The Apprentice (Series 11)

This series was so boring, wasn’t it? I fell asleep a few times watching. That’s not exaggeration either, I did. I don’t think the cast are to blame, they were generally regarded as pretty good. Was it the tasks not being up to much? Was it that, like many of the reality TV franchises that are now over a decade old, the show is a bit creaky and tired now? Maybe a bit of both, but either way this wasn’t a very interesting series. As lazy as it might be, I can’t be bothered to do a usual write-up of the series, so instead this is going to be mainly some random moments from series 11.

• They had mixed teams for the first task, which was a novelty… but then they changed them back to boys and girls in the second task.

• The first task was ‘Fish Food’. As in, meals including fish rather than food for fish. Team Versatile chose to sell fishfingers and calamari. Mergim stood out in the worst way for trying to sell fishfingers to a vegan restaurant and slating his teammates for not putting themselves up for project manager… when he himself didn’t either!

• There was also an incident where they couldn’t sell the calamari because it had got too warm. It didn’t look appetising anyway. Lord Sugar made a “looks like it’s already been through someone’s digestive system” joke on a later task, but this calamari looked like something’s digestive system! Despite all of this, Versatile still thrashed the other team that week.

• Team Connexus largely lost for making overpriced and oversized fishcakes. The person who was fired was Dan Callaghan, an adorkably goofy maths geek who’s attempt at sales consisted mostly of “Are you interested in buying a salad?” and running back to get his coat. The main thing he contributed was suggesting “the Sugar Babes” as a team name, which unsurprisingly they didn’t take up.

• Versatile also won the second task, ‘Cactus Shampoo’. Obviously that meant shampoo with cactus in it, but I quite like the idea of shampoo for cacti. I suppose shaving foam for cacti might make more sense. Sorry, derailing yet again.

• Verstatile came up with the name Western for their product, which worked well as it’s the sort of rather pretentious yet “macho” sounding name cosmetic products marketed at men tend to have. Their advert had a model having to strip to his underpants and stand in a mop bucket lathering himself with the product while water from a watering can was poured on him.

• Connexus lost, and the team leader Aisha Kasim was fired for not listening to any of her team, despite the fact she had a hairdresser, Charleine, at her disposal. She also cast models who were far too young for their target market, so Ruth had to step in and model the billboard advert herself, which she was pretty good at.

• ‘Cross-Channel Discount Buying’ saw both teams splitting themselves between Calais and Dover to get some items. There were disastrous attempts at speaking French from most of the subteams who went to Calais. When trying to buy cheese in France, Richard tried to turn on his charm, and it says a lot for how effective it was by the fact the cheese seller tried to sell it to him for a more expensive price than it was labelled as.

• In England, both subteams found free manure from farms, but had to shovel it themselves, which was pretty funny, particularly the girls in their high heels.

• Connexus lost yet again, and the person fired was Jenny Garbis largely for not doing much, including being the only person in the whole task not to buy anything, but despite that she left insisting Lordalan would be banging on the door to come and work with her in two or three years time. Well, good luck with that Jenny.

• One task saw the candidates having to buy products for a pet show. Some of the events in the pet show included rabbit show-jumping. Excuse my ignorance and each to their own and all that, but it made me think of that episode of Father Ted where they try to get a bunch of bunnies to race after a toy greyhound.

• The other products included a hi-vis vest for chickens (because “chickens crossing the road is no yolk!”). They had some cute, inflatable animal-shaped balloons,
  which came in various types, penguins, pandas, giraffes, which you could ‘walk’. They proved very popular. Versatile project manager David Stevenson spent most of the episode being very enthusiastic about animal face t-shirts, and indeed everything at all.

• Ruth Whitely was fired for not selling anything, and her technique of chatting to customers rather than selling to them probably didn’t help. There’s always an obligatory “too nice” one, and that seemed to be the general consensus of Ruth. She’s really nice, everyone likes her, not really “dog eat dog” enough for this show. She’ll likely be remembered for her gaudy eyesore of a suit, cheque pattern with pastel pink yellow blue colour vomit, and her starring role in the team’s shampoo advert.

