This is for chilledbootz, and cc100 and friends.
It took most of tonight to do this.
With a break for tonight's live task.
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Virgin Radio Breakfast Show. 24th June
Daryl: Paul Clarke is here. Good Morning.
Paul: Good Morning to you.
Daryl: You all right?
Paul: I’m absolutely fine thanks.
Daryl: Is Helen well?
Paul: She’s very well. Very well.
Daryl: Excellent. It’s good of you to join us and give us a bit of an insight into this year’s Big Brother. We were just saying during that song, for some reason – the viewing figures are great this year- but for some reason it just doesn’t seem to have captured the moment. And you probably didn’t appreciate how big it was last year while you were in there….
Paul: …No, No…
Daryl: …but last year it was huge and everyone gave a damn about the people in the house: you, Helen, Brian but this year? – what going on?
Paul: I don’t know. I just think they’ve got the whole Big Brother philosophy completely wrong this year. Because it’s the third one, they’ve tried to add different things: they’ve stuck the bars in, and all of this, they haven't got many tasks this year. I think it’s gone wrong. We did argue but…
Daryl: …That’s good, we want to see that…
Paul: …but we bonded better as well, and when you bond better I think a different side of you comes out, maybe the more comical side and when you get along I think people generally like you more. This time, they just can’t stand each other and they’re just fighting the whole time, and it makes good TV but, I think, in a way, it’s just not funny to watch.
Daryl: I've not warmed to any of the characters in there and that’s probably one of the problems for me.
Other Presenter: I don’t think there’s any likable characters in there, particularly. I quite like Alex…
Paul: Alex is a character in there. If you were to look at characters – I’m pushing myself aside – in our one we did have big characters like Helen, like Brian, Narinder, Bubble and so on. This year, you haven’t got that real individuality – no one’s really standing out from the crowd at all.
Daryl: Does it help because last year’s and in previous years you’ve had these tasks to get on which kind of helps you interact and bond with each other and whatever. Whereas this year they’ve just been left to get on with it.
Paul: Everyone’s personality this year has just been completely suppressed. I think the bars, everyone’s just gone off on their own and everyone’s just fighting for themselves.
Daryl: So you think they’re playing more of a game this year…
Paul: Yeah…
Daryl: When you’re in there, how long does it take before you actually start to behave normally? Because, obviously, when you first come in you are very conscious you are on a TV set – there are cameras everywhere. It can’t stay like that forever, there must come a point where you think, ‘ I’ll just get on with it and forget about that.
Paul: Yeah, I think that last year that, a lot of people were saying, that possibly, the beginning of last year’s one was quite boring and it kind of got better as it went along, and I think that is because personalities start to develop and you do start forgetting about the cameras and come out of your shell…
Daryl: And you start doing your hair in front of the mirrors.
Paul: And you start doing your hair! A lot! Actually, I must say, I was watching it yesterday and I watched Tim do his hair for about five minutes and I really cringed because I was like – oh please – that is like what I was doing, and that is just really appalling, really bad!
Daryl: So you do forget the cameras are there after a while. I mean, obviously, you are always conscious of the fact it’s a bit different but…
Paul: You’re always conscious of the fact your Nan’s watching.
Daryl: Yeah. I mean there are certain things you might have done had you completely forgotten the cameras were there, and obviously you stopped yourself short of doing them because…
Paul: there’s a lot of things you want to do in that house but…
Daryl: …you wait until you’ve come out to do those sort of things, obviously.
Paul: 'Course you do.
Daryl: But this year they seem to be much more conscious of the fact that…
Paul: I think they know the drill too much. You watch it live and they’re talking about things that I just didn’t have a clue about. I mean I never even saw this first one. So when I went in I was really, really naïve about the whole thing, I didn’t understand it. I think that when I came out I was just in complete shock, in complete aura of what was going on. But this year the people coming out, it’s not, ‘Oh My God what is going on, it’s just really, really bizarre.’ It’s kind of like they know what’s happening…
Daryl: …what to expect…
Paul: … and just going through the motions, yeah.
Daryl: So of the people in the house, who do you rate with a chance of winning?
Paul: Oh Alex without a shadow of a doubt, he’s got a big, big chance of winning. He’s a big woman, yeah! And I didn’t really like him at all to start with, he really irritated me and annoyed me but I think he has come out of his shell. He’s kind of – he’s getting a lot more confident now and I know what it is like, you get into this false sense of confidence in there, and I think it’s also to do with nominations – he’s been up twice, and he’s stayed in twice and I had five nominations and I stayed in, and it does, you get really, really confident…
Daryl: …oh you weren’t coming out! They were keeping you in there for as long as possible! There’s no doubt about that…
Paul: But you can see him getting more confident and I think he’s got a great chance of winning now because there’s no real characters in there. Jade is a big character but just really, really very irritating, very annoying and now I’m live on air I want to say she is nothing like my Helen at all! And it really annoys me. It annoys me. It does.
