Celeb BB wasn't going to be the first DMWSYDHT I was going to do, but then EJECTAPOLOOZA 2015 happened and I totally need to talk about it / vent.

I’ve always loved Big Brother, I was 16 in 1999 and obsessed with the first year. Despite whether you think it’s for better or worse BB completely changed television. I happen to think Reality TV is wonderful. We’re so busy nowadays that we don’t have time to stake out Number 17 and gawp at how many gin bottles they’re putting out for recycling or walk the dog slower past Number 9 to ‘gesture read’ the very dramatic row they’re having. Reality TV allows us to curtain twitch on demand. To check out our weird and wonderful neighbours that we wish we had. Sadly this means that we may find out they are using all that Gin to keep their Nan in a constant booze fog as she’s locked in the basement knitting dog sweaters for an etsy store, that the row was over how much the reserve should be on all the Natzi memorabilia they have to sell to fund their meth habit or that the loveable Reg Holsworth is a racist, misogynist, xenophobic homophobe and a child star might not fully understand consent.

What Happened?

On Wednesday 7th of January 2015 the properly brilliant at her job Emma Willis put 14 celebrities into a fairy tale themed house, these were …

Alexander O’Neal, a singer from the US
Alicia Douvall, a model who has had very obvious plastic surgery
Calum Best, son of Belfast City Airport
Cami Li, unsure
Chloe Goodman, cast member of the underrated Ex on the Beach
Jeremy Jackson, child star of Baywatch and perpetual adult fuck up
Katie Hopkins, a drag Nigel Farrage
Kavana, the ghost of boybands yet to come
Keith Chegwin, national treasure / arrogant twitter blocking joke thief
Ken Morley, the personification of straight white male privilege
Michelle Visage, an actual woman from RuPaul’s Drag Race
Nadia Sawalha, you’re thinking of her sister
Patsy Kensit, yes REALLY
Perez Hilton, he has a blog or something.

It was a glitzy affair, the VTs were funny everyone said they’d say things to people’s faces, Katie Hopkins proved that it’s actually quite hard to be a funny cutting bitch on cue and Nadia Sawalha was honest enough to say she was going in because she wants a new kitchen.

Once they were in it was all very civil, but then Ken Morley started to say things that he thought were fine. He made it clear he was going to the bathroom in the morning to ‘look at some arses’, he said it more than once to make sure that we knew he was definitely perving and perving hard. Whilst Cami Li was having her mic pack pinned to her dress he wandered over and said ‘Half Hindu princess, half slut’ with little to no context and then later he put on a southern USA accent and used the ‘n word ending in o’ when talking to actual black man Alexander O’Neal.

This was fascinating to watch, the first week of BB is always a look at how people act when they know they're being watched. No one goes in now without knowing what goes on, especially not people who have worked in the entertainment industry. Ken thought he was being funny and that it was okay to say what he was saying. People did call him out, Alexander told him to, in the future, just say black. Which led to a very uncomfortable few minutes of Ken saying that he thought black was a more offensive word and what the spanish for black was.

It was uncomfortable and it should have been uncomfortable. Ken wasn’t using the word in a malicious way, he was trying to be funny and that is awful. He’s so unaware of how that word can sound in any usage that he didn’t deem it worth thinking about.

Big Brother gave him a strong warning about using the word and threw in the sexist stuff in too as a little bit of an after thought.

Then Jeremy Jackson groped Chole.

It was quick, in the only room in the house without a camera and the fall out was almost text book.

The women rallied round her made sure she knew it wasn’t her fault (even Chole started to victim blame herself) and got her straight to the diary room. The (straight) men listened to Jeremy’s excuses and tried to lessen its significance.

It was definitely an unwelcome sexual touch and quite rightly Jeremy was ejected from the house. (After an investigation no criminal charges have been brought, this doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong)

In the aftermath of the incident Chole was spoken to by all the housemates, Ken took his opportunity to give her some advice,

“You know Jeremy that is a Jewish film producer from New York … don’t f**k yourself completely about it.”

When I heard him say that I had to pause the show and take in the bleakness of it all.

You hear a lot now about men in positions of power being able to do what they wanted to women and it’s gross, but here it was, explicit, recorded, unfiltered and offered as professional advice.

It was disgusting and I, like most viewers, I hope, was disgusted. Ken isn’t someone we get on TV nowadays. A backward relic with bigoted views that he doesn’t seem to understand aren’t okay. We need him on a show like this.

When Chloe told the other housemates what he said they gawped. Nadia was revolted and they all agreed Ken was an arsehole. Over the next couple of days he was taken to task by a few of the housemates, he was called out by all of them. Only Perez resorted to shouting at him.

Ken got worse the next day telling Chloe it was partly her fault as she went into a room with him only wearing a robe. Totally Ken, I’m constantly pulling men’s trousers down without consent on the off chance that they’re going commando and if they are it’s their fault I saw their penis.

Twitter went crazy, viewers demanded he be ejected and all the housemates started to exclude him. After he riled Patsy Kensit she told him to ‘Fuck Off, I’m meditating’, I’m putting that on a t-shirt when I find the right font.

Later Ken regaled Keith Chegwin with an anecdote about Frank Bruno in which he again used the ‘n word’ but this time in an upper class English accent. It was for this that Ken was ejected from the house.

I do not think that Ken is a good or a nice person. I don’t think freedom of speech allows him to get away with what he said but, I don’t think he should have been ejected from the house.

Ken was making a stinking mess and he should have been made to fester in it. Have us all at home seeing what awfulness he would say and watch the housemates give up on trying to rehabilitate him. No one watching thinks that by leaving him in the house that means what he is saying is okay.

Kicking him out makes him a martyr and allows him to go on a PR rehabilitation frenzy. He has already non-apologised on Loose Women today blaming the edit, I love it when people blame the edit, they didn’t put words in your mouth you said those things. For the papers and some viewers it’ll look like he’s sorry, it’ll seem like he saw where he fucked up but now he’s not being filmed all day it allows him to continue to say terrible things with little to no reparation and that’s terrifying.

Thanks for reading, if you liked it why not recommend it?