Monday April 8: It's actually very hard to get any sensible impressions of the new housemates when they get dragged through the crowd (a format virtually unchanged from last year). In any event, I was so struck by the sheer audacity of removing all the furniture from the house -- one of the few methods guaranteed to give the contestants a shock -- that I didn't notice too much.

The dominant impression I got that was Peter looked like he was stoned out of his mind. (I thought the same about Lisa last year, so that's not a good omen.) I wrote the phrase "annoying party moll" next to Jessica's name, but now I can't remember why. Other than that, it seems too early to say, although Nathan could easily get a bit wearing.

Random observations:

Tuesday April 9: OK, one day in and two housemates have managed to completely get on my wick. Damian's "I don't wanna clean" comment got my hackles rising immediately; you'd think that he'd realise the importance of teamwork. Even Blair (another young guy who hadn't moved out of home yet) wasn't quite that obtuse.

The worst remark came from Katrina during the shopping. Having rejected olive oil as unnecessary (she can't cook much, I assume), she then commented "tofu has to be there". Tofu! God help me if I had to share a kitchen with her.

Also on the subject of domestic chores, it was a bit disquieting to realise that all the girls were working out the shopping list while the guys continued painting. And maybe it was the lighting, but everyone seemed to spend a lot of time painting over areas they'd already dealt with before.

Random observations:

Wednesday April 10: Call me cynical, but I can't help wondering if having a birthday in the opening weeks of the broadcast might increase your chances of getting on. Then again, I wasn't completely convinced that the party was such a surprise; surely, if you watched the show last year, you'd be expecting it.

Random observations:

Thursday April 11: The extensive coverage of Shannon's exercise class being disrupted by Nathan made her look like something of a bogan, but she managed to get her own back (as it were) during her accounts of her bulimia. Oddly, the effect of Nathan's disruptions was actually to make him more likeable; I still don't think he'll last the distance, but he's slipped away from the perch of being the most obviously annoying. That role clearly belongs to Damian, who just fancies himself way too much. (OK, the fact the producers are emphasising his romantic attempts probably heightens the effect, but I still think he's a prat.)

Random observations:

Friday April 12: Getting to see the challenge completed always provides one of the more obvious dramatic peaks of the week. Without the structured format used for the same activity last year, I thought the housemates might have blown it, but they managed to scrape through.

While the lads were distressed by their inability to keep a football in the yard for more than 10 minutes, I couldn't help but be struck by the fact that there's much more exercise equipment around this year. We also got an early reminder of the fragility of microphones when Peter hit the pool with his still on.

Random observations:

Sunday April 14: The one-off 'The Honeymoon Is Over' special didn't introduce a whole lot of new information, but to be fair I did watch it straight after catching up with the first week's tapes, so everything was very fresh in my head. By far the best guest was Ben, largely because he was willing to make immediate judgements about everyone.

As ever, it's remarkable how after a week clear (if inevitably distorted) pictures of all the relevant personalities have emerged. Alex and Peter still seem a little bland, but that might not be a bad thing at this stage. However, the others are all now easily recognisable.

Monday April 15: Weekends are traditionally slow in the BB house, and the catchup footage was fairly bland today. Turkhan cracking was OK, but hardly unexpected; as we soon discovered, it didn't do her a whole lot of good in the nomination process.

Seeing the nominations live was definitely more interesting than the edited approach taken last year. It was especially appealing to see BB chiding people for their attempts to be supportive, although this policy seemed a little selective. For instance, Marty's reason for nominating Turkhan ("she doesn't handle it well") was virtually identical to that given by Alex, but it was only Alex who got busted.

Personally, I was pleased to see Damian nominated, and more than a little surprised at the commanding lead taken by Katrina. While I'll be voting for Damian, I suspect that Turkhan will be the first one kicked out.

Random observations:

Tuesday April 16: As a task, the military activity is ideal, but I'll be very surprised if the housemates manage to consistently all get into the bunker in 45 seconds. Even though they've sensibly opted to wear their military outfits most of the time, I'm sure someone is going to screw up. Failing that, there's always the option of someone leaving the bunker and breaking the 'two people at all times' rule (Sara-Marie did the same thing with the fire task last year).

The other important development was the unveiling of the meters for the showers and other utilities. This hasn't caused a major stir so far, but I bet that eventually there'll be some major fights over this

Fallout from the nominations process was fairly muted. Katrina looked like she was going to cry, but as we learnt during Peter and Nathan's stories last week, that's hardly a new development. I was all fired up to ring up and vote for Damian, but I've decided to hold off for a few days, to see if someone majorly screws up the military task and makes me change my mind.

Random observations:

Wednesday April 17: I'm sure that the allegedly budding romance between Damian and Mirabai is marvellous for the producers of Uncut, but I'm already bored with it. On the most basic level, the problem with emphasising a single couple is that it doesn't give us much exposure to any of the other housemates. Indeed, I can't recall having spotted Turkhan once tonight, and she's nominated for eviction. Katrina didn't fare much better. On the whole, seeing people respond to the prospect of a pairing is much more interesting than the pairing itself.

As well, the entire relationship is unpleasant. Damian's seduction technique (effectively repeatedly saying "You do fancy me" over and over again) confirms what a creep he is. For her part, Mirabai doesn't seem to have a clue what she wants, and Peter's less than helpful advice (to the effect that she has to be treated like a princess, whatever that means) didn't resolve anything.

Relationship confusion is running rampant in the house; it's also evident in Marty's feeble attempts to justify his claim that swapping salvia with Jessica does not constitute cheating in any way ("sure we've shared intimacy . . . to me, cheating is a bit further than a pash"). OK, I know Marty's only 20, and apparently lacks the ability to spell in any meaningful way, but you'd hope he could get a bit clued up.

Meanwhile, as Katrina complained that everyone automatically assumed she had a boyfriend, Sahra's comment "That's interesting, isn't it?" was belied by the bored expression on her face while she examined her fingernails. And I'm not even going to comment on Aaron's piss-poor attempts to comfort Katrina over her nomination.

Random observations:

Thursday April 18: On yesterday's episode, Mirabai was confused about what she wanted from relationships. On today's episode, Mirabai was confused about what she wanted from relationships. I'm not confused, but I'm getting increasingly bored with this particular pairing. Next!

On the positive side, Turkhan did manage some brief visibility in this episode. And the broadcasts are beginning to acknowledge that Damian is a lazy prick.

But it's Thursday, so the real game is Uncut, not the nightly broadcast. While Uncut lacks the surprise element which the first episode had last year (we really had no idea that the conversation turned to sex so often!), the uninihibited nature of the latest batch of housemates means that there's still plenty of material to go round.

Actually, given their enthusiasm for discussing threesomes, cunnilingus and shaved scrotums, the general lack of willingness to strip for the showers was a bit surprising. As Shannon put it when she finally succumbed to "nuding up", "I just can't be stuffed". Turkhan obviously isn't going to crack, but can Nathan (a natural extrovert) really be planning to stay clothed in the shower indefinitely?

With clothes back on, we learnt heaps about people's sexual preferences and practices, although not everyone seemed to get equal coverage. However, the footage of Turkhan flirting with all and sundry made her seem much friendlier than the G-rated editions have. Biggest surprise of the night was probably Aaron's genital depilation, although his argument for it -- "Why would your partner tongue a hairy sack?" -- seems fair enough.

And it's only taken a single episode for a new term to enter the show's vocabulary: larat, as a substitute for last year's ubiquitous JB. Bet we'll be hearing that one a bit.

Random observations:

Friday April 19: He may have used the word "dude" a fair bit more than is strictly necessary, but it was good to see Aaron finally confronting Damian about his greed and lack of contributions around the house. Whether Damian will absorb any of it remains to be seen, but the complete lack of food for the next week after failing the task will be a pretty good test.

As always seems to happen, the housemates greeted the news of their failure with a massive cheer. I was surprised and annoyed that the footage of them being told who failed which parts of the task wasn't shown. I would have liked to see how the others reacted to Damian's slackness.

The only other development of note was Katrina's late-night outburst about how she wasn't ready to leave the house yet. I'm not sure if this was a calculated move to try and win audience sympathy, but if so, I doubt it would work. I couldn't help but think that if, as Katrina says, she's not a "big group person" she should never have volunteered for the show in the first place.

Random observations:

Sunday April 21: "It's time to go, Damian." You would have been able to hear the cheering at my house from the next block. While I was encouraged by the revelation on the site that the "Damo's a sleaze" mobile phone icon was popular, I was still fairly sure that Katrina was going to be the first one out. Damian's 40% put him well ahead of the other two; what was perhaps a little surprising was that Turkhan came in second on 30.5%, just ahead of Katrina's 29.5%.

Damian's post-evacuation interview confirmed him as a bit of a self-centred show pony. He did seem quite shocked when he saw Peter describing him as "fake" (works for me!), and even more amazed at the bedroom footage of him and Mirabai. Despite his claims that she "definitely hit him", when leaving the house, Damian appeared to pay absolutely no attention to Mirabai, who doubtless will be even more confused now than ever.

Trying to pick tomorrow's nominations is difficult. I think Katrina will probably show up again, and Aaron's attempts to manage the food distribution process could lose him a few friends. Turkhan and Alex are also possibilities, and personally I'd like to see Jess go.