• I quite liked that this task essentially came down to a battle between dog sofas vs cat towers.

• In ‘Children’s Book’, the task was to write, make and record an audio CD for a children’s book. Sam Curry was chosen for Connexus as he is an English Lit. graduate, but it meant that he was overthinking it all a bit.  He started talking about character arcs, intricate plot and what morals it is teaching, and including words like “moisture rife” and “quell”. Bearing in mind this was a childrens book for 3-5 year olds they had to write in a day! In fairness, their product a sort of dragon-elephant searching for acceptance looked more interesting than Verstile’s “a bee makes honey” story.

• Sam lasted a few more weeks though. The candidate who got fired that week was Natalie Dean. She  had some unimpressive attempts at pitching over the series. One of the biggest things that happened to her over the course of the series was having a bad cough, so… she wasn’t the most attention-grabbing contestant really.

• ‘Handy Man’ was basically the candidates going around doing DIY jobs, but is mostly notable for having a triple firing.

• Project manager Elle Stevenson didn’t even make it into the boardroom. She delegated all responsibility in the task, but admitted it was all her fault in the boardroom. She kind of knew that the game was up, and got an instant firing.
  Elle has the unenviable statistic of losing all six tasks she was there for. She seems like a lovely person though, and there is something kind of adorable about her. She liked to wear princess tiaras and panda onesies.

• Though more unenviable than Elle’s performance record is the fact that after her firing, poor Mergim Butaja had to take over as project manager just to go into the boardroom! His DIY skills weren’t the best it has to be said. He tried to screw in a nail, which made a big hole in the wall. He accidentally splattered paint on a store sign and painted over the wrong part.

• The third person fired that week was April Jackson. Strong-willed perhaps to a fault and her pricing tended to be either too high or too low, but she was likely fired mainly because they had too many candidates left in at that stage. My favourite fact about her is that she has a Yorkie called Diva and used to have a dachshund named Anastasia Edwina Jackson.

• I didn’t notice Gary Poulton until week 7 ‘Discount Store’. For a spilt second I thought they’d started putting newcomers in half-way through like in Big Brother.  Even though Gary won, he still got barely any screentime other than to say cringey corporate Apprentice contestant buzzphrases: “They call me the postman because I always deliver” and “Retail is detail”.

• Though he got a more, er, memorable quote in the following week ‘Party Planning’, when David got fired after printing t-shirts using a picture and an iron, and it came out with Happy Birthday banner on backwards and the print running.  Gary said David “left a sour taste in the client’s eye”.

• ‘Property Agents’ was mostly notable for the fact that Scott Saunders quit on the spot in the boardroom, despite the fact his team had won.  I don’t blame him really. He said and did a couple of daft things in that episode (“windows so the sun can come through in the day or night”), and thinking a cupboard was a fridge, but the laying into him by Alan Sugar and Karren Brady (who, to be honest, was awful throughout this series) all seemed a bit pointless. Scott had been one of the better candidates up to that point too, and seemed to want to give everyone a fair hearing.

• Still, at least Scott appeared on the spin-off show You’re Fired, unlike the actual fired contestant that week, Selina Waterman-Smith. Selina was fired essentially because pretty much everyone had a problem with her. But Selina was a great reality TV contestant. Some of the stuff she said included saying “Pedestrians, out of the way!” while they were in a car, and when they had to plan a kids party saying she doesn’t have any children, doesn’t like them and doesn’t want any. She claimed to be a fire-breather, to which Vana laughed ” “So can she just put a match in her mouth and start breathing?”

• As well as refusing to appear on You’re Fired, Selina made a point of cutting herself off from the show afterwards and publicly slating it via social media and YouTube. If anything, it would be more of a surprise if she didn’t temporarily resurface as a Celebrity Big Brother housemate one day.
  

