Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
I watched a few programmes on the first “Big Brother” six years ago but have only seen a few minutes of later programmes until this year’s Celebrity Big Brother.

The first one was interesting because of its novelty value and for the mix of people – including the ex-public schoolboy later called “Nasty Nick” because he kept illegally asking the others about their voting intentions and being deceitful about something.

Later shows seemed to be composed of similar types of person; they appeared to be young lower middle class or working class types that didn’t appeal to me.

This year’s show included a big range of types and ages although most were minor celebrities I had never heard of.

John McGririck – the racing tipster – old, dirty, coarse and grumpy.
Germaine Greer – gave up after about five days complaining that it was too filthy and germ-ridden inside the house and I don’t think she got on with the others. I think she was just too sensible and mature to put up with the shenanigans
Brigitte Nielson – a star once married to Sylvester Stallone – very tall, blonde and statuesque
Bez – a former Happy Mondays band member and dancer. I’d never heard of him or the band
Caprice – the supermodel – there’s no doubt she has a fantastic pair and a very flat tummy with lovely muscle definition
Jeremy Edwards – an actor in Hollyoaks and Holby City with an educated accent who went to public school I think
Kenzie – a nineteen year old rap star
Lisa L’Anson – a presenter on KissFM amongst other things
Jackie Stallone – a psychic astrologer and a pensioner probably – Sylvester’s mother and so Brigitte’s ex-mother in law – an ugly old bat who lost her temper and never smiled

 

The first time I watched Bez was in bed most of the day and missed a group task so they failed it before they had even started. I didn’t think much of him but he must have been a bit down that day. In later programmes he showed that he’s an emotional guy and good fun. At one point he was sitting on the sofa near Caprice and said that he really needed a cuddle but Caprice was as cold as ice and just said “Ohhh”. Later when Davina was interviewing Jeremy they agreed that she should have given him one.

One of the first things I noticed was that the shower room was next to a window to the garden and they were showering in their swimming costumes – including bikini tops (except Brigitte). How they washed their private parts I have no idea. Jeremy confided to Big Brother in the diary room that he had voted against Caprice partly because she had never let herself go and never got her knockers out once for the benefit of them and the general public. In the first show there was a camera in the shower cubicle but they could face the wall away from it; this shower room was more exposed.

I also noticed that they were all sleeping in the same dormitory – in the first show the sexes were separate and didn’t venture into each-other’s rooms at night. A few years ago I heard the UK and US shows were the only two where sex between the contestants had never taken place. In the Latin countries it seemed to be a common occurrence.

Lisa admitted she was bossy. She was however always cheerful and alert but loud-mouthed. She always wanted to organise things and I thought she would go the distance.

Big Brother controls everything except the evictions and they can be perverse. Normally the contestants nominate two by voting and then the public vote for one to be evicted. On a few occasions the public voted without the contestants nominating someone and indeed the evictions took place unexpectedly to them.

Three contestants that I thought would continue to near the end were Lisa for her confidence, Jeremy because he was smart and took care of Kenzie who was a bit lost at times and Caprice who I thought would not be voted out because people would want to continue looking at her in the sauna, Jacuzzi or shower. However, they were all voted out after John and Jackie. Perhaps the majority of those voting were women who voted for the more emotional characters. Jeremy was sensible and clever, Caprice admitted she is a quiet introvert (and a bit shallow and dim to my mind) and Lisa just noisy.

On Sunday there was a public vote for third place which Brigitte won. She had been a sensible contestant without many good or bad points. Unlike Caprice she had been prepared to shower and hot-tub without her bikini top. Caprice was extremely quiet, nervous and seemed a bit distant most of the time.

There was then the final public vote which Bez won with 54% so Kenzie with 46% did very well. Bez, though, was always the one who most showed his inner feelings, sometimes angry, clumsy, falling over somewhat uncoordinated, dropping things, crashing out in depression, recovering to be cheerful. Bez needed loving care and so did Kenzie because of his immaturity. Brigitte wasn’t in that category but more likely to get a vote than Lisa or Caprice from women voters I suppose.