Random observations:

Monday April 22: All we really want to see on the Monday episodes is how people react after the evictions. This is doubly the case when the alternative is seeing even more footage of Damian and Mirabai getting it on in a state of confusion. Fortunately, we knew that couldn't last.

Aside from predictable collapsing into a heap of tears on Mirabai's part, the high point of the roundup was everyone getting excited by the pizza. Oh, OK, the high point was seeing how even in his farewell message Damian couldn't decide between Mirabai and Jessica. I suspect this will be playing on Mira's mind later in the week.

On to nominations! It was no great shock that Katrina and Turkhan got nominated again, and Alex (who placed fourth last time) was also not much of a surprise. With just one different vote, however, either Jessica or Mirabai could have been facing eviction, which might have made things a lot more predictable. As it stands, I think I'll be voting for Katrina, but we'll see how the week evolves.

As Gretel pointed out, everyone except Nathan has now been nominated at least once. This is in stark contrast to last year, where several housemates maintained a zero nomination score until well into the show.

I was a little surprised to see discussions taking place in the house about being told by BB to give better nomination reasons, given that any chat about this topic is generally taboo. Mirabai (who changed her mind) and Jessica still don't seem to have grasped the idea that you have to give reasons relating to yourself, not other people.

Random observations:

Tuesday April 23: "I'm not this emotional normally," said Katrina in tonight's episode. "They're looking at me and going 'This chick is psycho!'" Well, that's certainly one possible reaction. Mostly, though, she's just annoying, and she whines far too often.

It didn't help Katrina's cause (already damaged by that early tofu incident) when she chose to assume that the reason everyone voted for her was that she was too opinionated, and would be treated differently if she was a bloke. A quick check over the nomination listings confirms that this is pure horseshit, except possibly in Peter's case. Shannon tried to remind Katrina of this, but to no avail. But you'd think she might remember Sara-Marie, to whom being vocal was certainly no barrier with the public.

Elsewhere, we had a mini-Johnnie moment when Peter hugged Katrina moments after the nominations were announced, even though he'd put her up for two points. He saved his reassuring words for Turkan (whose name I must remember doesn't have an 'h'!), however. And Katrina herself was in much the same position when the three potential evictees sat down to discuss their situation; she's nominated Alex, who in turn had nominated Turkhan.

Not too much group activity going on, although Shannon was very keen to push the 100% betting (good to see they skipped that option). We also got our first major diary room moment, with Aaron saying he would find it hard to come up with good reasons for nominations. In the event, he did better than most of them.

Random observations:

Wednesday April 24: Tonight's episode was a textbook example of how you can't get a full sense of what's going on in the house either from the online diary (despite it being much more thorough than last year's coverage) or from watching the broadcast episodes.

Reading the site updates meant that I already knew all about the loose talk problem, and the fact the housemates were going to be punished for it. However, the exact identity of the miscreants wasn't the main issue, and indeed far more attention has been paid to the current task (looming all those squares) than to this development.

Watching on screen, we found out much more about the dangerous gossip, and got to see the kind of diary room stuff that never makes it onto the site, but you'd barely be aware that a major source of tension in the house is the endless nature of the looming task. While he clearly overstepped the line, I did think the way the show was edited was a little unfair on Aaron; we got to see his transgression and the discussion of it with BB, while Turkan and Alex got off with a few seconds of screen time.

The conflict over nomination discussion is particularly interesting this year because it's occurred so early. By the time the Jemma blowup occurred last year, the housemates were a fairly united group. Despite the constant protestations that "we're all friends here", that's clearly not the case just yet. Nathan's ability to lead without being obviously bossy is also becoming more apparent.

Of course, for sheer drama, nothing on show this evening could beat last night's Jerry Springer moment on Rove, where Damian was forced to come face to face with Mirabai's sometime boyfriend Dan. Damian looked genuinely scared; you could well believe that nothing particularly bad had ever happened to him before. In the end, it all passed rather inconsequentially, but it still made for a great moment. Like Gretel on Monday, Rove was also quick to pounce on Damian's more obviously dumb pronouncements. I especially liked this couplet:

Damian: I thought it would have been Katrina all the way.
Rove: If you'd stayed a bit longer, it probably would have got that far!

Random observations:

Thursday April 25: In an episode dominated by looming, looming and still more looming, there were two other dominant themes. The first was that the show was trying to beat up conflicts into something bigger than they really were. There was no real evidence, for instance, that Peter was especially unhappy with Aaron for his kitchen police routine. I know conflict makes for good TV, but I prefer real conflict.

The second was that we actually got to see Katrina doing something other than whining or crying. While it was good to see her putting her all into the task (unlike, say, Turkan), the more revealing moment was her discussion with Marty about her relationships with older men. This wasn't revealing because of the content, but simply because it gave her a chance to seem more human.

Uncut didn't have any great plot revelations, but we did get the usual assortment of ludicrous comments:

Random observations:

Friday April 26: Having learnt several days ago that the housemates completed the challenge, the dramatic value of Friday's episode was a bit reduced for me. Perhaps the most notable trend was that Jessica once again reclaimed the mantle of most annoying housemate. Given that Katrina and Mirabai did the bulk of the work on the rug, I think they were more entitled to roll wantonly on the finished product than she was.

Gusworld reader Rachel Jerram writes: "Have you ever noticed that we see more of Sahra on the 1 hour episodes of Uncut than we do in an entire week of normal episodes?" This seems to be true. Mind you, it might not be a bad strategy, since Sahra is already marked down as exotic within the house (what with being bi and all), so she can afford to lay low at the moment, while we try to decide who to vote out.

On that front, I think Katrina will have to get the vote. I'm sure Turkan is also doomed, but I can't quite bring myself to vote her off yet. All that seems certain is that Alex won't get voted off, but then I despaired of Damian getting the boot, so what would I know?

Random observations:

Sunday April 28: "Katrina, it's time to go." And again, there were two surprising elements. The first was that Katrina didn't turn into a total jelly when she got booted out. The second was that Katrina's dominance of the vote (with 57%) meant that Alex and Turkan virtually tied. Of course, this may be because everyone who voted for Katrina this week wants to vote for Turkan next week. We shall see.

Katrina proved far more coherent on stage than she seemed to have been throughout her time in the house, and managed to say "shit" more than anyone in recent memory. Her main moment of shock came when she learnt that Peter had nominated her for eviction. Her comment that she was upset that she wouldn't get to eat the food she'd helped to earn via looming seemed fair enough, but I'm not convinced by her argument that nicotine patches wouldn't have helped her temper.

Again, the show ran 10 minutes over time, and probably would have made the usual 15 if they'd bothered to include a band at the end of the show. To be honest, not having one is no great loss.

Random observations:

Monday April 29: Sometimes I think Channel 10 must curse the restrictions imposed by screening BB at 7:00pm. There was a fairly clear subtext to Turkan and Peter's conversation this evening: put bluntly, he'd quite like to shag her but she doesn't want to become infamous as the first Australian to lose her virginity on national television. This is reasonably clear from what we saw, but it would make for better viewing if there was a little commentary to string things together. Still, I guess that's what Uncut is for.

Other than that, the only notable feature of the standard show was Aaron stubbing his toe. But that was OK, because we had all the drama of the five-way eviction. Of course, there were actually two distinct groups of evictees; Turkan and Jessica, who nobody liked, and then the three guys (Aaron, Alex and Nathan) who tied with a two-point score precisely because so many people had voted for the first two. Unless Aaron is way more unpopular than I suspect, I can't see this making much difference in the long run; most likely Turkan will go (which could be fun for her future with Peter). personally I'll be voting to eject the fake, shrill and ridiculously haired Jessica. Interestingly, if you look at the total number of nomination points over the series so far, Mirabai is ahead of everyone except Turkan, Jessica and Alex, yet she's never been up for eviction.

No-one is getting any better at giving good reasons for nominations, and Big Big Brother is being just as inconsistent as ever in enforcing the rules. (He quite rightly chewed out Mirabai for using pathetic reasons, but didn't apply the same logic to Jessica.) Shannon had by far the best arguments for her nomination selections, and Aaaron didn't do too badly, but otherwise it was just variants on "I haven't really got to know him/her".

Random observations:

Tuesday April 30: The housemates are very slow to learn this year. After all the stuff-ups getting into the bunker for the military task, they've still committed 100% of their budget to this week's surf lifesaving task -- and as likely as not Turkan has already screwed it up. Of course, she may not be around to see it.

Aaron's continued insistence that he's a great believer in fidelity is beginning to wear really thin, as is his "honest and brutal" approach. If Jessica wasn't so plastic, he'd be climbing the ladder fairly rapidly.

But this is a verbatim transcription of a conversation between Marty and Jessica:

J: Cause.
M: Why?
J: Cause.

I don't think Mensa will be troubled by membership applications any time soon.

Random observations:

Wednesday May 1: Given that Aaron was the main force behind the risible decision to bet 100% of the house funds, it's not surprising that he's being such a pushy bastard about it. While I tend to agree with him that it's important for everyone to try and contribute to the tasks, the way he tried to handle it is just a joke. (It was also odd to see Sahra copping so much flak when Jessica's attempts to look innocent were so much more pathetic.)