• Both teams lost in ‘Health Snack’ as neither got any orders. Versatile team leader  Charliene throwing the ingredients in the pot like George’s Marvellous Medicine didn’t get it off to the best start. They had to cross out some of the health claims on the packaging out with black marker pen. As for Connexus, the product they came up with was a bag of olive oil slick with dehydrated red onion floating in it.

• Fired that week was big burly bald builder Brett Butler-Smyth. I wonder if there’s a posh butler out there called Brett Builder-Smith?  I’m sure everyone else has done that joke already. Anyway, Brett’s most memorable quote was “I shit you not”.
  

• Charleine Wain managed to have TWO mortal enemies over the course of the series. One was Selina – yes, Charleine had to the distinction of being the archnemesis of someone who had practically half the cast on her enemies list.  Charleine and Selina was battle of the glamorous blondes, at one time coming close to a catfight (though this happened offscreen).

• Her other enemy was marketing agency director Richard Woods, who had the obligatory David Brent role. Well, someone always has to get that role on this show. He did stuff like pretending to ice skate on the floor to attract customers in the ‘Discount Store’ episode, and in that same episode Charleine was determined to be the top seller, primarily to spite Richard by outselling him! One of the funniest things in the final episode was Richard and Charleine having to pretend to be the perfect romantic couple for a dating app advert.

• New York multilingual social media entrepreneur Vana Koutsomitis was my favourite contestant this series. She was very charming, though she often talked a bit she was a computer in a sci-fi TV show calmly counting down to a self-destruct bomb about to go off. She had some funny quotes too. Her business plan was an app which mixed gaming and dating. She said of it, “I don’t really want too much fun”, and when being told her team had asked people already in relationships about dating apps for market research, “It’s like asking a bald man if he would use Charleine’s hair salon”.

• The winner of the series was Joseph Valente, who had read Lord Sugar’s book.  He had a plumbing business called Prime Time Plumbers. He could be a bit monotone at times, but he was easier to like than last series’ winner.

So yeah, series 11 of The Apprentice was quite boring, despite a promising start. After two sub-par series in a row, I’d like to think the next series can only be an improvement, but if it is bad I hope its at least interestingly bad.

Popstars – 15 Memories 15 Years On

Popstars, the ITV reality TV singing contest which ultimately led to the creation of The X Factor, was on 15 years ago, I was 15 at the time it was broadcast, and here’s 15 random memories I have about it, in no particular order.

1.Obviously, despite trying to forget it, THAT performance of Britney Spears’ ‘… Baby One More Time’ that Darius did.

2. The nervous shaking ginger Glasweigan guy who I think I fancied a bit at the time.

3. I think I fancied Noel Sullivan a bit as well.

4. Poor Danny Foster. What terrible timing that he was in Popstars the same year Shrek came out.

5. How people at school always referred to Suzanne Shaw as “the one who looks like Hannah from S Club 7”.

6. Myleene Klass playing Coldplay’s ‘Trouble’ on the piano.

7. I really liked Kym Marsh, she was one of my favourites despite how temperamental she could be.

8. My favourite contestant though was Claire Freeland. I think she wore a pink cowgirl hat. She was by far the best singer, but was overweight and yes all the usual tedious things on both ‘sides’ that get said whenever weight issues come up on TV were said then. She released a solo single, a dance track called ‘Free’, but sadly it only got to number 44 in the charts.

9. I vaguely remember Warren Stacey’s Craig David-ish 2002 single ‘My Girl, My Girl’ which got to number 26, but I have very little recollection of his time on Popstars. But he went on to be signed to Def Jam, and has one top 40 single and a Wikipedia page to show for it, which is better than nowt I suppose.

10. The 30-year-old woman who they thought was a teenager, and then had to ask her to leave because it was only 18-24. She lamented that it such a small window of opportunity. “Everywhere you look it’s just for 18-24”. When Nicki Chapman said “Look at Tom Jones” she replied “Yeah, those people are already established”. Yes, unfortunately I think that’s still true today. Just look at how unsuccessful the Overs category is on The X Factor. Even the ones that have won from that category have a bad track record.

