[Amy]

It’s been a weekend of comings and goings in the house. Two new housemates in - in the form of Irishman Seany and Greek Gerry - and the departure of oldest housemate Lesley.

I’m still not quite sure what to make of the new boys - even if Seany and Gerry sounds like an Irish comedy folk duo - and especially Gerry – although that’s largely because he really reminds me of my flatmate for some reason, despite my flatmate being both straight and German. In fact, I had to do a double take on Friday night as I could have sworn it was Will when he first appeared on the show.

Meanwhile Seany seems a likeable, if incredibly daft Irishman with a horrible 80s footballer haircut and the dress-sense somewhere between a faded local radio DJ and Nigel from EastEnders. He seems to alternate between comic silliness and moments of world weariness that suggest he’s going to be either a fantastic character or a right pain in the neck.

But, quite honestly, anyone new at the moment is welcome if they draw focus away from the likeability black hole that is Charley.

The comedy value of Charley’s brittle, bitchy, “everyone’s against me” attitude has really worn off now. Indeed, so bad is it that I’m quite happy to revise my long-held opinion that the rent-a-mob crowd booing someone was usually unfair. In this case, if they built a giant wicker effigy of Charley and torched it in the car park at Elstree, I’d donate some petrol.

Housemates usually divide into the good, the bad and the wallpaper. And Charley falls into the bad in a way that nobody has done before. A nasty, vindictive, spiteful professional victim, about the only thing you can say about her that’ s remotely positive is that at least she’s not been singing the Sash in front of the Irish housemates.

Not that that’s usually a bar to winning the series.

Like all Big Brother contestants you end up hating during the highlights show, she suffers from having 24 hours of action condensed down to 45 minutes. It acts like a magnifying aspect for the most extreme aspects of the personalities in there. The dumb seem dumber, the dull seem duller, the loud seem louder. And the hate figures seem more hateable than ever.

Seeing her playing sympathetic with Lesley after Seany nicked the WI veteran’s duvet, while sniggering and egging the Irishman on, just said it all. It’s not the biggest crime in history - hell, it’s not the biggest crime in the show’s current run - but it just showed what a two-faced, spiteful little madam she is.

Meanwhile Lesley’s departure was a big blow to the show so early in it’s run, as the quirky, edgy sexagenarian had the potential to be one of the best housemates in a long time.
Saying goodbye to her fellow housemates, we saw the best and worst of her, with her snippy dismissal of Seany during his apology contrasting with her teary words of advice for the young women in the house.

What the current run needed, being so full of youngsters, was a steadying, calm voice of reason and Lesley was very much it. She will definitely be missed.

What’s worrying is the implication that there are more newcomers to come. Last year saw a steady stream of fresh faces being thrown into the BB mix, along with the tedious return of the people everyone had voted out in the first place. If that is going to be the case this year, they may as well replace the staircase with a stocked conveyer belt of Hollyoaks look-alikes and wannabe T4 presenters, just to keep the pace up.

Article Daily Mirror