If Aaron keeps up this kind of OTT he-man demeanour, I might be tempted to actually switch my vote away from Jessica. It's amusing, though, that she's convinced she'll be voted off because of her pairing with Marty (maybe she got that notion from Damian's eviction). Personally, my desire to see her kicked out has nothing to do with that, and I suspect that the producers wouldn't want her kicked out while there's still a chance of some shagging action. And who believes she'll keep her resolution not to pash Marty the next time the beer comes out?

Random observations:

Thursday May 2: I don't think Aaron's having been in the defence forces can entirely account for how defensive he is about his own behaviour. It might be fair enough up to a point to emphasise that his way of dealing with problems is to complain about them, or make jokes about them. But Aaron seems to be doing this far too often. More importantly, he isn't giving the slightest consideration to how his behaviour affects other people -- something that became very apparent during the otherwise surreal conversation about eating or not eating the last piece of bread.

That aside, the highlight of the show was the attempts to master the surf lifesaving task, accompanied by really bad surf music and really bad Speedos. While it's possible the housemates will earn their hidden spa, I don't hold out great hopes for them passing the task overall.

And so to Uncut, which took the unusual tack of only featuring footage from a single night (the good and evil party). Aside from giving the show greater narrative continuity than usual, this also means that there should be plenty of shower and workout footage in reserve for future editions.

Watching Marty try to put on his 'he-man' act during the so-called threesome, when it was obvious he didn't have a clue how to react, was pretty amusing. Of course, it's hard to act butch when you're wearing a wig.

We also got to see the Peter and Katrina footage alluded to by both Katrina and Gretel during last week's eviction. This was well summed up by my friend Arthur: "He's certainly fingering her, there's no doubt about that." What we didn't get to see was the reaction of Turkan to the news, since she was under a pile of bodies at the time. Shannon summed up the entire evening quite effectively: "You packet of sluts."

Random observations:

Friday May 3: It's been building up all week, and now I've finally decided. While I still think Jessica is extremely annoying, I'm going to have to vote for Aaron to be evicted this week. Partly this is strategic. Having garnered so many nomination votes this week, Jessica is almost certain to be up for eviction again next week. However, even though he seems to be annoying all the other housemates, Aaron might not, since he only just scraped in this time around. So I might not get another chance to vote for him for a while.

More importantly, his behaviour has just got worse and worse as the week has passed. The man seems incapable of listening, even when Shannon and BB both pointed out there were better ways of handling the need to visit the toilet than just deciding to get up and do it. He just keeps repeating the same mantras, over and over again. And while he's always willing to cite the needs of the group when it suits him (bitching about flour on this episode), he's equally willing to cite his right to behave in a way that's "true" to him, no matter how other people feel about it. (Incidentally, why is it impossible to make a pizza with wholemeal flour?)

Two events mentioned on the site but not in the episode also affected my judgement. When the housemates were given their individual scores for violations of the "rescue tube within 1 metre" rule, Aaron had stuffed up three times -- on a par with Turkan, and more than anyone else except Jessica. This was especially amusing given that he'd made such a thing about people admitting to their stuff-ups.

Finally, on Friday afternoon Aaron had an outburst where he accused everyone in the house (except himself, naturally) of portraying "fake" personalities rather than their true selves. This is a pretty remarkable statement coming from a man who has a prepared list of dick tricks, and who has already admitted to changing his voting strategy week to week. He's got to go.

Random observations:

Sunday May 5: "It's time to go, Aaron." Presumably, it's also time to go for the hapless satellite technician on duty when the broadcast stopped just before the moment of this announcement. (To judge by the timing, when the show returned they'd switched from the delayed feed to the direct feed, which could have made for some interesting moments.)

While Aaron was always a likely candidate for eviction this week (and more so as the week went on), I was surprised that he managed to claim a whole 51% of the vote. Even more surprising was that Nathan, with 13%, came in third; I was sure he'd get the fewest votes. However, with 21%, Jessica still looks likely to get booted next time she's up, which I imagine will be this week.

Aaron remained as impervious as ever to the idea that he might be wrong about something occasionally. I particularly liked it when he talked about how being in the Navy had made him more tolerant, and Gretel questioned whether his constant telling people what was wrong with how they behaved could really be described as tolerance (or "toleration", as he quickly rephrased it). His explanation of how he could justify adopting a morally superior attitude to Marty (essentially, he's young and still making mistakes) also rang a little hollow. Sure, that might be true, but the way Aaron comes across is a man presenting universally obvious moral truths that couldn't possibly be questioned, not someone trying to help others out.

And so, only 20 minutes late and without the usual BB questions, we moved on to meet the intruders. The dominant impression I got was who we didn't need: Hayley. She managed to be both too loud and too annoying (that whole crying schtick), and it would be annoying to purge the house of all the Katrina/Jessica types just to get them back again in spades.

If I had to choose an 'ideal' threesome to go into the house, it would probably be Nicole, Nicki and Will. Keiran seems like a friendly guy, but he's basically too similar to Nathan. Brodie also seems to have a certain number of Jessica-like tendencies, although he couldn't possibly be as bad (and I suspect he will get voted in). But since I don't want to ring up three times even if there will be three intruders, I'll be voting for Nicole.

Random observations:

Monday May 6: Not much as usual in the pre-eviction material, other than confirming that Aaron didn't have much idea of what was going to hit him. It would have been interesting to see Aaron's video comments to people he hadn't fought with, but not, perhaps, especially representative.

Peter seemed particularly isolated on this episode, not taking part in the pre-dinner percussion, ignoring Turkan and then complaining about the division of the chocolate feast. But he's never seemed particularly sociable. As for Mirabai going off again . . . new record please! Good to see she noticed the fling with Damian "wasn't even worth it", though.

All of that paled next to the excitement of this week's nominations. I thought it was highly unlikely there'd be five nominees again, and there were. I thought Jessica was a lock for renomination this week, and she wasn't. And I thought Shannon was entirely safe, and she got mugged by everybody.

The crop of new nominations means that by the end of this week, only Sahra and Marty will have escaped the process. Their scores at the moment seem to indicate that could continue; Sahra has just one nomination point (from Turkan in the second week), and Marty has just three. But of course, they also stick out now as the exceptions.

In career nomination points, Turkan still has the lead with 30, while Jessica is running second with 18. Of course, as she's not nominated this week, I won't be able to vote her out. Mirabai seems the most likely candidate for my vote at the moment, but we'll have to wait and see what eventuates.

Random observations:

Tuesday May 7: Let's get the 7:00 episode out of the way first. OK, Pete's totally lost it. His rambling explanation of how being nominated reminded him of his dad dying (total lack of control being the main comparison point) was just weird, and then he got offended at Turkan for not being able to make sense of it. (He'd have regretted that soon enough!) Like Aaron, it seems, our Pete may have a problem with actually listening to other people.

The housemates don't seem to learn much from starvation. Despite initial reservations from Peter and clear evidence early on that Marty's none too sure what he's doing, 100% of the budget is up again in the fashion task. At least it should provide a good finale on Thursday.

Tonight, though, was all about the intruders -- or so we thought until Turkan decided that this was a good occasion to definitively announce she was leaving. Even before that, however, I'd already written in my notes how much more exciting it was to watch a live broadcast, when what's going to happen is far more unpredictable. Gretel enhanced the live mood with the casual, almost off-hand way she announced the intruders ("You're going in right now"), so we never knew when it was coming.

That said, the selections were pretty predictable, and the percentages suggest the other three were never in with a chance. Notwithstanding Carmel Hill's comments, I suspect Kieran and Nathan's senses of humour may clash rather than blend. But that might not be a bad thing. Mirabai couldn't take her eyes off Kieran either, though she was back to the habitual sobbing soon enough.

Brodie, of course, had his big entrance essentially spoiled by Turkan's decision; while the more party-oriented housemates were quick to greet him, by that stage our attentions were elsewhere. After all, we'll have plenty of time to catch up with these guys later.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Turkan's live-to-air "I don't want to play any more" leaving fest was her discussion with Big Brother. We very rarely get to see conversations from the Diary Room in their entirety. While BB didn't succeed in changing Turkan's mind, he was powerfully persuasive; SSE definitely knew what they were doing when he got the job.

And there were plenty of other moments: Gretel revealing that Brodie should have been in the diary room just moments before Turkan entered, Brodie's endless succession of Ghost jokes, Turkan not even bothering to meet him . . . this was the most striking Big Brother broadcast since last year's finale.

Of course, we had to hang around through Rove to find any sense of resolution, and when it finished, Turkan was still determined to go, but hadn't actually quit the house. I'm going to assume she's left, and get some sleep. Should be plenty of material tomorrow.

Random observations:

Wednesday May 8: Even if I hadn't been delayed from watching it for nearly three days, the one-hour special episode tonight was always going to be a bit odd. As a Web site addict, I already knew Turkan didn't actually leave, so the suspense was minimised. And since more than half the show concentrated on the intruders coming in, we'd actually seen a lot of the key moments during Tuesday's live broadcast.

There were a few revealing moments, nonetheless. Despite being so upset, Mirabai was the first one to twig that Turkan's leaving would mean just four nominees for eviction. Marty's vague rambling that Turkan's leaving would "show some family values" demonstrated yet again that he's not exactly a deep thinker.

Big Brother's second meeting with Turkan was perhaps even more amusing than the first. After his initial greeting -- "You didn't think about it for long" -- he quickly established that she didn't really have a sensible reason for leaving.

