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May 200531st May 2005 We can't be bothered to talk about Big Brother.
Nope, for the next couple of days we're just going to sit back and enjoy it. Until the first eviction, Bother's Bar is OFFICIALLY a Big Brother free zone. We're going to write about other things. To celebrate, a reminder that if you want the best chance of winning lots of money, get your Fantasy League teams in before end of Friday. 29th May 2005 It's the return of the Big Brother celebrity lookalikes!This year, thanks to everyone having rubbish media hair, with a T4 "bent"...
Eyes down for a full house...Yesterday's first Big Brother daily show only got half the viewers of the launch night. Quick everyone, it's a failure! Do you know what would make Big Brother more interesting? If they gave them all guns! Have you read Dead Famous by Ben Eltzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... It's Fort Boyard speculation time!Someone's come up with the list of new games on Fort Boyard this year on Fortboyard.net. What could they mean?
28th May 2005 It's Interneteraction night on BBC1!It truly is the future of television on BBC1 this evening! Beginning with people being empowered and voting for people on Strictly Dance Fever, people answering questions over the internet on Come and Have a Go... and then the same or possibly different people answering questions over the internet on Test the Nation: the 20th Century Test! We will inevitably tell you how we got on, feel free to leave your Test the Nation scores below. 27th May 2005 Well, y'know, they began unlikable last year as well...They're in...
The first big surprise for the housemates was the deciding of the unlucky 13th. BB calls a housemate to the diary room. Makosi goes. Unlucky! She's now automatically up for eviction this week. However, there's a cruel twist. The person who receives the most nominations gets immunity from the vote. So if she can annoy the other housemates into voting for her on Monday, she's off the hook. Nasty, although this seemed to go over her head. Big Brother has given them a luxury welcome party "because of Makosi". Hmm... The website doesn't seem to be coping very well at the moment... Hurrah!Reports suggest that Living TV2 have bought the rights to seasons 3-7 of The Amazing Race. Watch out for season five, that's a blinder. Great news of course, but I've seen them all already - that The MPAA was right after all! *shakes fist*. New Happy Hour!A new season of Big Brother begins this evening, and with it comes a brand new BIG PRIZE interactive competition, one you can keep up with on the exciting sidebar: Sauron's Fantasy Big Brother League. It's now up, but there isn't an awful lot you can do until I update it with the names of the housemates sometime this evening (note: a bit late because I'm likely to be out), but there you go. 25th May 2005 Tuesday Night Teaser answer:
1) Tony Wilson owned The Hacienda nightclub in Manchester, whilst the Italian show La Talpa used the Hacienda in Mexico as its setting. 2) The very same Hacienda was also used as the base for Playing it Straight, produced by Davey and Hugill and Abela, who also produced our domestic version of The Mole. So there you go - hardly worth bothering with at all, really. Unlucky for one...More Big Brother information coming out:
We're getting rather excited now, in truth. 24th May 2005 Who lives in a house like this?Ooh, Heat magazine have pictures of the all new Big Brother house, minus the bedrooms and the diary room. But don't worry! Because Digital Spy have them as well. It looks like quite nice, although that three level sofa is clearly there to be annoying. Tremedous Tuesday Trivia!Because it isn't Big Brother related, here is an exciting question: What connects Factory Records owner Anthony H Wilson to The Mole? Answer: soon (you won't get it). In the spirit of Bothers Bar, there are actually two interesting and acceptable answers, based around one underlying theme. 23rd May 2005 Now hang on a minute...You lose on Big Brother UK, the most you can usually expect is a couple of quid selling your fascinating life story to a Sunday tabloid rag. You lose on Aussie Big Brother?
