fancy him and vote to keep him in. Then eviction night came. He was announced as the evictee and his jaw almost dropped all the way through the floorboards. After all that bluster about how he was going to rule the series and him being a great gameplayer he was out in just 2 weeks. Not only that, his eviction percentage was a record breaker, at the time it was the highest eviction percentage ever, a massive 91.6 % in a 3 way vote.

Eurovision 2014

This was one of the best finals of The Eurovision Song Contest for a long time. I even liked the introduction video postcards this year, which usually bore me senseless. They had quite a good idea this time, getting the finalists to create an image of their country’s flag. Some used well known symbols of the country, such as Rubik’s cubes for Hungary, tulips for the Netherlands and for us in the UK, red London buses.

Our entrant this year was Molly, a singer-songwriter with a track called ‘Children Of The Universe’. It had a lot of praise going into the competition, but still didn’t do that well, finishing 17th overall. To be honest, I think it’s mostly because the song just wasn’t that great. OK, there was nothing wrong with it as such, but I can’t imagine many people would pick it as their favourite, especially with this year being stronger than most. The most interesting moment involving Molly in this contest wasn’t anything to do with the song, but an awkward interview with one of the presenters Lise Rønne, during which she gave Molly a Curly-Wurly cake made by Molly’s local baker, with Molly making various “WTF?!?!” faces throughout.

There was another British contestant in the final, London rapper RiskyKidd who featured on Greece’s entry, ‘Rise Up’ by Freaky Fortune. This track reminded a bit of ‘Carnival De Paris’ by Dario G or a lot of the other Euro-dance tracks that often chart during a World Cup year, but if it had been remixed by a UK rapper . The performance had a lot of “Make some noiiiiiise!” shouts to the crowd. Oh, and it had some trampolines too.

For my personal favourites this year, one I really enjoyed was Finland’s entry, a band of nice clean-cut lads called Softengine with an indie-rock track ‘Something Better ‘. The song was very elating and epic. It eventually finished in 11th place, which is Finland’s highest placing since they won with one of Eurovisions best ever winners, Lordi – ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ in 2006.

But my overall favourite was Romania’s entry, ‘Miracle’ by Paula Seling & Ovi, which like ‘Something Better’ was very uplifting but was more of an electro-dance track, which had a circular piano and Paula Seling’s vocals reaching very high notes. This was the second time Paula Seling & Ovi have entered. They came second in 2010 with ‘Playing With Fire’. This time they only finished 12th. I suppose it shows that I’m not quite in touch with most Eurovision voters as my two favourites this year Softengine and Paula Seling & Ovi finished 11th and 12th respectively, and that I didn’t reckon much to ‘Playing With Fire’ back in 2010. That said, the winner in that year was the time my overall favourite actually won, ‘Satellite’ by Lena for Germany.

I usually really like Iceland’s entry, and this year was no exception. It was a band called Pollapönk with a song called ‘No Prejudice’. It had a message of “wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice?”, specifically about a guy with a stutter saying he shouldn’t be bullied for it. The band were wearing white bow-ties and bright one-coloured suits in red, blue, yellow, pink and purple. On the internet it was a bit of a spinning roulette wheel as to which colour coded ’90s kids programme they’d be compared to, like the Teletubbies or the Power Rangers. It featured an MP from Iceland on backing vocals. Now it might not sound like it worked in theory, but it really did! The song was happy and very catchy, and the multicoloured suits, triangles, circles, squares and party balloons added to it.

France had a similar idea, but their’s didn’t work at all. TWIN TWIN – ‘Moustache’ ended up dead last in vote, and escaping membership of the dreaded “nul points” club by the skin of their teeth. One of them had Jedward hair, and another looked like Weird Al Yankovic dressed as Timmy Mallet. The song was about a guy who was upset because he couldn’t grow a moustache. I know this is Eurovision, but that’s kind of dumb and hard to get invested in whichever way you look at it. The multicoloured staging also went far over the line into colour vomit territory, meaning it was hard on the eyes as well as ‘meh’ on the ears.

Still, while it might have been the song with the fewest votes and while it might have been awful, I don’t think it was the worst. That by a long way was the Belarus entry, which was Teo with ‘Cheesecake’, and if it were a cheesecake, it would be far too heavy on the cheese and be over a decade past it’s use-by date. It had turntable scratches that were on a lot of songs circa 2002. I think it was trying to be modern in that it sounded like a knock-off of Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’, but sounding like that song certainly didn’t help it look less sleazy.

Germany’s entry (Elaiza with ‘Is It Right’) was a bit rubbish too, and looked a bit thrown together in a “will this do?” sort of way. One girl with an accordion, one with a double bass, and a singer who could have been plucked out any random karaoke bar.

You can always rely on Eurovision for some interesting staging and backing performers. Poland’s entry, Donatan & Cleo with ‘My Slowianie – We Are Slavic’ was very bawdy, with busty women seductively working butter churns and washboards. It wouldn’t look out of place in a Carry On film or a ’60s seaside saucy postcard. Italy’s entry was singer named Emma with an angry rock-ish track called ‘La Mia Città’, and the performance looked like a Roman themed Vegas casino. Ukraine’s entry, ‘Tick-Tock’ by Mariya Yaremchuk had her dressed as some kind of half-Catwoman half-Vampira outfit, and featured a guy in a giant hamster wheel.

