First published 22nd January 2007 on http://www.myspace.com/wivenhoefunnyfarm/blog

Day 19 starts with Cleo tut-tutting about the noise that Jack and Danielle made the night before, neglecting to mention her role in encouraging it as an overture of twisted mentalist love to a sleeping Faceman. As “Wake me up before you go go” reverberates insiduously through the house, she watches her object of desire from the kitchen. “He looks like he’s in such a bad mood,” she observes, a wistful smile playing across her lips. To be honest, being serenaded with lukewarm Wham! after an evening trying to escape the gropes of a schizo probably wouldn’t have most people bouncing around full of thanks for another wonderful god-given day.

Danielle and Jo also keep their malevolent beady eyes closely fixed on Face from the bed opposite. Pressed together wearing identical black caps, like the scary murdered twins from “The Shining”, they chime a disingenuous “Good morning” to an unimpressed Face, who ignores them, instead greeting Shilpa purposefully and striding off. Danielle’s immediately on the defensive (coming from the city of defendants, after all they were only a lirrel bi druhhnnk and aving some fun. “God these PEOPLE!” she exclaims.

 In the diary room Face  reiterates his annoyance with Cleo’s crossing of “the line” and invasion of his space the previous night. He agrees to be cordial to Cleo for the sake of group tasks, but stresses “Do not touch”. I feel your sense of violation Faceman, and dread the introduction of Cleo’s gimp “friend”/character Alan Intruder.

The preview before the adverts appear to show the bottom half of Jack. The bonus means no nasty oily Jude Law face, but he makes up for this by wriggling his nasty, playdough cock around, and I feel as though I’ve been touched wrongly.

 The task has to be one of the finest ever on this show; each housemate is given five minutes in the diary room with a choice of props in which to make Big Brother laugh. Immediately Cleo starts beasting the Face in her effortlessly excruciating faux-mummy way, “You could do your act where you’re singing and then telling a story.. that’s REALLY FUNNY.” She neglects to add “Dahhling! Mwah!”, but somehow it’s audible anyway.

 Whilst Cleo nips off to transform herself into another scary fun-free character for the next three hours, Jo’s bemoaning her lack of inspiration. “I’ve only got one idea. I’m not funny,” she shockingly informs us all. For some reason most housemates choose to wear a non-comedy wig to express their wacky ways; have none of these people even watched “Extras”?

 The mortified look of depression and terror on the faces of some of the housemates as they assemble around the dining table awaiting their call is truly wonderful to behold. Ian_TWFS in particular is fixed with the pallid expression of a boy who’s soiled his pants in the queue for the school medical. Welcome to the world of comedy.

“I aven’t gorranything to say, ” whines Danielle, wearing the accursed Cleo red wig of unfunniness. The housemates politely refrain from suggesting that no-one will notice. Called into the diary room she does a flaky “Aveline” impression rendered more upsetting by the fact that even in character she still chooses to define herself by an urge to fuck Teddy Sheringham (“Oooh Teddy ooh!”), no doubt propelling her boyfriend ever closer to solace in the arms of Ashley Cole. Despite playing her ace and jiggling her breasts (and presumably offering whoever’s judging this a soapy scousy titwank), she fails and exits the diary room looking like an abused puppy. “Never mind, you’re too pretty to be funny, “Face consoles knowingly. Her features brighten; “I know!”

Jo slumps in next and actually does well with a nice rubbish camel joke told in cockney (“What you got the ump for?”) earning a tinny laugh track and a pass. Her victorious exit drives the stake of failure deeper into Danielle’s shallow little heart, and I thank Big Brother yet again for such a simple yet fiendish task.

Ian_TWFS’s called before he starts puking and crying , and for a character act put together so quickly does brilliantly and bravely, even if it is an “impersonation” of a geeky virgin called Cecil singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley . Personally, I think Ian_TWFS’s is dealing with some issues from those bully-filled schooldays. However,  I’m hooting by the time Big Brother presses the laugh button and he skips out a free man.

 Next up is Face, who rather self deprecatingly drawls through the old horse at the bar chestnut (“why the long face?”), recieving a confusing mechanised kertish response from Big Brother. Rather lost – he invents what I ever objective believe is a genius limerick (so genius it has one extra line! Come on!) which fails to get a laugh from the miserable cunts.  He re-enters the lounge branded unfunny, to Danielle’s unfettered delight.

All this time Cleo has been perfecting her lines and teasing her wig and make-up, ready to show us the funny. She looks like the geriatric bastard child of Joan Rivers and David Bowie (In “Labyrinth”).

 Jermaine’s next and I’m willing him to be funny. After a sweetly childish sketch involving him removing his earwax with a big stick (no-one asked you to re-enact your childhood Jermaine!). He goes on to introduce a song, “one of my biggest hits. It took me many years to write. It’s called ‘Shake it'”. He produces a pair of maracas and shakes them. And shakes them. And looks defeated. Yet still shakes them. And his face starts to break into the giggles, but still he keeps shaking. Like me Big Brother is obviously so incapacitated by the pure brilliance of this, that it takes them a few minutes to come to and press the LAUGH button. Jermaine’s pass really piles the pressure onto Cleo, who frantically starts consulting her inner copy of “The Method” and channeling the spirits of the comic heroes of the 1970s.