11. Nigel Lythgoe as a kind of proto-Simon Cowell, dubbed Nasty Nigel by the press after Nasty Nick from the first Big Brother. Nick Bateman- Nigel Lythgoe – Simon Cowell. What a weird evolutionary chain that is.

12. Unlike future reality TV pop star searches, they showed us the marketing/packaging/image side that goes into creating pop stars too. Big mistake, it’s a bit like a magician revealing the secrets behind his tricks and then performing them and expecting the audience to still be impressed. You can see why this aspect was dropped.

13. Fire motifs weren’t good for Hear’Say. People said the official poster of them looked like Myleene’s hair had been set on fire, and then there was the ‘Pure & Simple’ video which people said it looked like they were lighting their farts.

14. Those of us who thought they’d picked the wrong five were quite pleased that Liberty X (as they were eventually named) went on to be more successful. Then there was the irony of Hear’Say releasing as their last roll of the dice ‘Lovin’ Is Easy’, which sounded like it was trying to be a Liberty X track.

15. ‘Pure & Simple’ is a bit of an oddity in pop history really. It wasn’t regarded as particularly good at the time, and you never hear it played these days (well, other than Kayleigh dedicating it to John in Peter Kay’s Car Share), but it is one of the best selling singles in UK chart history, even if it was just off the back of the TV show, and everyone seems to know it. At least some effort had gone into making that single, unlike all The X Factor winners songs.

As a bonus, because I love an excuse to talk about obscure pop music trivia, former Fame Accademy contestant Lemar had a big hit with ‘If There’s Any Justice’ in 2004, and that song was originally offered to Hear’Say! So in a parallel universe where Hear’Say were successful, that might have been a hit for them. Wonder if it’s the same universe where Girl Thing were successful (what do you mean you’ve never heard of them? Jodi Albert out of Hollyoaks was in it and everything!), as they recorded ‘Pure & Simple’ before Hear’Say.

Celebrity Big Brother 16

OK, so I decided to watch and review the summer/autumn series of Celebrity Big Brother last year, but then I remembered why I never bothered before. There’s never any time,
and last year because of various reasons (illness, changing jobs and other stuff) I wrote some of this but couldn’t put it in anything resembling coherence. I will post it now just before Celebrity Big Brother 17 starts.

Most series of Celebrity Big Brother tend to made up of British and American housemates, but this series decided to use that as a full theme, making it UK Vs USA. While its debatable if the theme worked, the logo and house design were great. It included a 1950s Americana diner themed kitchen and dining area, a shower with a red telephone box door and a garden with one side decorated like New York City and the other like Downton Abbey. On launch night they opened with a dance number featuring Royal Palace Guards and cheerleaders.

As for how the series went, everyone fitted national stereotypes. The Brits were reserved, their attitude to being on the show was all “Keep Calm And Carry On” and they mainly sat having cups of tea. The Americans were loud, brash, competitive and confrontational and all about “playing the game”. Although the show likely cast it that way in the first place.

On launch night, the contestant that made the most spectacular entrance was American reality TV star Farrah Abraham, wearing a dress which incorporated elements of the United Kingdom and the United States flag. However, it kind of went downhill from there with her, getting into a confrontation soon after entering, and far from the last either.

On the second day one of the housemates was removed, though it was for things they did before even entering the house. Tila Tequila was removed for posting comments on social media saying she sympathised with Hitler. Considering the programme should have known about this before signing her as a contestant, that shows either spectacular incompetence or a very tacky publicity stunt.

Two further contestants entered on Day 2. They were probably held back from launch night as they were two of the biggest names for this series, in a similar way to Katie Price’s big entrance in the last series of Celebrity Big Brother (though her’s wasn’t planned from the beginning, she was supposed to have been in this one. Actually, it makes you wonder how she might have done in this series). Anyway, they were entertainer Bobby Davro and “the world’s first supermodel” Janice Dickinson, and their late entrance was so they could be the initial team captains for Team UK and Team USA respectively.