Here! Thake this $2000 credit card! And whilst you're here, why not have an exciting 3G phone? And since you're going... why not drive off in this lovely Hyundai car? Let's also not forget that last year's top prize was Aus$1m, and this year's top prize is also Aus$1m, but with $5K being knocked off every time they break a rule. By our reckoning, Aussie Big Brother offers by far and away the biggest prize for winning any series of Big Brother anywhere in the world. So if the rumours of a permanant swap between UK and Aussie houses does actually take place (and to be honest, we can't see it happening), someone could be in for a very big surprise. Brig Bother's Big Brother Big Bogus Betting Bonanza!We've decided we're going to bite the bullet and back all the outside bets on Big Brother this year. We're going to place a fiver on the person with the longest odds each night starting Friday for five days (provided I haven't betted on them already), and each week we'll stake £2.50 on the person the bookies suggest are least likely to be evicted on the Tuesday nights. If we did this last year, with Nadia at 60-1 and regular eviction upsets, Brig Bother stands to make millions! Look out for Sauron's Fantasy Big Brother League beginning on Friday night. 22nd May 2005 He raps in UkrainianIt's the morning after the night before, and I would have updated sooner but had had a bottle of cheap merlot. Anyway! What a night it was, and here are those all important final scores, along with the OFFICIAL votes of the Bother's Bar House Jury (everyone gave each song a mark out of ten, when some other people turned up halfway through they were also allowed to give marks and the top and bottom mark were eliminated so they all had a mark out of fifty. After the reprise, everybody could give a five point bonus to their favourite song, and we picked up the phone and voted for the top two. Simple, non?)
Well there we are then, proof if proof were needed that our music tastes are actually much better than those of Europe.
Athens 2006 it is then. Eurovision.tv are offering streamed versions of both the shows at the moment, except they don't seem to be working. 20th May 2005 Well, that's the end of the Happy Hour for this week. A big thanks to everyone who took part (a record number!) and congratulations to our big money winners. Bother's Bar's Fantasy Big Brother League Happy Hour Championship Thing will opens its doors sometime next Friday night. 19th May 2005 We missed the Eurovision Semi-final due to work commitments, but rest assured we're really angry that the two countries we had bets on on the basis of punditry failed to get through to final. And that's why you shouldn't listen to people, ever. Speaking of which, we still haven't watched Celebrity Love Island yet, but we already think it's rubbish. See? We're like a satire on punditry. More Take the Money or Don't Take the Money. ABSOLUTELY GRIPPING UPDATE! 18th May 2005 It's game on in round three of Take the Money or Don't Take the Money! How far dare he push it? Also: we downloaded an episode of Celebrity Love Island and will watch it this evening - never let it be said we're not impartial. Electro BrotherBecause it's a slow news period in the run up to Big Brother next week (a press release allegedly reports that this year's house will look "aspirational", but that the things the housemates most like about it when they move in will seem horribly oppressive as the game goes on, and that the house is the same size as BB5s but has been completely redesigned), as promised here is a bad quality mp3 of the theme to Aussie Big Brother, which I've said is a brilliant banging electro rock dance remake of the original Dutch theme. Actually, the one I'm giving you there is the original German theme, but I believe it to be the same one - I'm sure someone will pipe up if I'm wrong. 17th May 2005 How is Chris doing in Round two of Take the Money or Don't Take the Money? And! A new review of Sleb Rassling for you. 16th May 2005 Our exciting big money copyright infringing game Take the Money or Don't Take the Money has begun on the Happy Hour page, look out for nightly updates over the week. Tomorrow sees a review of Celebrity Wrestling, weather permitting. I hardly even knew 'er.Bother's Bar favourite Challenge channel controller Jonathan Webb has been speaking to the press again, this time Monday's Mediaguardian section regarding poker's role in the Challenge line-up. The highlights for those who can't be bothered to register:
Why Aussie Big Brother is really greatWhilst we're on lists:
And finally!Celebrity Love Island began this evening. *Shrugs* 15th May 2005 You are so busted!Aww man! The housemates have worked out the secret of Logan! And it looks like Big Brother has evicted three housemates for lying to Big Brother about personal circumstances during the auditions (Constance, Nelson and Dean). Except we reckon this is the Aussie Big Brother bedsit really. 14th May 2005 A feature on Deal or No Deal, the basis for the current Happy Hour game, is now up in the Weekend Specials. Playing it StraightThis was a really enjoyable series, as it turned out, and we got caught right up in the moment at the end. Anyway:
After effectively going "oh Danny, oh Danny, oooh!" for the past five weeks, Zoe did the obvious thing... and went for the cockney charm of Ben the Builder, the most obvious homosexual of the three of them in our eyes, and past Mr Gay UK to boot. Marco took it well, Bother's Bar favourite Danny (who we incorrectly had down as gay from the very beginning) was really upset, but probably not as upset as Zoe who realised she had picked a liar over someone she really liked. The aftermath was astonishingly powerful, Ben had managed to successfully play it straight and won the cheque for £100,000 whilst Zoe, Ben and a looking slightly PO'ed looking June Sarpong tried to hold back tears (they failed). But Ben the Builder... can he fix it? Ben the Builder... Yes he can! gave the cheque to Zoe who insisted he kept at least half, he said he was there to play the game to prove the point that not all gays are camp and go to ABBA concerts. A predictable ending, but a nice one all the same, we hope there's another series in the outing. Offing, sorry. 13th May 2005 The Happy Hour competition has now closed, and all contestants will be contacted before I go to bed this evening. The game begins for real on Monday, hopefully. A new feature on Deal or No Deal and some sort of analysis of tonight's Playing it Straight final tomorrow. Lots to get through this evening, so let's go... Logans' RunA gratuitous shot of some men swapping clothes in the latest incarnation of Aussie Big Brother.