Paul: There is just no comparison. The only thing they have got in common is they’re loud and that is it. Jade hasn’t got anything going for her that Helen has. Helen’s got the innocence and the sparkle and Helen had a great female following last year but this year it’s like all of the women can’t stand her [Jade] and I just think that says something about the person. You’re not going to get another Helen again, OK I’m really biased, she’s my girlfriend – really, really biased! Helen is just a great girl, real loving and you’re not going to get that again. Jade is just very irritating.
Daryl: Well, yeah, that is kind of the way that people have portrayed her, as much as anything. In the paper, as I said, I refer to her as the piggy one. Not in a nasty way!
Other Presenter: Awful.
Daryl: Well, you’re probably right and I feel a bit bad about it…
Paul: No comment…
Daryl: … But there’s a picture of her in the paper next to Miss Piggy and you can’t tell the difference between the two pictures, you can understand…
Other Presenter: She doesn’t do herself any favours…
Paul: She doesn’t, she can just cry at will. It’s just like she just clicked her fingers and suddenly she can cry and when she does that baby voice…
Other Presenter: …Oh that's what she’s just started to do…
Paul: I’m looking for a brick to throw at the TV. Really!
Other Presenter: It’s a lot more bitchy than in previous years. All the girls are slagging each other. It wasn’t like that for you was it?
Paul: I don’t think it was. I mean I know a lot of people bitched behind people’s backs. When you’re in there you’re living you’re life as much as you can. You don’t know what is going on behind other doors. We obviously get to see everything that is going on – all the bitchyness - but this year, yeah they're in it for themselves. They’re definitely in it to win. And I can’t believe the amount of times I’ve counted, people go into the diary room with a strategy, about winning…
Daryl: … Oh really?…
Paul: This year it really is a big game and last year I don’t think that happened. There was no strategy involved and in actual fact that prize money didn’t even come into the equation at all, no one really even talked about it, but this year they seem to be talking about it all the time, it’s more of a game.
Daryl: I would have thought you go into it with a view of winning ‘I‘d love to win, this is a game’ and all that but actually once you get to know people and you make friends…
Paul: …Yeah, Yeah…
Daryl: … that kind of goes out the window, it’s not so important, it’s actually, you know, enjoying the company of the people you are with is probably more important, actually, than winning the competition but this year it doesn’t seem to have…
Paul: Well people have a pop at you, they say, ‘Oh you went in it for the experience!’ like this but it is actually true, I think that the experience won over what the money is. This year, they know the drill, they know it and I think it’s a harder atmosphere in there because they don’t really get along that much and they are in it to win.
Daryl: On balance, aside from the fact that you found a girlfriend you are very happy with, aside from that did you enjoy the experience?
Paul: I absolutely loved it.
Daryl: No regrets about it whatsoever.
Paul: No regrets, no regrets. We had a hard year last year. There was a lot of pressure on us but we kind of pushed that aside and we said let’s just do what we want to do. Let’s try and treat this a normal relationship and we have and we have survived it and I think if we can get through that then I think we are made for each other at the end of the day. But we supported each other massively…
Daryl: …Sure…
Paul: It was just a bizarre year, a real bizarre year.
Daryl: One you’ll never forget!
Paul: I’ll never ever.
Daryl: Do we not know the nominations this week do we?
Other Presenter: No, they're out tomorrow.
Daryl: Who do we reckon’s going to go out?
Other Presenter: This week? Sophie, I reckon.
Paul: I did say that, yeah. I actually thought Sophie was going to go out last week; I was very surprised she wasn’t nominated last week.
Daryl: What about Tim?
Paul: I think Tim might possibly be out quite soon as well unfortunately.
Other Presenter: They like him though, don’t they? A couple of people have said.
Paul: Yeah, I think they do but I think you can just see who are going to be the front runners now and Alex is definitely going to be up there. I’ve got to say something for Spencer though because he came out and it was a shame because I wanted him to stay a bit longer, because I did kind of like Spencer to an extent, and I think that he is a prime example of how you can be edited in such a bad way. I watched Big Brother’s Little Brother yesterday and he was just so angry with the system because he’s only going to be remembered, for evermore, for burping and farting and no one wants to be remembered for that, and the poor guy, that’s it, that all he’s going to be remembered for, and it’s a shame, it is a shame.
Other Presenter: But to be fair, you go into the house, and you know, you’re going in there for our entertainment, so pretty much…
Daryl: ‘Make me laugh!’ ‘Entertain me, do something funny!’ Actually they could make it interactive couldn’t they? Whereby, you know, on digital TV you can go into interactive pages…
Other Presenter: …Yeah…
Daryl: …and see different things going on. Actually, you could request the housemates to do various things. ‘Make me laugh, big girl!’ Obviously that wouldn’t be one of the options that! Just in my head.
Paul: ‘Burp!’ ‘Fart!’, ‘Dance!’
Daryl: ‘Do you’re hair in front of the cameras, Paul!’ Sixty times!
Daryl: Okay, so at the moment you’re tipping Alex to win.
Paul: Yeah, definitely.
Daryl: Well, we’ll speak to you in a couple of weeks’ time. In two weeks’ time he may have gone! Who knows.
Paul: He may of. Anything can happen this year I think.
Daryl: Thanks for joining us…
Paul: …Thank you…
Daryl: …and we’ll speak to you again soon.
Paul: Take care now.