
WILL I GO BARMY?
7 January 2007
CELEB BB: OUR GIRL INSIDE
BY the time you read this I will have been in the Big Brother house for four days. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you about it last week, but I was sworn to secrecy and there was a chance that if I'd blabbed (which I sooooo wanted to) they wouldn't have let me in - and I wouldn't have been able to report back to you and tell you the truth about life on the "inside". Why I am doing this? Lots of reasons. But I won't be a hypocrite and say the shed-load of money they offered me wasn't a contributory factor in my decision to take part. And God knows it may be a decision I live to regret. But as regular readers of my column may know, I have given Big Brother a bit of a bad press in the past. I have criticised the whole ethos of the "reality" thing and, as a journalist, going in was just too good an opportunity to miss.
I want to see what it's really like. I want to see what happens to people when they're held captive and removed from everything that's familiar. I hesitate to say that I want to test myself, because I'm scared that I will fail the test miserably and discover that whatever I thought I was - I'm not. In fact, I was so nervous about the whole thing that I didn't sleep for five days before I went in. I kept asking myself what the hell I was doing agreeing to participate in a show where I wouldn't see the people I love for three weeks (well, less in my case as I'll obviously be voted out first). Where I wouldn't be allowed to have a pen or pencil, read a book or a magazine, where I would have no contact with the outside world - no phones, no computers, no radio, no newspapers.
Every night when I tried to sleep my eyes refused to close thinking of the horrors that awaited me. I suffered from a mixture of fear and anger. How dare Big Brother bosses deny me information from the outside world? How dare they tell me I couldn't read a book or use a pen? I'll admit it. I was scared. I'd heard lots of rumours about who was going to be in the house with me - and if they turned out to include former Miss Great Britain Danielle Lloyd I made a mental note not to stand too close to her too often or I would look 10 years older than I already do! (I also realised I could be the "old bird" in this series). By the time you read this all will have become clear unlike, I suspect, my mental state - which is what worries me the most.
Will I be able to hold it together? Will I go a bit barmy like Vanessa Feltz did a few series ago when boredom and frustration drove her to start writing furiously on the dining table. Will I be able to cope eating and sleeping and living 24/7 with a whole load of strangers? Will I get drunk and make a complete fool of myself? Will I stay sober and make an even bigger fool of myself? Will I sob and weep and look like a crazy person (aka Sophie Anderton on Celebrity Love Island).
Will I destroy any shred of dignity or credibility I might have gained these last 20 odd years? All this was whirring around in my head as I was trying to go to sleep and popping herbal calming pills. But the fear aside, I suppose what I really hope is that I learn something from all this. I hope to forge new friendships, to learn about myself and other people. I want to learn how to tolerate other people who in the REAL world, I might not do quite so readily. But most of all what I really want to do is have a fantastic time. I want to enjoy the adventure and come out of it glad that I went into it. And I hope that when I'm in there I can depend on your support.
You've always given it so freely in the past and I'm asking you for it again because I'm sure by now you will have seen that I'm in desperate need of it. So toodle pip for now. I'll talk to you all again in a couple of weeks when I will have all the gossip for you - that is, of course, unless I've been carted off to The Priory in the meantime.
Love, Carole XXX
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She's got some nerve claiming to have had credibility before... She slagged Galloway and every other celebrity for appearing on last year's CBB, yet here she is doing the same thing!