One of the earliest tasks saw the British housemates as members of a Royal Family and the American housemates as servants. It featured guest appearances from Paul Burrell, former butler to Princess Diana, and former BBC news royal correspondent Jennie Bond. (There’s a lot of “former”s in this post. Well, let’s face it, this is Celebrity Big Brother we’re talking about). The most interesting part of this task is when the servants have to get scandalous tabloid pictures of the Royal Family. All in all, it was an elaborate, but rather bland and time consuming task.

The first proper evictee was actor Danny Baldwin, who seemed pleasant and normal, and therefore nothing like his brother Stephen Baldwin who had been in CBB7.

In a hotdog themed task the housemates dressed up as sausages, and they had to cover themselves in mustard and ketchup and slide themselves into a giant hotdog bun. This was won by Team USA. They elected Scoop as the President of the house, and he was given the option of nominating someone who would automatically face the public vote. He chose Chris Ellison, best known for being in The Bill. He became the second evictee. Not sure what to say about him really, he was a bit grumpy and…, well that’s all he was, he did little else. He possibly saw it as just another job.

The show used the Fake Eviction to a Secret Room Twist for the gazillionth time. There was a twist on the twist though, as this time the other housemates were let in on the secret. When (because I doubt this will be an “if”) they inevitably do this twist again I think they should just tell the other housemates that the fake evictee has gone into a secret room right away, as the housemates suspect it anyway it’s been overused so much.

This time, the two housemates who were voted in would get to watch the housemates in there as usual, but they wouldn’t know that the others had been told about it. The two housemates would think they were putting people up for eviction, but the joke would be on them as they were actually putting people up for immunity, and those left over would be up for eviction, so the other housemates had to actively try to get themselves “nominated” to save themselves from facing eviction.

To be fair, the twist on the twist was good, and the two who were fake evicted were the best choices to go into the secret room. Farrah because she was such an obnoixous, annoying, ridiculous, screeching, delusional nightmare who took everything as an insult. The other was former porn star Jenna Jameson. She was later voted by the viewers as the most strategic housemate. She seemed the most concerned with the team she was on and who should be on it and how they should play it.  I rather liked Jenna I have to say, partly because many housemates have claimed to “play the game”, but she’s been one of the few to actually live up to it.

One of the things Farrah and Jenna spied on was a talent show the other housemates put on to explain why they were put in the house. There were more than a few amusing bitchy comments. “Holy snorefest” being their immediate reaction to the talent show. Jenna thought Stevi and Chloe’s singing was awful and wondered how the hell they could have got on a singing contest in the first place. She thought that Natasha was a good singer but that ‘Whole Again’ is a crap song. She also this to say about Austin, who had probably the most tenuous claim to fame of all the housemates: “Cheers to your epic untalented ass”. I also agreed with Jenna and Farrah’s choices as to who should have won and lost the talent show;  Scoop as the best and Bobby as the worst for his dreadful cringeworthy impressions.

That said, it was kind of satisfying them coming back rather smugly and then it being revealed that they had been duped. Bobby Davro dubbing them ‘the Ugly Sisters’ and his “no amount of lipgloss can hide the ugliness inside” nomination to Farrah seems to be the most remembered things he said about them, but I much preferred this which he said to Farrah after she came back from the secret room “Do you know why people take an instant dislike to you, Farrah? Because it saves time!”

To be fair to Jenna and Farrah, they did their own late entrant for the talent show, and it was one of the more memorable entries, involving them spraying chocolate sauce on one another.

While the twist on the twist was good, it had an annoying outcome of two of the nicest housemates ending up going.