That aside, we also got further insights into the intruders, and the housemates' reaction to them. Nathan was his usually friendly self, but even he admitted to not feeling comfortable. And Shannon could not keep her hands off Brodie, which could get interesting over the next few days.

Random observations:

Thursday May 9: Now that we know Turkan is staying, the major point of interest with her is the changing relationship with Pete. Her claims that they shouldn't share a bed were rather undermined by her goodnight hug, but then consistency has never been her strong point. Her being granted a self-help book by Big Brother was also a useful reminder of how much power the house psychologist wields.

The suggestion that Nathan fancies Brodie has already been essayed several times on the Web site. The evidence on the show has been slimmer, but tonight we did get Nathan's comment that he wasn't monopolising him, he was just ruling him.

Uncut's attempts to make something of the Turkan/Sahra pairing were equally unrevealing. What was interesting about this was that it demonstrated that Turkan does have relationships with other people in the house other than Peter, something not always obvious in the nightly episode.

Other than that, I was rather taken with Nathan's endless insults to Jessica's vagina, but then I've never liked her much. Indeed, Nathan was on something of a vagina frenzy, also essaying the immortal remark "If you want to see Shannon's vagina, shake your head and then give the madatory two dollars."

Random observations:

Friday May 10: The fashion parade made for good television, though I can't see Marty's attempt at formalwear cutting the mustard in the real world. Kieran made an excellent MC; imagine what would have happened if Hayley was in the house.

Challenge aside, the main point of interest from the episodes this week has been trying to decide who to vote for. Mirabai was my original pick, but I'm now strangely drawn towards the notion of voting for Turkan or Peter. He's gone into full-on sulk mode this week, even before the Turkan bombshell. On the other hand, her inconsistency has been just as frustrating (I'm sure she'll get more votes as a result). If she left, Peter would be miserable, while I don't know that she'd care so much if he went. Of course, the whole nation might hate Shannon and the argument might be moot, but I'd best make up my mind before Sunday.

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Sunday May 12: "It's time to go, Shannon." From the audience cheers at the beginning, it was clear that Shannon and Turkan were likely to get the chop. And so it proved, although Shannon's 37% of the vote is the lowest so far this series (and beats most of last year's as well).

After an initial tearful moment, Shannon took it well, even during footage of her pashing or sunbathing in a G-string. Notably, the housemates were much more vocal about her exit than about Aaron's. Gretel too seemed much more pleased to be sharing the stage with her than with everyone's non-favourite Navy child.

The housemate footage from over the weekend was notable mostly for the Jessica/Marty stuff. I still find her appalling, but Marty's no brain/all fun approach is also increasingly raising my hackles. Looking forward to the chance to vote one of them out.

The karaoke night was also nice, though Sahra didn't seem to know the words to Mr Mister's immortal classic 'Broken Wings'. On the flip side, we might not have been able to hear her over Nathan. Tonight also saw the first use of the 'Housemates Song' from last year on the show (albeit the professionally recorded version).

Random observations:

Monday May 13: Two points of interest in the 7:00 show: the varied reactions to the mother's day message, and Shannon's farewell message. We only got a selection of the mother's day greetings, but they confirmed various facts: (a) Jessica's mother is as annoying as her daughter (b) Peter gets easily upset (c) Nathan calls his mother by her first name (d) Nicole will be praying to get voted out, because she isn't suited to life in the house.

A pattern is developing in the nominations: two people who are obvious targets, and one who takes the lead unexpectedly. This week, the latter role fell to Sahra, which makes me think that the bossiest person in the house is the likeliest to get nominated. (Notice Nathan was only one point off the action.)

Big Brother had to get out the nominations beating stick, with Jessica not having any sensible reasons at all and a super-depressed Mirabai also lacking real conviction. Personally, I'd love it if BB threw Jessica out for complete failure to try and come up with a sensible reason. After his nerves over making a choice, Nathan still came up with one of the better reasons on the night.

At least this week the choice is easy: the long-delayed Jessica vote must go into action. If I managed not to vote for Turkan last week, I can do say again this week. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if Turkan finally got the boot, given her percentage this week. I assume Sahra is safe, but maybe Australia secretly hates bisexuals.

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Tuesday May 14: On post-eviction day, the main excitement is always the task. The radio challenge is quite interesting (and I look forward to the promised guest appearance by Bert Newton tomorrow), though I don't think Peter's wrong when he says he's not much of a talker.

The prospect of Jessica being allowed to talk for an entire hour is much more daunting. Just allowing her to make annoying comments while they grabbed this week's batch of (quickly picked) shopping was wearing enough. During her alleged D&M with Marty, she commented: "I've got an answer for any question." Unless, of course, that question is "Who do you nominate for two points?" As my mate Arthur pointed out when she went to talk to to her favourite rat, Stuart: "Geez, he'd be biting his own tail off!"

Turkan was upset to get nominated again. Honestly, what did she expect? If you suggest you'd be happy to leave, you can hardly be surprised when people give you the option.

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Wednesday May 15: Berating Marty for being thick may be turning into a national hobby, but at least he can recognise Bert Newton when he's on the phone. That said, Alex (like most housemates) proved fairly adept at the radio task. The obvious exception was Peter, but this was no great surprise; indeed, Peter had warned previously that he thought this would be difficult, and you couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

That process was assisted, of course, by Turkan being such a bitch over the whole chip packet incident. If Jessica wasn't so firmly lined up in my eviction vote targets, she'd be a definite candidate. Indeed, no-one else in the house apart from these two would really attract my vote at the moment, though of course it only takes one stupid remark or action to change that kind of thinking.

Housemates Revenge was a strange beast, partly because Nicole was always the obvious candidate to go. Just like Rachel last year, she'd made it clear that she'd be happy to leave, and even did so during her "why I should stay" speech.

What was really striking was that none of the housemates could come up with any reason to vote out anyone else. Supposedly, their one minute speeches would justify their two voting choices, but in fact they all just did variants on "he's so nice, she's so nice".

Unlike last year's voting process, the intruders didn't get to hear who had voted for who (Brodie 6, Kieran 5, Nicole 3), which means they won't sit around and steam about who wanted to kick them out (Mirabai and Turkan didn't want Kieran, Peter didn't want Brodie). And unlike this stage last year, when we all know Anita was sobbing her heart out in the Diary Room at every opportunity, it's quite likely that the intruders will survive at least the next couple of evictions. After that, though, it's still anyone's guess.

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Thursday May 16: I'm going to stick to my resolve to vote for Jessica this week, but Turkan has been testing it sorely. Her freaking out because Peter refused to lend her some Vaseline was just another example of her self-centred, I'm-gonna-treat-him-like-shit attitude. Around these parts, Turkan is now being referred to as the "frigging frigid fruitloop".

Fortunately, we didn't get major repeats from Wednesday's eviction show, instead concentrating on the aftermath. Nicole's departure, where she asked for a final hug from the other two intruders, reminded us that she'd never quite bonded with the house in the way that Kieran and Brodie have.

And so to Uncut. Australia's male population will be deeply disappointed that Nicole managed to keep her breasts to herself for the duration of her stay in the Big Brother house. Our revisit to the shower room did reveal, however, that the cold showers saw "nuding up" go by the wayside for many housemates (not that Nathan or Turkan had ever made the shift).

The show raised many other questions, however. Does Will really have a 22cm penis? What exactly does the photo given to Shannon look like? Would anyone really respond to the line "You are that wet you want me inside you, don't you?"? Why couldn't we see more of the karaoke footage?

Jessica's remark "I need to wash my sheets" is going to go down as one of those endlessly repeated BB moments. However, my favourite comment for the night was Nathan's "Jessica's a sex addidct who lives at the rubbish tip."

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Friday May 17: From an organisational point of view, restricting the radio task to 22 hours makes a lot of sense. It left the housemates with free time to complete the 40 Hour Famine, and it also ensured the task wasn't disrupted by Wednesday night's intruder eviction. However, from a viewer point of view, there's not a whole lot of activity at the end of the week.

This was especially evident this evening, with the highlights being Nathan's story of holding a fake charity cake sale and Kieran's account of licking the cup of a girl he wanted to kiss. The ad the housemates produced for the famine was pretty impressive -- a lot better than last year's effort -- but probably didn't need the level of coverage it got.

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Sunday May 19: "It's time to go, Turkan." Well, at least it wasn't Sahra. Turkan herself handled eviction much better than she would have a few weeks ago, although I suspect her relationship with the boyfriend is well and truly rooted (and not in a good way). Her 49% vote gave her a comfortable lead, but Jessica's 33% holds out hope for all of us who really don't ever want to see her mother again.

And in the future? Ben's comment at the end of his 40 Hour Famine message was "You only get one crack". It would seem that the crack in question is Mirabai's. Her line to Brodie -- "Do you know the extent of your charisma?" -- is going to go down in history, I suspect. Sahra summed it up nicely when she said "You can't have a connection with everyone." Well, no, but you can let them feel you up.

Mirabai could well become more irritating in the weeks ahead, but for now I'd still like to see Jessica go. When she remarked this evening that she was "having a rager of a time", I realised who she reminded me of: all those trashy contestants on Perfect Match a decade or so ago. Loud, obnoxious and entirely superficial.

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Monday May 20: "I promise I won't break the beds any more" proved to be a prophetic statement for Turkan. Inevitably, the episode following her exit focused largely on Peter, even though his state of mind -- "crap" -- was not exactly a shock.