With some trepidation I note that Jack is wearing a dressing gown to accompany his crap Abba wig and shades into the diary room. As feared, his party piece involves stripping down to a bikini top and an ill-fitting thong and willy wobbling away to his monotone rendition of “I believe in Miracles”. I’m tempted to start another complain to Ofcom campaign; this is so upetting. Especially as the more he gyrates the more of the sluglike top of his one-eyed pig-botherer is revealed to me. Big Brother amusingly finds a tasteful “VOMIT INTO SHRUBBERY” noise to which Jack complains that the thong string has “been cutting my balls off for the last two hours” (now THAT act might have raised a chuckle eventually). “That’s all I’ve got”, he claims fairly accurately. Thank goodness he didn’t remember that he can make it sick too.

 Reminding us all of what a serious business comedy can be, Cleo enters the diary room and proceeds to deliver a horrifically laughless sub-Grenfell Cupid Stunt tribute act. I find it difficult to even type about her simpering “Dorothy Montgomery”, wife to loaded, yet incontinent biscuit heir “Wilbur”. On top of the emotional scars inflicted by Jack’s little turn it’s all just too raw and too soon.

News of Cleo’s failure reaches Ian and Face in the garden, Face incapable of resisting being an ever so slightly smirky Dirk. “I didn’t work hard enough and she worked too hard, ” he correctly surmises. Ian tries to be nice “Maybe she needs an audience”. “Maybe she’s not funny,” comes Face’s reposte and he launches into a diatribe against comedians who always blame their audience that makes me love him even more.

Finally it’s Shilpa’s go, and she introduces her banana obsessed aunty, before a superheroically speedy change into a crazed gurning version of the granny from the Kumars. Complete with headscarf and goofy teeth, she pleads “HAVE A BANANA!” in increasingly desperate tones. It’s hysterical and has me repeating the phrase to my friend for the rest of the night (Does that make me a racist? Sadly I’m now wishing her character had shouted “HAVE A POPPADUM” as I would have soiled myself with joy). Successful, she dances out into the kitchen, much to the chagrin of a stony-faced Cleo. Never mind Cleo, have a banana. I’m still laughing.

Dirk, Jermaine and Ian_TWFS discuss Cleo’s vainglorious failure in the garden, Ian expressed sympathy for the wit-vacuum as she worked so hard at the task. “She works hard at EVERYTHING,” suggests Face pointedly, as he and Jermaine collapse yet again into the snickers of the poetically judicious. “I think she’s funny, “argues Ian_TWFS lamely. “She doesn’t have a funny bone in her body,” comes Face’s brutal review. Critics can be so cruel. Like those ones in the 80s who told Cleo she could make people laugh. She must keep all her funny in her tits.

 The reward is almost as beautifully borderline wrongmo as the task, with the housemates being given alcohol and the chance to watch the video of each of their comedy efforts in front of everybody else. Cleo stiffens visibly as her time approaches.  Firstly we have to suffer the mental trauma of Jack’s sack, at which Shilpa wisely protects her retinas from scarring by hiding her face in her hands, whilst Ian_TWFS destroys this weeks sales of Heat magazine by suggesting that “Jack’s trunk” may be featured within. As Cleo’s clip plays the camera pans round to the collected “audience”, capturing the very essence of comedy death. As somewhere a bell tolls mournfully, Danielle’s mouth forms a silent O of disbelief on her malnourished Cabbagepatch kid face, Jo’s eyes flicker embarrassed from the screen, Ian_TWFS resembles a car crash survivor recovering from shock and Face quietly DirkSmirks. Even the tumbleweeds look a little bit confused.

 Later Face is called to the Diary room and asked whether he wants Big Brother to warn Cleo for her rapey ways, but he takes the classy option and decides to “let it go”, as long as she desists from fisting him in his sleep.

 In the bedroom Jo is again freaking out and wants to go home (presumably she’s concerned that she might have been involved in something that makes her look bad. Oh what can it be?). Shilpa comforts her by stating “You haven’t done anything spiteful” (oh Shilpa if only you knew!). The scene where Jo and Danielle hold Shilpa’s hands in a ludicrously fake bonding session is nearly as sickening as Jack’s dancing jizzgun.

 In the diary room’ s “big chair” Cleo discusses the bad feeling with Face, incapable of understanding why he gets upsets with her when she calls her “friends”, such as sexual predator “Tiara” into the house.  “Tiara”, she claims, “elaborated on the house mood in a funny, fun way”, but Face “really reacted against her“. Some people really have no sense of humour when introduced to psychotic constructs invented purely to prevent someone having to take responsibility for their own sociopathic actions. Tsk!  It makes the fact that Cleo accused Face of having a split personality even more stunning. I guess it takes six to know one.

 Today’s blog has been brought to you by Mr Binky. Blame him, he’s a naughty octopus.

 QUOTE OF THE NIGHT:  “I made MILLIONS being funny, but not in THAT room, ” (Face deadpans about the cutthroat world of comedy)