Scoop was one of the best housemates this series. He deserved to win the talent show for his crowd-pleasing performance of his hit ‘Be Faithful’ from when he was known as Fatman Scoop. He was one of the more rational housemates, and had a peacemaker role. He wasn’t surprised to be voted out, saying that “Nasty is good television” and that “If I’d have known it was this hard I would have charged three times my fee”. He had a couple of other funny one-liners, including saying that Chloe should make a “cigarette salad” after her plan to go without food so she could have cigarettes, and that the house was so stressful “When we all get out we’re going to have a drink and go to a therapist!”.

TV presenter Gail Porter had kind of a housekeeper role, doing the cooking, dishes, general housework and unpacking Janice’s various suitcases. She seemed quite fragile, having gone through mental health problems in the past perhaps the CBB house wasn’t a good place for her to be. But she seems like a nice woman, and she provided one of the funniest moments of the series, interrupting an argument Janice was having to ask what she’d like on her toast.

It was a little sad to see Scoop and Gail go, especially as the reason they ended up facing the public vote in the first place was they didn’t want to try and say provocative things about Jenna and Farrah in order to get them to nominate them. It’s also likely they went in a vote to save because they didn’t want to get involved in petty in-house battles. Scoop went because he didn’t want to slate people he’d befriended, and Gail went because she didn’t want to be mean.

In yet another eviction twist, all the 9 housemates who were remaining were up in a vote to save, the top 4 would be safe and they each had to choose from the bottom 5 who would stay, with the one left over being the evictee. I don’t know if this was another twist intended to save Farrah, but she ended up in the bottom 5 and wasn’t chosen to stay by the others. I don’t see how anyone can be shocked that Farrah would be disliked both in and out of the house. Her self-absorbed, entitled, it’s all the rest of the world’s fault attitude and the way she constantly spewed bile over everyone else and went on and on about how perfect she thought she was were just the start of her annoying traits. Look, I get why housemates like this are needed, but they always end up getting far too much screentime and put on a pedestal by a vocal minority of fans. It was the same with “Speidi”, Perez and Marc in the last civilian series. They make them out to be the whole show despite them being overbearing, exhausting and basically a black hole sucking the life out of the series rather than enhancing it.

This series was billed as UK vs USA, and it wasn’t just in tasks. There was an almost series-long feud involving red wine, who should have it, how much they took and saw the house divided usually along Team UK/Team USA lines. Just one of many examples was when all the wine was kosher and Jenna and Farrah took all the non-kosher cocktails for themselves, so Natasha, Sherrie and Chris got the kosher wine as there was only one bottle and they didn’t see why Jenna should have it all to herself.

That said, what happened more often than the UK and US housemates rivalry was infighting in Team USA.

The Americans often clashed with each other, mostly with a lot of Team USA clashing with Janice Dickinson. Sometimes it was that she lost things for their team by getting confused. Other times it was more personal. She took some celery out of a fridge that was reserved specifically for Jenna’s kosher food. She told Farrah off once by telling her straight “You’re not the queen of reality, I am!”. She was often accused of being diva-ish and living in “Janice land”, which she kind of was, but sometimes I could see where she was coming from. Once she wanted a bath but couldn’t have one as Austin, James, Stevi, Jenna and Farrah were using all the hot water for an hour, and they didn’t clean up after themselves, Gail cleaned up after them.

Janice was another housemate who had some good one-liners. Once while she was sunbathing and she overheard some of the others bitching about her as they thought she was asleep, until she joined in a conversation they were having about seagulls. “I hear everything”. One of my favourite lines of the whole series was Janice making up after having an argument, calling it “Water under the duck’s back’s bridge”.

Anyway, onto the housemates who made it to the final.

6th place went to Loose Women panelist (well, every series of CBB has to have one) Sherrie Hewson. She mainly had the “Nana” role, kind of the default for older female housemates. To be fair, a reason she might not have done much in the house was that it turned out she had a cancer scare before going in the house and didn’t get it checked before entering, which she now acknowledges as a mistake.

