Now known as 'Big Brother's Big Mouth', but still the same format, cheeky Cockney chappie Russell Brand oversees a studio full of regular Joes who want to give their opinion on the Big Brother series & it's housemates. In amongst the plebs are 3 "special" guests who get to sit at the other end of the studio on their own chairs (the ham-&-eggers all sit on like a white bench close together); these VIPs are usually a Z-List celebrity fan of BB (Myleene Klass, Vanessa Feltz, someone like that), a previously evicted BB housemate, & a non-famous, self-proclaimed "Big Brother Obsessive", who is usually either an archetypical computer geek or some trendy, pierced, never-had-a-bath student sort.
I prefer 'Big Brother's Big Mouth' to the "fanzine show" 'Big Brothers Little Brother' for one reason only, Russell Brand. This man is so loud, irritating & obnoxious, he actually starts to become very entertaining once you get used to him, whereas, as pleasant as Dermot O'Leary is on 'BBLB', you kind of get the feeling he takes everything just a tiny bit too seriously (I mean, it's just a bunch of gits in a house, after all!), whereas Brand depreciates both himself & the BB phenomenon in the way it should be done.
Brand is the ringmaster of a circus of ordinary folk trying to shout over one another to get their views about BB heard. The toothy presenter is often seen to (half-heartedly) scold any audience member who attempts to argue with anyone else, or who tries to vent their spleen for more than about 10 seconds. Other highlights of 'BBBM' include the Mouthpiece, where viewers at home can listen to some of the things they've called into Channel 4 to say about BB, previews of forthcoming BB highlight shows, & a text-message poll done for fun which asks such posing questions as: "Who's the biggest crybaby in the house?" or "Who has the best catchphrase?" I've never been a massive Big Brother fan until the last series, then I got into quite a lot due to the insane mixture of housemates. As long as the whole BB craze is not taken seriously (as it often is by all the tabloids & gossip mags), then 'Big Brother's Big Mouth' is the ideal half-hour verbal free-for-all to get you in the mood for what the majority of us want to see: the late-night highlights. Also, I hope to see Russell Brand on more shows this year, if TV producers continue to let him be a hyper-active buffoon, he could become one of the greatest television personalities of modern times!
