The house has once again been shaken up, this time by the patented arrival of the 'Golden Housemate', Suzie. She seems to be an older, brunette version of Lea, only without the thoroughly unlikeable personality. And the incident with the whisk. It amazes me how people in the house turn on others so quickly - within hours of her arrival, Lea was badmouthing her to Grace, Imogen and the rest of the insecure lot. Then Lisa spoke in that Mancunian Gravel voice about how people were "a**e-licking" the new housemate. I don't know how many times I've heard that phrase in the house, and each time it becomes more tiresome. Memo to Grace, Lisa et al - it's called being friendly. Obviously an alien concept if you're up yourself, but novel nonetheless.

The 'standing still for nine hours' episode (an unbelievably poor version of last year's Box Task) exemplified Grace's insecure and increasingly irrational behaviour. As Richard, Aisleyne, Nikki and others sat outside she moaned, "Look at them all sitting on their beanies getting along - it's hilarious". Actually (and this may come as a shock), it's called...getting along. Still, at least 50% of her sentences make sense. Then she started whining incessantly about how she needed to win to avoid nomination. Glyn, always one to take a hint, offered to quit. "No, no, no, no!" Grace pleaded/ordered, "Don't you dare!" To top it all off, after agreeing to draw straws with Lisa, and promptly losing, she ran off in tears, rejecting poor Mikey's attempts to console her and protesting, "Why are you being like this?" On that evidence, she could almost have been talking to herself.


Getting Along: Richard

And the ultimate irony is, her imminent eviction spells disaster for the show. Pete and Glyn are nice guys and entertaining characters, Nikki - well, she's an entertaining character. But that alone can't carry the remaining TEN weeks of the show (yes, there are really ten weeks to go). The show needs Nikki to stay, yet it also needs Grace. The dramatic image of the housemates standing stunned as the "Get Grace Out" chants drifted over the wall was a great moment, but it came at least two months too early. The nomination process this week has been a screwjob, as Grace would otherwise have escaped eviction due to her constant back-stabbing (the very back-stabbing she complains about) and getting each housemate on her side. She's Nasty Nick without the paper and pencils. But the most dramatic angle of BB1 ended when Batemen was bundled out the back door, sparing him the lynch mob. If voting goes as expected, Grace will be out by Friday and the only long-running angle will be gone. She may walk out before then, denying us her hilarious eviction. Pete, Glyn and Nikki have no interesting angles lined up, unless Lisa (a revolting liar, as evidence by her treatment of Sam) heads into a jealous feud with Nikki over Pete. They've run through so much in three weeks that it can surely only do downhill after Grace's inevitable downfall. There are apparently no new housemates ready to enter, so we may be stuck with Lea's tiresome moaning, Lisa's tiresome swearing and Nikki's ludicrous facade, which luckily hasn't grown tiresome. Yet. Pete and Glyn will be the only two people to save the show for the next TEN (10) weeks. It they and Nikki are edited into obscurity for boring romance storylines involving the likes of Mikey and Imogen, then the 60-minute nightly show is in trouble. And Endemol only have themselves to blame - the same people who gave us he genius of 'Deal Or No Deal' can't even see that a 13 week show will drag long before the final night.

We'll be longing for the days of Sezer. Heck, we'll be longing for Shabaz.