In 5th place were ex-The X Factor contestants Stevi Ritchie & Chloe Jasmine, who became a couple while on the contest. As CBB housemates, they were a cringey borefest, with Stevi bringing the bore and Chloe bringing the cringe. They sometimes sat around saying unconvincing sick-bucket lovey dovey stuff to each other like “You’re my cabbage”. “You’re my sprout”. Bleurgh. In what could have been out of Inside No. 9‘s ‘Nana’s Party’ episode we had Sherrie’s Hawaian themed birthday party, with Stevi doing dad dancing to ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ and Chloe going to sob in the Diary Room. Given that the couple they reminded me of from ‘Nana’s Party’ were a sad clown practical joker husband and a bitter, damaged alcoholic wife, lets hope that’s not a vision of their future.

Chloe Jasmine had technically been on Celebrity Big Brother before, as part of Kandy Floss, Chantelle Houghton’s fictional girlgroup in CBB4. Chloe’s contribution to CBB4 was far better than her contribution to CBB16 frankly, but another contestant with a connection to a former series was the 4th place finalist.

Bobby Davro has a link to the very first civilian series of Big Brother, when the housemates won a video of him as a prize, but some didn’t want to watch it and the ones who did weren’t too keen on it. In this series, he was the standard “old comedian telling old jokes” sort of Celebrity Big Brother housemate, nothing more, nothing less. Oh yeah, he sleepwalked a bit too.

3rd place and Top Girl went to Atomic Kitten singer Natasha Hamilton. She had a bit of an Amy Pond look going, red hair, green eyes, jumpers, chequered shirt and glasses, and a bit of a Cady Heron role, as the smart, sarcastic nemesis of the Mean Girls (Farrah and Jenna in her case). Most of the time she was one of the most down-to-earth and level-headed, while she stood up for herself she said she wasn’t going to waste her energy on people who can’t handle different opinions or even listen to them.

The top 2 were a homoerotic bromance of two buff guys who often stripped off and spent time in hot tubs together.

Austin Armacost finished runner-up. He’s an American reality TV star, he was in something called The A List: New York apparently, but he lives in the UK with his British husband. They live in Huddersfield. I used to go there all the time, so weirdly there’s a chance we might have met some of the same people. Austin seemed to get on OK with most of the other contestants most of the time, but there were occasions when his control over his emotions seemed limited at best, and he behaved awfully. One time towards the end he lost his temper and said some horrible things to Janice. The British housemates were disgusted. He continued on in a similar way to the other housemates. This was the last straw for the normally calm and collected Natasha, raising her voice, ironically with what she said to Austin: “You don’t have to shout!” Austin broke down and sobbed in the Diary Room about his difficult past, before going out and being offered a cup of tea by the British housemates.

The winner was James Hill who had been a contestant in series 10 of The Apprentice. James came across much different from what he did on The Apprentice, much more mature. In this company, he was one of the more sensible ones, and while he didn’t always come across too well in The Apprentice, in this series he seemed like a great guy. To be shallow, he is a very good looking too. He left the house to ‘Heroes’ by Mans Zelmerlow. So the brat of The Apprentice became the hero of Celebrity Big Brother. Draw your own conclusions from that.

A random highlight for me, the housemates dancing to ‘Push It’ by Salt-N-Pepa backed by Scoop MC-ing.

I also enjoyed the repeat actions task. Janice was repeatedly told to go into the Diary Room and told that her microphone wasn’t working. When Janice came out, Austin had to shout for James, Farrah shushed him, Stevi & Chloe kissed, Sherrie walked out with toilet paper stuck to her shoe, Jenna spilt a bottle of water, and Natasha sung ‘Whole Again’ to Bobby teaching him the lyrics. They had to repeat that over and over again.

Overall, Celebrity Big Brother 16 was pretty good. It had a decent set of housemates and twists, and had a few storylines going on rather than just relying on one or two housemates (like CBB11 being about nobody but Rylan and Speidi) or just being a random mess (like most of the civilian series for the past seven or so years). The theme also didn’t end up getting forgotten about the way Big Brother themes usually do, it continued more or less to the end. This was one of the better series.