And what about Jess? She can get it packing a case, she can get it wearing skates, she can get it being a cow, matter of fact she's got it now. There's something so profoundly irritating about her, it's impossible to explain. She certainly went some way, though, by failing to come up with sensible nomination reasons the second week in a row.

Of course, she wasn't the only one. With Mirabai, Kieran, Marty and Alex all coming in for criticism, I imagine a full-house Big Brother spack-out is in order. I certainly hope so. It's not like the nomination process is a surprise, after all. If it were me, I'd kick Jessica out right now, but of course I'm biased.

I can't see how Jessica will survive a vote against Marty and Brodie (whose appearance in the list I found quite surprising). Mirabai came within a hair's breadth of tying with Marty, who took his usual "who cares?" attitude. Jessica is the house champion for total nomination points, followed by Alex.

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Tuesday May 21: The Tuesday show is never particularly exciting, but tonight's instalment was particularly slow. Really, it was just more of the same: Jessica being annoying, Marty declining to engage his thinking processes, Mirabai being a fruit loop . . .

The superhero challenge is an interesting one, though tonight's episode didn't offer a particularly clear explanation of what the housemates will eventually be expected to do. One suspects that we'll be seeing a 100% bet every week from now on; clearly these guys are incapable of learning that lesson.

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Wednesday May 22: Another quiet evening, enlivened largely by footage of the housemates dressed up in ridiculous superhero costumes. Typically, Jessica failed to recognise her song when it came on.

Rather less enlivening was the endless blather from all and sundry about how they would know when they found "the one". In Mirabai's case, this would admittedly be a ridiculous concept to begin with. Peter's comments that no-one had matched ex-girlfriend Kelly could be interpreted as meaning he wasn't interested in Turkan any more, but his remark that he always went for non-conventional beauties could mean that he was still interested. Hard to tell with Mr Silent.

Compared to previous BB birthdays, Alex's was rather understated -- perhaps a result of the recent crackdown on alcohol. Still, I'd happily settle for less alcohol if I could get a bouncing castle for the night. Speaking from recent personal experience, I can also confirm that putting sparklers on a birthday cake is a bad idea, since the sparks end up making marks all over the icing.

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Thursday May 23: The superhero task has proved fairly unrewarding thus far. However, seeing Alex forced to tickle and compliment Kieran while the latter was dressed as a woman was something of a highlight.

Sometimes, housemate behaviour is hard to understand. There's nothing to talk about except what they get up to, yet neither Mirabai or Brodie seem capable of being even vaguely articulate about their "relationship", if we can dignify it with such a term. Brodie was so "whatever" it almost made Marty seem articulate. (The key word in that sentence is almost.)

Mirabai went some way to explaining why she keeps getting nominated for laziness with her remark that she "loves being cooked for". Ever heard of washing up, dearie? Of course, that could be tricky when you're busy hunting down men. As Nathan remarked, not getting involved in the house is "not asking for a fucking miracle".

Incidentally, Gretel's question as to why Mirabai had become known as 'Mirabike' rather than Brodie is a bit pointless. He doesn't have a girlfriend on the outside, and he didn't sleep with Damian. Of course, according to Kieran he did sleep extensively with Nicole, unless Denzel Washington really was a secret bonus intruder.

It was only a matter of time before the soggy Sao urban legend made its appearance on Uncut, especially as the number of females on site continues to dwindle. Oddly, Nathan's obsession with vaginas also continued unabated.

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Friday May 24: It's amusing how the housemates all seem convinced that Brodie is the most likely person to go, a sentiment which I haven't found shared anywhere in the world. On the whole, it will be very surprising if Jessica doesn't get the boot. On tonight's episode, she was actually less annoying than Mirabai, who was in full 'drippy hippy' mode in her discussion about her non-relationship with Brodie.

That the housemates passed the task wasn't especially surprising -- it wasn't the most challenging of options. However, the on-screen presentation was a little unfair to Peter, since it didn't name the other two people who failed (Nathan and Sahra). It was amusing, though, to watch Kieran unsuccessfully probe Peter in a vain attempt to get him to explain his feelings. BB's thoughtful pause after the words "You failed" also worked nicely.

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Sunday May 26: "OK, it's time to go, Brodie." Bloody hell. Will nothing get that evil sea-wench Jessica out of the house? Well, maybe this week's voting will: at this stage, even with the choice of every person in the house, Jessica would still get my vote, followed closely by Mirabai. Actually, with 39% to Brodie's 49%, Jessica's obviously not that popular with the public; not for her the Sara-Marie situation of being hated by the housemates but loved by the public.

Other than the fact that it happened, the most remarkable thing about Brodie's eviction was his Stepford-style brothers. His answers weren't particularly revealing, perhaps because he was still in shock at having gotten the boot. Gretel also seemed less engaged in discussion with him than she had been with either Turkan or Shannon. Maybe she was expecting Jessica as well.

Inside the house, tension continues to brew in the war of the bedrooms. I've already received mail suggesting Nathan was evil for messing with Marty's head over this subject, but I actually found that sequence really funny. I do wonder, though, if Kieran will take over as most popular "funny" housemate with the public.

The other key question for the week is who Mirabai will crack onto next. Kieran is the most likely target, I guess; he's desperate by his own admission, so he'd probably be willing to put up with her psychobabble. Peter is also possible (remember that even when Turkan was still there, he had that in-bed gropefest with Katrina).

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Monday May 27: The key lesson of today's daily show was something we all already knew: the housemates are incapable of keeping hold of their balls. You'd think they'd have given up on any attempts at ball-related exercise by now, but then again maybe Marty's not capable of dreaming up any other ways to entertain himself. At least not when Jess isn't in groping distance.

Speaking of Jess, her remark to Mirabai, "You've made such good choices", reminds us of several things:

For those of us visiting the BB site on a regular basis, tonight's nomination show was a little anti-climactic, because the group nomination and double eviction were treated as if they were complete surprises. All us Web addicts were totally aware of this, even the housemates weren't that surprised by the news that two of them were going. (In the outside world, maybe this will put the 'Alex is a plant' rumours to rest once and for all.)

The news that everyone was nominated did throw people somewhat. Mirabai was the only one who seemed to view it as a personal attack; Peter looked even more like a stunned mullet than usual.

The 30-second justifications varied widely in quality. Only Nathan and Kieran came close to actually meeting the brief. OK, Kieran met it in a stupid way, but that's pretty much the way he works. Everyone can imagine what I thought of Jessica's singing and Mirabai's blather.

Marty was his usual "whatever" self, and Peter was, well, Peter. Alex and Sahra also performed poorly, which is interesting given that they've generally been quite astute players. For some reason, Sahra got singled out by both Gretel and the site as someone who has trouble coming up with nomination excuses. In fact, she's been one of the most consistently intelligent nominators (a fact highlighted on the recent BananaTV commentaries on the show by Peter and Ben from last year).

So who to vote for? Jessica is obviously a lock, but picking a second person is more difficult. My immediate instinct would be to nominate Mirabai, but I am vaguely conscious of the dwindling number of females in the house. The other possible candidates are Peter, who's really worn out his usefulness, and Marty, because I really don't endorse his "never worry about anything and keep your brain switched off at all times" approach to life. We'll have to see who misbehaves this week. Of course, given my patchy track record in picking evictees, this could mean Nathan and Kieran are headed for the door.

Random observations:

Tuesday May 28: Much of the mail I've received this week seems to indicate that people are planning on voting against members of the so-called 'Gang of Five', because of their evil plotting. This seems like an over-reaction to me. If spending time with other people and saying things to them you don't say to others was the criteria for voting people out, Marty and Jess would have been out weeks ago. (I wish.)

Not much of interest happened before we reached the nomination footage again, but it was good to be able to see everyone squirming outside as the announcement was made one by one. Jessica, of course, couldn't keep her mouth shut, and came out with a stupid line about how "You've got to have a good reason". Presumably she was trying to keep BB happy, but this would work better if she could actually act.

The housemates' "rebellion" was amusing, but the fact that within three hours they'd requested the video footage to learn their dance moves suggests that it might not come off. Also interesting is the widespread conviction that this wouldn't be a bad week to go, as you'd get to leave with someone else. It seems dangerous to assume that both nominated housemates would go at the same time; what's to stop them bringing them out at half hour intervals?

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Wednesday May 29: The stench of failure is in the air, but it might just as easily be the failure of the rebellion. As Kieran correctly noted, the only people who ultimately suffer are the housemates next week, who are guaranteed not to have any food. And why would Big Brother care about that? The hungrier people are, the more they fight, which makes for good viewing.

I'm assuming the boredom factor is the main reason why, despite their "we're not doing this" stance, everyone keeps learning the songs and the flags and the dances and the cookery and the origami. What else are you going to do all day? The exception might be Peter, who always seems to want to do the opposite of everyone else.

The 'yes/no/mm' game was amusing, especially watching Marty grapple yet again with his feelings (or lack thereof) for Jess. Talking gibberish is indeed one of his specialties.

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Thursday May 30: Another night of endless debate about whether failing is a sensible option. This gave Nathan a good chance to show his persuasive skills, although I'm not at all convinced that the "we need to spend time with each other" explanation was the primary motivation for choosing to fail. I think everyone was just pissed off. I also don't think this kind of thing will help Nathan not garner votes, although it seems mildly unlikely he'll leave.