The two Logan's are given one minute to swap clothes, then Logan (David) is allowed three minutes to exchange information to Logan (Greg), who at this point had no knowledge of the house, the housemates, who he was talking to before he was called to the diary room and what he should be doing when he leaves. Logan (David) will spend time in the Isolation House with DVDs and games until called upon to swap back into the house. If they can keep up the pretence for a fortnight, they can go in together as seperate entities. They seem to be doing OK so far, although the girls seem slightly confused when Logan seems to go off with them... Super Mega Irritaing Stick Electric-aiiiii!We've noticed that ITV are currently producing a pilot for a physical action show on ITV called The Wire. We like a bit of pointless specuation here at Bother's Bar, and have come to the conclusion that it might, in fact, be an exciting British version of the Japanese show Denryu IraIrabou - The Irritating Maze. Basically, it's a giant version of those don't touch the wire games you find in fairgrounds. Except with extra obstacles and massive explosions if they touch the wire. A bit like this:
from the slightly tedious Belgian Fear Factor, although to be honest it will probably have more in common with this and its moving obstacles.:
from Die 100,000 Mark Show, an image I've nicked because it looks like I've temporarily misplaced my tape, which is highly irritating considering I'm doing a feature on it in a couple of weeks. Erk! BTefnet Going Down Get You Down?You can still download Survivor and Aussie Big Brother from other sources.
Not much time to report today, but this is your first and final warning regarding the fact that the Happy Hour qualifying question closes tomorrow night at 11:30. You might as well give it a punt judging by the answers we've had so far, frankly. Also tomorrow: the Playing it Straight final, some pictures of two men swapping clothes, and could this really be the future of ITV (pictured right)? 11th May 2005 So if they can do it, why can't we?Look! Aussie Big Brother has no trouble at all doing a live show with an audience. Not so loutish as the stereotype suggests, then.
And because you're fascinated, the Aussie BB house looks like this:
The launch show was very stylish, the only real downer being that introducing the housemates dragged a bit. Which is quite a big downer when you think about it really. Who, I hear you ask, is set to be the new Jeff Brazier?Because Channel 4 have commissioned a new series of Shipwrecked, and they appear to be turning it into a five month competition in the style of Survivor. Hmm... It will go out on T4. This might be very shrewd, provided they don't overlap it with Big Brother. 10th May 2005 Moo!We've always taken a dim view of people who are allegedly with it and knowledgeable who seem to pretend not to know who certain celebrities on celebrity reality shows are, possibly in a bid to look cool, aloof and above it all. However, it's happened to us four times in the last week. Quack quack oops. First: Substitute wrestler Phil Turner on Celebrity Wrestling drew an absolute blank. It turns out he's a bloke from House Invaders... ah! of course. Last night we caught the last five minutes of The Farm hosted by the frankly awful Colin and Justin out of Colin and Justin's Brilliant Decoration Show. We didn't know Emma B by the face (although did know her by the name - did you know every other celebrity in celebrity land is called Emma B? Honestly, count them up). Lionel Blair, Ron Jeremy, Keith Harris and Orville, again we knew La Ciccolina (two porn stars, it's quite clearly a toss up to see who gets the insemination job then) and Emma Noble we knew by reputation. Flava Flav came on screen and was introduced by one of the regulars thusly: "OH MY GOD! IS THAT FLAVA FLAV?" sounding just a little bit like an excited Dave Benson-Phillips. However, we drew complete blanks on Mikey of Phixx fame (knew the band, couldn't tell you who the members were), Dave Da Fireman (Jessie Wallace from Eastenders' ex) and Charlene, who apparently used to be Lucy Ewing in Dallas, so there we are then. I'll tell you what though, the The Farm site has slowed the entire Five site down considerably. Eat mat! Ouch! Etc!Celebrity Wrestling is being moved around the schedules in order to give other shows a chance (joke copyright Lee and Herring) (would link but the page doesn't seem to be up at the moment). 