Woo hoo. I had recently watched the Big Brother DVD where you get to see what goes on behind the scenes, in the production room etc. About 7:50 tonight I was thinking how smooth it was all going on the Eviction show and the production gang must be in autopilot. Then, about 12 minutes later, it was on for one and all.
Merlin was announced as being evicted and off he went into the car. After the
ad break he appeared in the walkway, but was playing with some paper in his
hands – he was struggling to ‘unpeel’ it and pointedly not hi-fiving
the audience on his way to the stage. His fumbles came to an end and it was
revealed it was a sticker saying “FREE TH REFUGEES. The gap showing where
the E had fallen off. Finally out came the gaffer tape and over his mouth it
went.
He went onto the stage and refused Gretel’s repeated attempts – and eventual pleas – to at least say something. It was pretty fruitless, so they cut to the house for
an unscheduled “live” cross. “Live” is actually on some sort of sound delay to beep the swearing.
Not tonight. It was all happening too fast. I counted at least 3 full or
partial f*cks going to air. Probably going to be trouble as this was the 7:30
time slot. Then Bree, who was wearing a cute but plunging LBD, gave the audience an accidental flash of her whole boob. Later on she commented on this, so she must have been told (?).
Some more swearing, cuts to black screens and Gretel getting clearly annoyed with the audience, topped off one of those memorable nights of live TV.
Still,
the headlines will be worth all the stress. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll get
Gretel to replace Merlin on the PR trail this week.