Uncut tonight was much more interesting than the main show, although it confirmed an important principle: it's generally more amusing to watch the housemates talking about sex than it is to watch them romping naked. Especially if this involves Brodie's testicles hanging out of a G-string.

Indeed, it was a penis-focused night, with endless discussion of semis, boners and the thumping rajahs, and lots of visual evidence to boot. We also had the animated footage of the doors to bedrooms 1 and 2, although part of me thinks they just did this to fill up time, given how often they had to play things in fast-forward to avoid an excess of erections.

I'm no closer to deciding who I want to vote out second, and given that (as we expected) the housemates are being removed individually, maybe I won't choose until after the first one goes. It definitely seems like Keiran might be in for the long haul.

Random observations:

Friday May 31: A Gusworld reader writes to me: "Your picks for eviction suck. Just go to any online poll and you'll see that Nathan will be evicted in a landslide." In my defence, I did note the fact that my eviction picks are generally way off earlier this week, and it's become increasingly clear that Nathan is a likely candidate (though online polls aren't infallible).

I can certainly live with Nathan getting the flick (even though it seems to be somewhat illogical), just as long as Jessica gets the boot this week as well. And at least Nathan will feel his push to "spend time" with the other housemates was justified if he gets evicted.

While everyone knew the housemates were going to fail the task, what was interesting was the selection of the footage they showed on Friday. I thought Mirabai's making a quite acceptable flower and then tearing it up would get aired in full, especially since they showed her later diary room comment that she felt pressured into failing. It was also annoying to keep intercutting from the "cooking show" and the German dancing; I'd have preferred to laugh at each individually.

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Sunday June 2: "OK, it's time to go, Nathan/Alex." Talk about a tale of two cities. Nathan's eviction was no big surprise, and he proved to be amusing, over-the-top and good value onstage. Alex was more of a shock, but his on-stage interview was the biggest dud of the series so far.

Evasive, contradictory and seemingly in shock at the late realisation that the microphones could hear everything from within the house, he didn't say another word of note once Nathan had returned to the stage. Probably the only good thing about his appearance was that it might silence the "plant" rumours once and for all. As ever, Gretel's feelings towards each housemate were quite clear, although Alex didn't help his case by continually answering her questions with questions. Here's hoping Rove does an "Anita" on Alex and declines to interview him.

Nathan's bitchy remarks made for much better value, though for the 39% who voted for him they probably just acted to confirm the view of him as an annoying poof. His mother probably wasn't too pleased at his "She didn't get drunk, did she?" comment.

Predicting the course of events from here is quite difficult. It seems likely that Jessica, Mirabai and Peter will be up for nomination this week. The bedrooms are balanced once again, though Mirabai might choose to leave Jessica and Marty to the dry humping. The battle to win the show is probably between Marty, Keiran and Sahra, with Marty the likely victor. Mind you, I thought that about Blair (the Marty of 2001) last year. Somehow, Marty seems less likely to end up on Neighbours whatever the outcome.

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Monday June 3: Post-eviction nomination predictably centred on Sahra, apart from Mirabai's comment that Kieran "is a stud, he hasn't discovered it in himself". Presumably she thinks he'll be easier to romp with than Peter then.

To judge from the amount of farewell footage played, Ten doesn't think we're going to be that compelled by the Princess Diaries. While we got virtually all of Nathan's, we got almost none of Alex's, and most of that was about Nathan. To be fair, though, Alex was slightly more open tonight than yesterday, when, as Sahra obserbved, he got the "biggest shock". I like the idea that he jokingly confirmed the infamous 'plant' story.

And so on to nominations. Obviously, I'm disappointed that I won't get the chance to vote for Jessica this week. Given how crap my nomination-picking skills are, I shouldn't be surprised, but of the housemates still left, Jessica has far more career nomination points than anyone else. On the other hand, it makes for an easy vote this week: how could you pick anyone other than Mirabai, the queen of awkward?

The big nomination surprise was Sahra, but her position wasn't certain until the final vote; had Mirabai picked on Peter, the whole scenario would have been different. On the whole, the quality of reasons was up this week, though yet again Sahra was the only one to entirely escape censure. BB's switch to focusing on how the group might suffer, rather than just individual reactions, probably confused a few people.

It was also pathetic to watch Marty struggle even after BB had given him a perfect opportunity to justify himself ("Does that disturb you"? "Nup.") Of course, since none of the housemates ever nominate him much and the general public loves him, it won't make the slightest difference. The fact that Marty "doesn't have in-depth conversations" probably works in his favour, since it makes it hard to bitch about anything except for his lack of depth. And better him than Jess.

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Tuesday June 4: If they hadn't already worked it out, BB's tormenting the housemates by not giving them a task for this week until they ask for it is a useful reminder that, Alex-style delusions aside, they are not in charge of events in the house. It turns out that Mirabai's not even in charge of the domestic part of her brain ("Apparently Pete gets up early and cleans up"), but never mind.

Things are very strange in the house overall. The lack of a task means the housemates aren't really doing anything, other than moving stuff out of Bedroom 1 (which will doubtless make it easier to set up the charity challenge). With Nathan gone and Kieran apparently turned down a notch, it's all rather quiet.

Meanwhile, in Marty's case, it turned out that what's good for the chicken is not good for the gander. After using the "chicken" routine (which I haven't seen since primary school) to persuade Jessica into the nudie run bet, he wasn't willing to go through with it when he was the loser. And then he complained incessantly about the virtually invisible lipstick. Is this the same guy who a few weeks ago couldn't seem to stop wearing wigs?

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Wednesday June 5: Tonight's episode opened with an entirely deceptive comment, "The rebellion lives on". While the Web site has made it clear for some days that the housemates haven't been given a task because they haven't asked for one, we were almost halfway through the scene before this fact was revealed.

Nonetheless, I'm pleased that the housemates have indulged in a dancing frenzy as their pseudo-task, if only because dancing always brings out the most ridiculous aspects of people. (I'm speaking with some authority here.)

Obviously, the housemates are getting very used to reading the responses of BB (or they think they are). When they requested the costumes and music, BB responded with the usual "BB will get back to you", which Marty chose to report as "He said it shouldn't be a problem".

What we didn't get to see tonight was Mirabai going to play basketball not long after claiming she couldn't do the dishes because she'd burnt her hand. Then again, do we really need any more evidence of her laziness?

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Thursday June 6: We're definitely in one of the slow phases of Big Brother, which is the inevitable result of reducing the number of housemates and viewers voting out most of the noisy ones (Jessica excluded). I actually missed last night's daily episode owing to travel issues, but judging from the show diary on the site, that didn't result in anything too crucial.

Even Uncut (which hasn't been the rating success this year it was last year) is winding down; next week is the 'best of' episode, which suggests they won't be bothering for the last fortnight. This means we'd better pray that nothing too plot-critical happens in a format that can't be shown in the 7:00 timeslot.

If there was a theme to tonight's Uncut, it was "let's pick on Keiran". I'd try and feel sorry for him, but he's told so many stories of his own sexual patheticness that it's no wonder he falls victim to this kind of stuff. There was rather less of Marty and Jessica rubbing uglies than I thought, especially since this is likely to drop back a bit now everyone's in the same bedroom.

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Friday June 7: As well as being pleasantly cruel, the mini-task for this week means we've got more activities to watch on screen. Indeed, with the dance routine also on display today, we've moved from underkill to overkill in more or less 24 hours. One can't help but wonder whether Pete will get stuck with the lion's share of the breadmaking task.

Compared to last year's bunch, this year's housemates seem to have spent much more time retreating into fantasy worlds, and today we had the going native scenario. Of course, if I was Jessica, I'd probably want to be someone else too.

I assume that Marty's attempt at a no-swearing pact will be a non-starter (indeed, it's probably been breached repeatedly since Thursday). I also assume that when Marty said "I shouldn't have said that one", we were back in what is euphemistically described as "c-word territory".

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Sunday June 9: "It's time to go Mirabai." Cool, but why did Gretel have to be such a wimp about the eviction scores? OK, Mirabai was sobbing a bit, but on the whole she handled the whole eviction process much better than we'd have expected from earlier evidence. So why deprive us of the chance to learn whether she cracked the magic 50% barrier? I hope the sight provides some answers eventually.

Having raved on about how much she missed her family, Mirabai seemed rather keen to abandon them to glow in the cheers of the audience. Her "I don't know" responses to the key questions weren't overly entertaining, so I found myself reflecting on who was likely to win. To judge from the audience response, it's definitely going to be Marty or Jessica, and not Peter. Of course, that leaves me with only one possible voting option.

Mind you, we need to get through nominations first. Hard to pick this week, but following the usual principle that people nominated before get nominated again, the most likely combo is Keiran, Sahra and Jessica. (Yes, I realise she's now popular outside, but that might not translate in the house. Oh, what do I know?)

Random observations:

Monday June 10: Tonight was the first night someone's video will got shown in full, so it's a pity in a way that it had to be Mirabai's. The only really relevant bit was her comment that she fancied Marty, which led not many hours or beers later to his revelation that he fancied her, and Jessica was basically second-best. Of course, we can't rely on this testimony. As Marty's earlier comments about his girlfriend on the outside show, he doesn't think much about the consequences of anything (a point picked up by Peter in the nominations).