Those three entries were all quite good, but this year we had some boring ballads where the staging seemed to be there to distract from how dull the song was. Azerbaijan (Dilara Kazimova with ‘Start A Fire’) had a red dress and a trapeze, Montenegro (Sergej Cetkovic with ‘Moj Svijet’) had an ice skater, and Slovenia (Tinkara Kovac with ‘Round and Round’)
had… a flute.

While it was a decent year, there were a bit too many bland ballads. As nice as it was for as small a country as San Marino to make it to the final, and it being third time lucky for their singer Valentina Monetta, the song ‘Maybe’ was hard to care about. Norway’s entry, Carl Espen – ‘Silent Storm’, could easily be an X Factor winner’s song, especially with Carl Espen being an ordinary bloke with no professional singing experience who only auditioned to go into the contest because a relative thought he had a good voice.

Speaking of The X Factor, the final had a former contestant from UK X Factor this year, Ruth Lorenzo who finished 5th place in the fifth series. Here in Eurovision she was representing her native country Spain. Now Ruth Lorenzo is my all-time favourite X Factor contestant, so I was looking forward to her representing Spain, and I’m pleased she managed to finish in the top ten but unfortunately I didn’t like the track, ‘Dancing in the Rain’, much. It was just another addition the boring ballad pile. The best of that pile was Sweden’s entry, ‘Undo’ by Sanna Nielsen, which was at least sweet.

The acts seemed more like they had been paying attention to modern chart music as opposed to the usual state of affairs where they are just trying to sound like the act which won the previous year. We had some dubstep, from Armenia (Aram MP3 with ‘Not Alone’) which was a favourite in the bookies odds and finished third, but frankly I think Hungary’s entry ‘Running’ did dubstep way better, and the singer András Kállay-Saunders certainly had a better voice. Host country Denmark’s entry ‘Cliche Love Song’ by Basim wasn’t bad, and could easily have been a Bruno Mars hit, and the Netherlands with ‘Calm After the Storm’ by The Common Linnets did a song which sounded very like US country and western act Lady Antebellum, and it turned out to be surprisingly (and, in my opinion, bafflingly) popular in the final vote, finishing as runner-up.

We had two acts that seemed to be going for a Mumford & Sons vibe. The first was Switzerland’s entry, Sebalter with ‘Hunter of Stars’, and was probably the better of the two. It was more lively, and on a shallow note Sebalter was very handsome. The second was from Malta, a folky band called Firelight with ‘Coming Home’, which was OK, but definitely seemed more like a tribute band.

The winning song was Austria’s ‘Rise Like A Phoenix’, and sounded very like ‘Skyfall’ by Adele and many other James Bond film themes. But while it is a decent song , it was the performer, Conchita Wurst that sold it.

With hindsight her win was obvious. Before the final the most talked about contestant was “the bearded lady”, though she is actually a drag queen, the alter-ego of Thomas Neuwirth. Conchita Wurst is a good singer, and I think the reason the song won was because of how moving her performance was. A lot of the people connected emotionally to it, and the lyrics talking about a Phoenix rising from the ashes seem to fit well with Conchita, going through times so tough you burn out only to rise from it more powerful and striking than ever. I really liked that Ruth Lorenzo hugged Conchita after her victory. Apparently they are very good friends, and might collaborate on a song in the future.

There was some noticeable political feeling in this year’s Eurovision. With many of Russia’s current policies, such as their government’s homophobic attitude towards LGBT people and their recent invasion of Ukraine, you can see why they aren’t exactly the most popular country at the moment. You have to feel a bit sorry for Russia’s entrants really, which were two 17 year old twin girls, The Tolmachevy Sisters. They didn’t get booed much in their performance, and their song ‘Shine’ wasn’t bad, but when it came to the vote the audience loudly booed every time Russia got high points, and when Russia themselves were announcing their votes. There have been underlying political tensions in Eurovision before, but it’s rare that it’s been this obvious.

Many have seen Conchita’s win as, in its own way, a good sign for gay and transgender rights, especially as she got high public votes from all the countries, including the more conservative ones. It was heartwarming that so many people in so many countries rooted for her, and it became even more so when Conchita said in her winning speech “This night is dedicated to everyone who believes in a future of peace and freedom. You know who you are, we are unity and we are unstoppable”.

Denmark can be proud of themselves for setting up a good show. Not everything worked. The interval performance which was just people climbing up ladders, and a song about the 12 points score and presenter Pilou Asbæk doing an unfunny all night running joke about references to China. I know they need filler material to show while they are counting up the votes, but still. It was great to see Emmelie de Forest , last year’s winner for Denmark performing ‘Only Teardrops’ again though. I still listen to that song a lot on my iPod, and she performed a new song ‘Rainmaker’ which was written especially for the contest and to go with the whole “#JoinUs” countries coming together theme. As all 26 finalists came on the join in it has the distinction of being the first time all entrants have performed on stage together.

Eurovision does seem to be becoming even more international, with other continents liking it. It has long had a following in Australia, and thanks to the internet it is beginning to have fans in Asia and in North America. This televised contest also achieved high viewing figures in the UK this year. With a generally good set of finalists, an inspiring winner, political tension in the background and Denmark doing a fantastic job hosting it, it is definitely one of the best years I’ve seen of Eurovision, and I think it’ll be a bit of a challenge for Austria hosting the 60th edition next year to top it, but for now it’s a good set up for that.