Top Ten Songs of 2015

10) ‘Stronger’ – Clean Bandit

Clean Bandit were number 9 on my list last year with ‘Rather Be’, and they are here again just one place lower with ‘Stronger’. This soaring, sophisticated and uplifting ballad featured Alex Newell and Sean Bass on vocals.

9) ‘Uptown Funk’ – Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars

There’s always a bias towards recency when you do these lists, and unfortunately that means songs like this can suffer. It is one of the biggest selling tracks of 2015 in the UK, but it came out at the end of last year. To be fair, it still sounds good despite overplaying. It’s great, it’s fun, it’s classy, it deserved to be the big hit it was.

8) ‘See You Again’ – Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth

While I can’t claim to have much of a fan connection to The Fast and the Furious film series (I didn’t see any until this year, I thought they were alright), I found this song very moving. Paul Walker’s death was a tragedy. He was a nice person by all accounts and died in a horrific accident at a relatively young age. ‘See You Again’ is a very well produced song which struck a chord with a lot of people.

7) ‘If You Love Someone’ – The Veronicas

Australian pop-rock duo The Veronicas released this track. The song is about changing and “finding a voice” in general, but has hints of supporting political causes, such as conservation. But a lot of people can relate their own personal problems with it. For me, it spoke to me as it could be applied to coming out or being more confident in yourself generally.

6) ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself’ – Jess Glynne

Jess Glynne has done very well this year, with this being her biggest hit. Her vocal performance on this is brilliant. This track got my through much of the last half of this year. Sometimes when you’re stressful about your present, regretful about your past and fearful about your future, songs like this can be helpful. I was surprised at just how helpful this track was actually!

5) ‘Eyes Shut’ – Years & Years

OK, I know ‘King’ was the big hit for Years & Years, but I liked this one more, and it’s my list. The original version of this track had an intriguing, electronic production, but I prefer the album/single version. ‘Eyes Shut’ as a piano ballad is absolutely beautiful, and showcases Olly Alexander’s voice more. It is very smooth and distinctive, and has a vulnerability to it which conveys the lyrics of their songs.

4) ‘Giant Peach’ – Wolf Alice

Wolf Alice – ‘Giant Peach’ reminds me of two works of literature I studied while growing up. The band is of course named after the short story Wolf Alice by Angela Carter, which I read in college and uni, while Giant Peach reminds me of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach which was read to us in Infant School and we had to paint a picture of the giant peach on the sea with the seagulls flying it. Wolf Alice are one of the best bands around at the moment, it is great that they seem to be getting more and more successful, and this track was one of the most interesting to come out this year.

3) ‘Ship To Wreck’ – Florence + The Machine

I was surprised this didn’t get more radio airplay than it did, it sounded great listening on my iPod. ‘Ship To Wreck’ is about being self-destructive and has the familiar motifs of water and the sea Florence + The Machine like, such as killer whales and ships, though I think my favourite line wasn’t water related. “Thousands of red-eyed mice scratching at the door”.

2) ‘Hello’ – Adele

Adele had her work cut out following 21, but she more than managed it. ‘Hello’ was a huge hit. Admittedly it being this high may well be another case of bias towards recency, as songs which come out near the end of the year when people make these lists tend to be more fresh in their minds. But ‘Hello’ has great vocals, an arty video, gorgeous music and production and emotional lyrics, and while it’s all very dramatic, it all fits together.

1) ‘Shut Up And Dance’ – Walk The Moon

When I first heard this song, I thought Walk The Moon were British at first! Not only that, but I thought they were Northern English. They seem like just the sort of band that would come from there. They are actually from the Midwest in America, namely Cincinnati in Ohio. This was my summer song this year, it’s fun and the colourful, cartoonish video perfectly illustrates it. I think this track, and certainly the video, would be a perfect fit to be used in Peter Kay’s Car Share.