The nominations themselves are disappointing: as everyone's pointed out, the public doesn't seem to want to break up Jessica and Marty, so Keiran looks like a sitting duck. It could easily have been closer; if Peter had inverted his votes, Sahra would also have been nominated, which might have split the non-breakup vote and seen Jessica get the boot.

Well, I can dream, can't I? This is the first week I haven't waited a couple of days to make the vote; I hit the phones to vote for Jessica the second the credits rolled, and I'm seriously considering buying a block of SMS votes as well.

It has to be said that when it comes to hating Jessica, the housemates agree with me. She's racked up 34 points so far, putting her miles ahead from the others. Keiran is next on 14 (a high score for a short period), followed by a close cluster of Peter on 12, Sahra on 11 and Marty on 10.

The other notable feature of the nominations was how Pete slipped under the radar once again. The same reasons kept coming up from different housemates: Jessica talks in the morning, Keiran's a grot, Sahra's too reserved, Marty's brain is permanently in a low gear. But it's looking like he might win regardless.

Random observations:

Tuesday June 11: This week's task was introduced in a very low key way, with no discussion of the bet percentage (100%, as usual) or the exact nature of the task. It seems that rather than learn more about this, the producers think we want to see more footage of Jessica and Marty trying to look deep and meaningful in front of a fire. Sadly, to judge from public reaction, they may be right.

Proving that there's nothing new under the Big Brother sun, this year's crop have come up with the idea of staging a wedding, just like the 2001 mob. At least they're not planning to marry off the 'real' couple. Is this the closest Keiran is ever going to get to a wedding?

The charity challenge was the usual mix of chaos and stupidty. The big contrast with last year was (1) the inclusion of the charity element and (2) the fact that the housemates were nowhere near as surprised when Gretel made her entrance. All of the games looked amusing, but some didn't make for particularly good viewing; for instance, in the watermelon-smashing exercise, it was hard to get a sense of ongoing progress. Marty was consistently disobedient, which raised Gretel's ire on a number of occasions.

Random observations:

Wednesday June 12: This is the first time in three weeks in which there's been a full-scale task that's taken seriously by the housemates, but it's barely rating a mention on our screens. Instead, we get to watch Marty doing a really bad job of making up content from BB's letter. Let's face it, you know you're in trouble when even Jessica can notice something wrong with the way you're expressing yourself.

Practically the only other thing of note this evening was the Kieran Deep Heat toothbrush gag. Surely they'll start picking on Peter soon for a change?

Random observations:

Thursday June 13: The second extended episode of the daily show (following Turkan's earlier blowout) started with an obvious disadvantage for me: it was going to feature even more of Jessica than usual. And so it proved. Nonetheless, there was something interesting about an entire show devoted to just one narrative line, rather than jumping around from random incident to random incident.

That said, we didn't get to learn much about the characters during the party sequence itself. I couldn't help noticing that Peter was the last to get up and dance during the concert, while Keiran looked quite down in the mouth at one point during the dinner. Perhaps he'd realised that this incident probably put the final seal on his eviction; how can you compete when your rivals are essentially given a whole show for themselves?

Mind you, Keiran might also be assuming that the public would clamour for more footage of Marty and Jessica more or less having sex, when in fact we haven't seen it yet. Because of the previous plans to show a 'best of' Uncut, it'll be next week before we enjoy that questionable pleasure.

The best bit of the evening was watching Marty refuse to discuss his future relationship plans outside the house. While this might be because he's planning to propose to Jessica live on stage during the final show, it seems just as likely he's going to dump both girls and go on a root-rat frenzy.

Random observations:

Friday June 14: Last year's housemates became totally obsessed with the 'Best X Ever' formula, applying it to almost everything. Until recently, it seemed that the 2002 mob had resisted, but in recent days they've started using it extensively. On tonight's episode alone we had "the best birthday ever" and "the best week ever". This is a dialogue trend that can only go downhill.

The puppet show made for a good conclusion to this week's batch of episodes, though it would have been nice to see more of each individual puppet. The Jess puppet only resembled her in that it was also fairly ugly. While there's a part of me that would still like to think she's going to get the boot this evening, I can't really bring myself to believe it. Ta ta Keiran.

What I can't help wondering is what will happen if we end up with a final trio of Jessica, Marty and Peter. The last two never want to talk about anything, and Jessica never shuts up but never says anything worthwhile. The last week could be very painful, methinks.

Random observations:

Sunday June 16: "It's time to go, Keiran." Oh well, so much for that dream. Still, the relatively high percentage of votes for Jessica (33% to Keiran's 55%) means that with a little luck, she'll be gone this week.

Keiran was, as expected, fairly cheerful onstage, although he seemed rather shocked by the size of the crowd and that did subdue him a little. His prediction of Peter as a possible winner was also one we haven't been hearing too often, but one I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more as the final fortnight kicks in.

Indeed, for tonight's nominations the trick is not picking who'll get nominated, but who won't get put up for eviction. There are two clear candidates: Sahra and Peter. At this stage, I suspect Peter has the edge because of his dogged devotion to housework, but, as usual, anything could happen. It's even quite possible for all four housemates to be up for eviction in the last round of nominations. The only thing that seems certain is that they'll bet 100% on this week's task.

Random observations:

Monday June 17: Well, tonight clearly established, yet again, that I'm no good at picking the nominees. But Jessica is up for eviction, so I'm a happy chap. I'm not convinced that she'll actually get the boot, but she has to be a reasonable prospect. A lot might depend on how the others behave during the week.

It could have been a little different. If Peter had just given Marty 1 point instead of Sahra, all four housemates would have been up for eviction. Mind you, that might have bought the "couple factor" into play, so perhaps I should be grateful.

The reasons for nomination were the usual mixed bag. A low point was Marty's inability to understand why Big Brother thought his reason was inadequate. But then, what should we expect from a man who utters the phrase "too less of fun as what they used to"? This kind of remark is why I don't want him to win.

Gretel and Keiran made for an entertaining interview combo, especially as he still doesn't take himself seriously. I especially liked her closer, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Watching Shannon and Nathan upstage Jemma was nearly as much fun.

As for the nightly show: Jess sniffing Marty's shirt was a sight we just didn't need. Marty's revelation that he was just one drink driving conviction away from a jail term was no great shock; going out on Friday, getting drunk and then driving home smashed is standard behaviour for farm types. (I speak as someone who was sitting on the floor of the ute at the time.)

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Tuesday June 18: We've known for a long time that Peter is obsessed with the notion of family, but it really started to get tedious tonight. I'm not questioning the sincerity of his feelings towards his own family, but does the man have any other facets?

Peter also made a fairly stupid observation: that the remaining four are who the viewers want to see in the house. This is a major over-simplification. Because some housemates are hardly ever nominated, they may only be up for eviction when there's a far more obvious and appalling option available (like, say, Mirabai). The result? They appear popular simply because they were always the second choice in a given week. It doesn't mean too many people like them.

While we got all the build up to Peter's nomination of Sahra, we didn't actually get the punchline: that the comment she'd made was actually and clearly in jest. The end result is that Sahra looks much nastier than she actually is, which probably won't help her in this week's nominations.

Neither will the fact that, for the purposes of tonight's episode, she was almost the invisible woman. With only four people around, you'd think everyone would get equal time, but no, we have to watch yet another example of Jessica's alleged "intelligence" in the form of creating rhyming couplets.

Random observations:

Wednesday June 19: For some reason, there's almost nothing memorable to note about tonight's episode. Jessica thinks she loves Marty, but isn't sure if he loves her back. Peter is inarticulate, and his jokes aren't very good. Jessica is a noisy airhead. We've all been here before.

It's days like these that I wonder if people really thought through the consequences of booting out people like Nathan and Keiran.

Random observations:

Thursday June 20: On the surface, getting the housemates to act as journalists and expose new aspects of themselves seems like a good second-last week task. The problem is that no-one seems to have any real extra depths to expose. I mean, who wouldn't have guessed that Peter's biggest disappointment is the absence of his parents?

Similarly, Marty is entirely incapable of thinking in any coherent way about his future, and especially the future of his relationship with Jessica. It's all just fun, for the moment. Scratch the surface and you get nothing. Well, you learn that he had the option of breaking up with Jonelle, but chose not to. I guess that would have meant thinking about it.

Two weeks after the event, we finally got to the footage of Marty and Jessica shagging (or as good as). But they certainly took their time about it. While ostensibly this footage was the main reason for this bonus Uncut episode, it didn't get around to that until 9:15pm.

First up, we got the endless ribbing of Keiran over his sexual technique. While he was a willing participant, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. The whole thing really did sink to schoolyard levels, and notice that before Marty could demonstrate his "superior" approach, he had to rearrange the couch!

As broadcast, the footage does seem to support Jessica's claim that they didn't have sex, they just rolled around a lot. The fact that they were willing to do that with everyone else in the room pretty much speaks for itself.

Random observations:

Friday June 21: The guiding principle for editing tonight's episode seems to have been "let's pick footage of the two boys or two girls together". As usual, this didn't reveal much, because we're really at the point where Sahra is the only housemate left who might possibly have some surprises left, and I don't think she'd be telling.

This week's task has also passed in a very perfunctory manner, and that was reflected in the low-key way in which the results were revealed. The high point of the episode was thus when Peter kept getting in the way while Jessica and Marty tried to talk about the future of their relationship (which is, as everyone in Australia with a brain knows, non-existent).