9th May 2005 Want to watch Aussie Big Brother? Have BitTorrent? Go here. I knew my brilliant First Degree Burns campaign would work!Do you remember January, and do you remember Bother's Bar's brilliant "Give Us First Degree Burns - Bring Back The Krypton Factor!" non-campaign? Well someone seems to have listened, as the BBC's Wayne Garvie (responsible for Strictly Come Dancing) has gone on record at the Rose D'or festival stating that he wants to bring it back. I wonder if this has anything to do with Jeremy Fox, The Krypton Factor's creator, apparently coming back into format development? Now, we should be getting excited about this. We should also bear in mind though that Garvie was responsible for the failed 1995 series of the show which added the dreaded Super Round - we felt it was needless but didn't think it was bad in itself - which rather doomed the show to failure. I know you want to update it, but please bring back the original six rounds please Wayne (no dropping of Intelligence this time). We bet he finds some way to include a vote out element. Still, though. Those crazy Eastern Europeans and their mad editing skillz!It's good when people give you things, it's even better when those things include an exciting episode of Fort Boyard Russian style.
Why's that exciting I hear you ask? And why so many paragraph breaks? It's so I can fit in the pictures (they're black and white - sorry, that's the vagaries of SECAM for you). And the reason that this is jolly exciting is because the French seem to use Russia as a test bed for some of the things they're likely to introduce next year. Mainly in the night stakes. If things are to be believed, this year once again the team will face challenges overnight in order to release any prisoners that have been taken. This year, to gain access to the council the team must successfully play do-re-mi on the Musical Pipes (this used to be a key game you know), doing this activates an irritating and loud piece of repeated music - the team must find the source of the music to find the crystal which will let them into the Council room. Considering the original Test of the Night Before was a three hour endurance-a-thon, you do have to wonder why the producers bother with this short test these days and just get the team to collect all the keys overnight - the torchlit fort is the real star here and they know it. Other points of interest:
Fort Boyard 2005 begins next month on France 2, 8th May 2005 All pictures sorted now, thanks. Who will be the first to suggest this for Challenge's Player strand?UKNova is a wonderful little page for fans of UK entertainment if you're BitTorrent inclined (if you want to sign up and it doesn't let you, keep trying as it kicks people off at regular intervals). Somebody seems to be uploading a ton of Cannon and Ball stuff including recently, wonderfully, an episode of Cannon and Ball's Casino.
Indeed, what the second round (where Ball mimes things for the contestants to try to guess whilst Cannon gives verbal hints) has to do with anything casino based at all is beyond me. The final round, Crack the Safe, has our lucky contestants answering questions with numerical answers in a bid to find the combination (and with questions such (how many pounds in half a stone, this is something that happens quite easily). In other UKNova news, someone seems to be uploading episodes of The Murder Game at the moment. Excellent! Eye Eye!Only three weeks to go before Big Brother opens the doors to the viewing public for eleven weeks. The interesting news at the moment though is that Big Brother Australia began last night. It apparently is borrowing last year's "evil" theme from our domestic version, and is borrowing the idea of having twin housemates going in and out of the house at regular intervals from BB US. It looks like there's a fair chance that the bedsit idea is going to be used, and that the $1,000,000 prizemoney might dwindle away to zero if they fail at tasks. If anyone knows of anywhere that's torrenting BBAus, or if someone's uploading them to newsgroups, do let me know.