I thought that Kenzie as a young lad might take an interest in Caprice but in all the programmes I watched I never saw him near her. I expect Big Brother was hoping that Caprice would attract someone but John got very annoyed with her, Jeremy thought she wasn’t opening up and Bez did try once but got a cold response. He did show some interest in Brigitte. In fact, the blokes were often seen together playing chess or just chatting.

There are many people who would never watch Big Brother on the assumption that it is just mass-media trash. However, the psychologists have a field day. In most programmes one of them interprets the feelings and actions of the housemates in various situations. Big Brother doesn’t just watch them but deliberately puts them all under stress.

On one occasion they gave diet coke to all except John knowing that he had said that he just couldn’t manage without it. On another occasion they were offered breakfast in bed and dribbled baked beans onto them from holes in the ceiling, ruining their bedclothes. All the time small things were done to inconvenience the housemates to generate confrontation either with each other or with Big Brother.

An unmanned space probe has landed on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, and has sent back pictures, sound and data for about half an hour before succumbing to the temperature of minus 180 degrees Centigrade.

Titan is covered in cloud and so no one has known whether the surface is solid or liquid until now. During the descent it took pictures from various altitudes which showed lakes and river valleys and a lighter area next to the lake which might indicate a beach washed by waves. The liquid would be of methane or ethane due to the low temperature. No hills or mountains were visible from the landing site but the pictures during the descent may indicate some.

The landing site appears to be soft like compacted snow and is covered with small round objects assumed to be super-cooled ice. They have rounded surfaces so there must be a wind which seemed to be confirmed by the recorded sounds.

The ground and sky looked amber and a distant horizon was visible, all illuminated in the reflected light from Saturn.

There was an interesting TV programme last night on global dimming. It seems that there are two conflicting environmental effects working at present – global warming and global dimming.

Global warming is due to greenhouse gases and global dimming is due to pollution which reflects sunlight and also causes many smaller raindrops rather than fewer larger ones. This has caused rain to fall in different places during the 1980s and 1990s, for instance causing the decades-long droughts in Ethiopia. Monsoons in Asia have been disrupted.

The cooling effect of reflected sunlight has counteracted the warming effect of global warming so the net increase in global temperature has not been as much as it would have been if the global dimming effect had been absent.

The degree of global dimming was unknown until the September 11th attacks in America provided an opportunity for it to be tested. For three days nearly all air flights over the United States were grounded. A scientist had been trying to measure the effect of aircraft vapour trails on global temperature. He realised that the atmosphere was much clearer on the day after the attacks so he got all the weather data from about four hundred US weather stations.

Since daily temperature varies due to weather conditions he used the temperature range between the day and night temperatures which is more stable. He plotted the ranges for three days prior and immediately after the attacks and for three days after flights recommenced and compared the results with the annual average.

He found that for the three days before the attacks and three days after the recommencement the temperature range was slightly below the annual average but while the flights were grounded the range was ten per cent higher than average, a huge difference.

Since the 1990s the world has started reducing pollution by cleaning power station gases, car exhaust filters and so on and already the rainfall in Ethiopia and the Far East is more normal. However, for the last few years daily the temperatures have been greater than usual in many areas of the world. England had the first daily temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Scientists are now concerned that the effect of greenhouse gases will be much greater than before and that a run-away temperature increase could result if greenhouse gases are not controlled drastically very soon. There is only an opportunity during the next two decades otherwise the effect will be unstoppable. If pollution is increased again to counteract the effect as before other problems will arise such as respiratory diseases so this is not an option.

If the Greenland ice cap melts then the sea level may rise two metres and swamp a large number of cities.

There is a huge store of methane in the sea bed, especially in the Arctic Ocean, which will be released as sea temperatures rise; this will add massively to the greenhouse gases and we will be unable to stop the release once it starts except by lowering the sea temperature – quite beyond our present technological powers.

Postscript 16/01/05

One scientist said that he thought most of the effects assumed to be global dimming were in fact due to sunspot activity. I always thought sunspot activity was in bursts, usually over a few days but also over a few years. Climate change has been a steady change over at least three decades so I’m not sure if he is correct.