Random observations:

Sunday June 23: "It's time to go, Jessica." It's a pity that I was watching a tape of the show late at night, otherwise I would have been shouting from the rooftops. After a fairly slow week onscreen, finally getting to see Jessica go was the perfect reward.

Mind you, it was a fairly close run thing. With Jessica on 37%, Peter on 32% and Sahra on 31%, this is the nearest we've ever come to a proper three-way tie. It also doesn't bode too well for Peter this week, although Sahra might pick up the automatic anti-girl vote and overtake him. Sadly, Marty seems destined for the final two, although a Blair-style reversal might still be on the cards.

Jessica's claim that she went into the house for her career but then got interested in the people was rather undermined by her addiction to screaming at the audience and having them scream back. Indeed, while it's become common for housemates to listen to the audience's answers when thinking about their responses to the "big questions", Jessica did that with practically every one of them. This girl just wants adulation.

There's no big question about who to vote for this week. None of the remaining housemates would have been one of my top choices for winning, but given what we have to work with, I'd most like to see Sahra win, then Peter, then Marty. Whether it pans out that way is hard to fathom, but I'm just grateful Jessica isn't a contender.

Random observations:

Monday June 24: Marty wants mullet. Girls make noises. Peter cleans pool. Marty poaches eggs. Jess gets dressed. Peter loses football. Marty retrieves football. Peter loses football. Boys play cricket. Marty removes tangles. Farwell to rats. Jessica is evicted. "I'll be right." Jessica's farewell message. Off to bed. Pretend note trick.

Well, that was the daily show. A good selection of guests meant that The Final Countdown was also fairly entertaining. Despite the much-hyped return of last year's three finalists, Ben, Sara-Marie and Blair said practically nothing of note about this year's contestants. In that respect, Nathan and Shannon were much more forthcoming, as well as reminding us yet again that the house would probably be a lot more entertaining right now if one of them had stuck around.

Visiting the communities the finalists come from wasn't a bad idea. Note that the WA contingent were the only ones to actively attack other housemates (with the handy dartboard), rather than just promoting their own local favourite.

Lastly, a mathematical note. The official site claimed that only a few hundred votes separated Jessica and Peter. Assuming this meant around 600 votes, then it means only 12,000 people overall voted. Last year, in the final weeks, figures in the hundreds of thousands of votes were being bandied about. Either nobody's voting, or someone can't do their maths!

Random observations:

Tuesday June 25: Apart from the restoration of hot water, tonight's episode was notable chiefly for showing Peter saying "interesting" approximately 10,000 times. If this was meant as a tactic to make Peter himself interesting, it didn't work.

We had plenty more examples of Marty's low-voltage brain in action. It took him just a few hours to forget the reason why Peter needs special handling on Wednesday (it's his late mother's birthday, but Marty soon assumed it was the anniversary of the day she died). He proudly proclaimed that he'd be getting the lowest score in every mini-task, despite having kicked up a stink about the notion of deliberate failure during the housemates rebellion.

And a question: how is it that the housemates can't hang onto a football for more than a day, but haven't misplaced the basketball in all this time? To judge from tonight's episode, it's getting hurled around the yard just as much!

Random observations:

Wednesday June 26: So "Pete's on the outer", is he? Actually, it's not that surprising; all this rubbish talk of families aside, when you're down to three people, the odds that they're going to all be close friends are pretty minimal. At this time last year, Sara-Marie was very much "on the outer".

Marty meanwhile has come "outer" his shell, talking about his relationship with Jessica rather more than he did when she was in the house. His comment that his girlfriends invariably love him more than he loves them doesn't really demonstrate much apart from poor taste.

Random observations:

Thursday June 27: Tonight's episode was fairly mundane, with the main highlight being the showing of Monty Python And The Holy Grail to try and keep Peter happy. Ten was very careful not to show any footage from the actual movie; either another network's got the rights or they're taking that copyright proviso about not screening sale copies of movies in a public place really seriously.

Of course, normally that wouldn't matter with two other hours of BB on-screen, but I didn't expect, or get, much from Quentin Crashes Big Brother (and I was unable to catch the final, international Uncut special). I think the main problem with the Quentin piece was a clash of ideas. The notion of getting Quentin himself to invade the house might have worked for a current affairs report, but was just not interesting enough to sustain an entire documentary. The behind-the-scenes stuff was OK, but didn't tell us much new, and would have made more sense earlier in the series.

Random observations:

Friday June 28: The final daily show ground to a slow and predictable halt; what we all want now are the Sunday and Monday events. The biggest point of interest was seeing who each of the housemates thought would win. Sahra plumped for Peter, Peter plumped for Marty (and correctly deduced the public was seeing him as a "cute little kid" who "keeps it simple"), and Marty sat on the fence. Peter's probably correct, though that hasn't stopped me casting my vote for Marty to be evicted on Sunday.

Random observations:

Sunday June 30: "It's time to go, Sahra." And so the notion that a female might actually win BB goes down in flames, along with my preferred choice for this year's winner. Sahra's 41% gave her a clear lead, but which way the votes will swing tomorrow night is less obvious. To add to the confusion, this time around we're told to vote for who we want evicted, not who we want to win. I'm going to vote to evict Marty, but unlike last year's surprise Ben victory, I don't think it'll help.

Marty's revelation that he wants to marry Jessica will probably help him score a few votes as well. I'd be tempted to suspect he'd made that announcement purely to make himself popular, but that just seems far too subtle for a man of his, ahem, intellectual capacity. (We were reminded of that again when he described himself in "two words" as a "happy go lucky country boy".)

Having finally seen Jessica booted out last week, it was disappointing to have her back on stage so soon. Indeed, she acted as if she'd never left, screaming and ranted like the deranged gibbon she is. Clearly, Jessica could never love Marty as much as she loves an audience.

Sahra was a little less articulate on the interview stage than I'd expected. In part that might have been because of her feeling that being in the house was not that difficult, a concept Gretel seemed to have some trouble processing.

Random observations:

Monday July 1: "It's time. The winner of Big Brother 2002 is Peter." Before the show, my friend Mel had predicted that Peter would win, more or less replicating last year's result (average Aussie bloke wins over younger hunk). And so it proved, with quite a healthy margin (59% to 41%). What this says about us as a nation I'm not sure, but it was an outcome I was reasonably happy with, even if I couldn't get as worked up as last year, when I was so keen to see Blair not win.

While we got a winner's announcement quite early (about 7:40ish), there was plenty of material toget through first. The reappearance of all the housemates made it clear that Jessica is still by far the most annoying, but Damian (nicely busted by Gretel for "posing") wasn't far behind. He even managed to make Aaron and Katrina just seem mildly annoying.

When the announcement was made, Marty didn't seem particularly bitter. The appearance of his dogs was a nice touch (and a logical precursor to being reunited with Jessica, if you think about it). Quite why he stole the bean medley is anyone's guess, and on at least one occasion he appeared to have forgotten what question he'd just been asked as he indulged in Jessica-like crowd baiting.

The most moving moment was a simple one: Peter's brother Tom being allowed into the house to meet up with him. The producers obviously learnt from last year's evictee walk, starting this time with the first one out rather than someone who'd only got the boot half an hour before. Damian's pathetic prancing walk made another appearance. I kept wishing Jessica would catch fire, while a stunned Peter seemed to have no sense of direction.

Random observations:

Tuesday July 2: This year's Rove appearance was a bit better organised than last year. As well as the group chat, we got a separate visit from the winner and runner-up (though I suppose that would have been hard last year, what with Blair losing his voice and all). Sahra got short shrift by being reduced to just the group appearance, although the same could be said for Alex. Jessica was as annoying as ever, but didn't actually dominate the conversation. If that role fell to anyone, it was Nathan, but on the whole everyone got a few words in -- even Peter, who was a bit less stunned.

Conveniently, Rove also asked all of the housemates if they thought they would now pursue a career in entertainment, which was where I wanted to finish up as well. Only two of them gave what I'd consider an honest answer: Shannon said definitely yes, and Marty said he hadn't thought about it.

It's been a common observation that this year's housemates are all in it for the media glory. If so, they haven't been paying much attention to the careers of the 2001 lot. Blair has an ongoing role on Neighbours, but that's not proved much of an career for many people once they leave the show. Sara-Marie got a book, a CD and some pyjamas out, but is now reduced to reporting on Totally Wild. Ben does some football commentary for radio, while Pete does promotions for (I think) Nova, and both have dabbled in Internet TV. Jemma does regular makeup spots on GMA. Christina has done some ads for Planet Ark, while Gordon did some for Virgin phones. Todd had his reporting gig this year on the show, but he's been fairly invisible the last few weeks. In short: some of the housemates are still vaguely visible, but none of them looks like being a threat to Eddie McGuire anytime soon.

I could well imagine Shannon pursuing an infomercials route, and Nathan could probably get a job as a radio DJ if he toned himself down a bit. I can't see Peter or Alex even wanting to pursue media careers. Keiran could be useful in the odd ad campaign. Jessica is obviously hungry for fame, and it is the national duty of all Australians to starve her. The rest of them? They can dream, but I can't imagine it getting anywhere.

Random observations:

Don't forget, Celebrity Big Brother will be back on July 21, and so will we . . .

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