This immediately led to suspicions of there being two houses on various messageboards , intriguingly the idea of a "sun" house and an "owl" house (two natural opposites there), one house will get to use the garden during the day, the others during the night. I think this particular idea is unlikely, as indeed are any ideas that might make people go "WEERRRR, they've CHANGED IT, it's RUBBISH NOW." The last time they did try the two house idea, it wasn't really two houses at all being the rich/poor divide of BB3. This said, other countries have tried the idea with reasonable success so well, you know. Other interesting rumours suggest that the new Big Brother house is going to be akin to a funhouse, with a bouncy castle bedroom and an upside down kitchen. This sounds a bit too wacky to be true and the excitement will probably wear off in about an hour when people realise they actually have to live in it. Still, at the end of the last Big Brother producers suggested that the next one was going to be more comically themed with more in the way of practical jokes, so perhaps this isn't as far fetched as it seems. We reckon actually that they might incorporate the identical twins game as seen in BBUS last yeat and BBAus this year. For the uninitiated, two identical twins go into the house, one properly and one in a special secluded secret area. At regular intervals Big Brother gets the twins to swap places. If they can keep the fact that they are twins secret from the rest of the house for a certain length of time, they can both njoin the game as seperate entities, whereas if they're caught napping they're more likely to get kicked out. We probably won't bother covering Celebrity Love Island, in all honesty. 7th May 2005 Bother's Broken BarHey kids, can you take a quick look at some of the World o' Game and Different etc. features for me? I get all the pictures on my computer, some chums of mine don't get any. Can you put my mind at rest so I can work out what might be causing the problem? Ta. Tomorrow will probably be some sort of Big Brother rumour round up ("Do you know what would make it better? If they gave them all guns!!!!1"), and a golden oldie gets a viewing. 6th May 2005 The Bother's Bar ManifestoWe're back fans and we appear to have transformed ourselves into a sixties theme pub. We haven't quite incorporated all the changes in time, but that just makes it more exciting later, doesn't it? As proprietor of this bar, I make the following pledges to you, the public:
We hope it meets up to your expectations. We hope you have Javascript enabled. And you aren't on dial-up for looking at the features. Whatchabinuptoo, then?As I said, not as much as I'd like, but there's still quite a lot of new material here.
And if you hadn't visited the old bar before it was condemned, there were some interesting features on The Mole, South African Countdown and You Don't Know Jack you may have missed out on.
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We think it's been very entertaining. We think Endemol are rubbish for clearly cutting away from anything that looks like might go in tomorrow's show during the live streaming (fine, except some people have paid £15 for it. When it's working). We think the unlucky 13th housemate is quite a neat and amusing idea, but also think the decision to change the unlucky housemate each week is the sensible one (BB Hater Says: "WWEEERRRRR, they didn't even have the COURAGE to see it THROUGH. This is RUBBISH. WHY are you WATCHING this? YOU must BE a moron. Do you remember when they had PROPER people ON the telly? Do you know what would make Big Brother more interesting? If they GAVE them guns! Have you read Dead...").
Tony Wilson and The Mole are connected by The Hacienda. There are two ways of arriving there.
Have a holiday to Singapore!
Highlights!
Again, lots of political voting this year. This being said, Greece won it despite the Balkancentric bias in the Eurovision make-up. This goes to prove something, although I'm not sure I quite know what. It certainly wasn't the best song - actually lost amongst the rather identikit ethnic dance sounding ones, although it was certainly the most advertised before the show itself (we were seeing adverts for Greece using the song on MTV Hits for about a week before the contest) 
Because we've never seen anyone go straight through a window before. 
Just like there are two identical twins, look! 
12th May 2005
And that episode comes from last year.
For some reason, the team weren't penalised at all for being a key short when the key chase time ran out. Possibly it was because they already had two prisoners but even so it was a bit of a cop out. Russian Hugo Myatt might have explained everything, but we didn't understand it.
Well I say wonderfully, it actually may be the most misnomered show ever. Actually that's not quite true - Cannon and Ball are in it (and are fairly entertaining for the most part) and the first round is based around a fruit machine, but the similarity to a casino ends there really.
There have been an awful lot of rumours flying around with regards to what interesting twists the UK version has in store. The new logo was revealed some weeks ago, given the title "Shattered", and seems to be two eyes intermingled.
We promise to reuse the same great old jokes that made the original Bother's Bar the most popular page on the internet.