10. 20 Footballers who really look like women. Be sure to hoot at the Arsene Wenger one – BF

9. What happens when you can’t read the lips of The Beatles properly is very, very funny.

8. Apart from being computer games, there’s a link between Mario and Space Invaders that you’ll never be able to unsee ever again. Sorry. – CannotUnsee

7. Australia’s Next Top Model makes the most royal of boobs on their live show. Watch the video at Amy Grindhouse. It is astonishingly toe-curling.

6. Get a friend to take acid and lock him in a cupboard. Record him. Make an animation of him talking about balloon hands and saying “LIGHTHOUSES RULE”. – Video

5. Stonehenge Boy killed by early Daily Mail readers – NewsArse

4. Like robots? Like wrestling? Want to see the two combined? God bless Japanese people for making our daftest of fantasies come alive – Video

3. Want good advice? Advice that isn’t too flowery, but rather, peppered with the F word? – GoodFuckingDesignAdvice

2. World War I officially ends this weekend? How? Weird, but interesting and true – Telegraph

1. Twilight fans get tattoos. Twilight fans look tragically dim – Geekologie

Anyone who has ever endured the displeasure of listening to someone eulogising about a great TV show like The Wire or The Sopranos will know the score pretty well.

You just have to watch a few episodes, get used to it. Or to use the words of someone like Danny Dyer – you just need to break the tart in. Big Brother is the same. And like the aforementioned shows, you need to stick with it, and then stay stuck.

So, for the benefit of those people who have been too distracted by things like the World Cup, Andy Murray‘s thrilling Wimbledon ride, and going out with friends because it’s hot outside, here’s the general gist of what’s been going on…It’s a new format this year, bookended by the inclusion of retrospective clips from the previous night’s drama, and a teaser of what is to come. As a dramatic device, it’s a great idea, because it creates the illusion of there being some kind of storyline taking place.

On the downside, both of these clips have tended to involve housemates either cheering or tutting. Hopefully as things progress, you might get someone being smashed in the face by an infuriated soldier with metal legs, the obligatory moving bedsheets, or the one who seems convinced that God is keeping him in publicly screaming at a picture of Jesus because he’s just been nominated again. We’ll just have to wait and see.

As for what’s been going on, the series is now moving into the meaty section, where will they?/won’t they? couplings become the focal point. Already there is a small love triangle developing, between John James – a sour faced reincarnation of Alf from Home and Away, lumbered with the body of a young Jason Donovan – a cheerful milk maid called Josie (who might win!), and a godawful medical cretin who renamed herself Sunshine, presumably in a bid to momentarily mask people from her deep crippling depression.

Elsewhere, Ben – the impossibly fey toff – is undergoing a strange Brideshead Revisited storyline with an impressionable young homosexual called Mario, whilst Shabby – a posh squatter – is becoming increasingly irate because she’s  an angry lesbian, and that’s what angry lesbians do. They get angry. Especially when Irish pretend-bisexuals are refusing to put out.

Of the rest of the people in there, Corin, who thinks she looks like Jordan, is seemingly relishing her role as this year’s token thicky – to the point where some viewers are actually worried that she might be brain damaged.

Nathan makes us want to brick up the screen with his abhorrent “mad for it” manner. He’s exactly the kind of person who describes things as “quality”, which makes him exactly the kind of person who should think long and hard about castrating himself.

And anyone not mentioned above tells their own forgettable story.

Seriously, just give it a few episodes.

Josie to win!

This was a guest post by Josh Burt from the magnificent Interestment

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Hooray! Big Brother is back! Hooray! And because this is its final year, the launch show did its best to mimic the entire Big Brother decade.

It started out exciting. Then halfway through it threw in somebody who looked famous but wasn’t. And then it became so overwhelmingly tedious that we automatically wished pain on all of the housemates and briefly considered euthanising ourselves because we didn’t think it was ever going to end. The entire Big Brother experience, summed up in 90 minutes. Great work, Channel Four.

But who’s in the Big Brother house this year? Glad you asked – we’ve listed them after the jump. Honestly, the things we put ourselves through for you people…

So, the Big Brother launch show was different this year, because the 14 housemates were picked live on TV – it was definitely live, by the way, even the the sky somehow stayed visibly lighter than anywhere else in the rest of the UK for about 30 minutes – from a group of over 80 hopefuls.

Essentially what this meant was that – instead of seeing the Big Brother housemates quickly get out of a car, trot down a runway and enter the house – we had to sit through a dull, prolonged The Price Is Right-style selection process whenever a new housemate was named. It happened 14 times. FOURTEEN TIMES. Great way to keep things zippy, Big Brother.

But who were the 14 grasping attention-starved empty vessels picked to be this year’s Big Brother housemates? Let’s see, shall we?

Josie – Blonde, chicken-liking, petrol-drinking Carry On idiot.

Steve – Tattooed amputee. One black contact lens. Looks like he beats people up for a living.

Ben – Posh cock who wears a jumper around his shoulders, which everyone knows is the universal sign for ‘I’m a tremendous cock’.

Rachael – Beyonce lookalike. Might be a bitch, but we’re willing to overlook that purely because she looks like Beyonce and we’re incredibly shallow.

Nathan – Eyebrows. That is all.

Dave – A monk or an emo or something. Oh, God knows.

Caiomah – A sort of white Rihanna who pretends to be a lesbian sometimes because she hasn’t got a personality.

Govan – This year’s Normal One. Except he’s never been in a relationship because he’s probably some sort of bloody sociopath for all anyone bleeding knows.

Shabby – You knows those little porcelain dolls of sad-looking tramps dressed like Charlie Chaplin? That.

Ife – A singer, she says. A bit nothingy, really.

John James - An Australian labouring under the impression that no British people have ever seen an Australian before. Nobody take him out drinking in Shepherd’s Bush when he’s evicted, for crying out loud. It’ll break his heart. The nearest thing to boy-totty of the year.

Sunshine - She is called Sunshine and she wears a tiny hat. We’ve hated people for less.

Corin – A Jordan lookalike who appears to have been pieced together from hundreds of fossilised foreskins and most of Superdrug.

Mario – A wildcard housemate who has entered the house as a mole but – get this! – he’s… tee hee… dressed as an actual mole. That’s so random! Except that it’s actually the precise opposite of random!

And that’s it. We’ll be checking in with Big Brother intermittently throughout the series – or maybe more if it looks like Steve’s post-traumatic stress disorder will kick in and make him attack Ben – so it’s not all bad, is it? It is? Who are we kidding, of course it is.

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10 - Thanks to reader Bradford Johnson, we’re able to bring you the best Christmas song that you probably haven’t heard yet…

9 - And, just to balance things out, one of the most utterly dumbfounding – Littleredboat

8 - Maury sluts - Liquidgeneragtion

7 - Shameless self-promotion of the week, part two – Stu’s got a blog. Read it now before he forgets it exists! – Stuartheritage

6 - 2008 in terrible band names - AVClub

5 – Look, a Christmas miracle! An iPhone app that isn’t breathtakingly pointless! - Qype

4 - Parents can be so cruel sometimes - I Am Bored

3 - What happens in the new season of Lost? Everything goes MENTAL, that’s what – YouTube

2 - Is your Christmas tree covered in Mario baubles? Then you lose, my friend – Instructables

1 – A little late, but this really is animal cruelty at its most adorable – Best Week Ever

10 - You heard the Mario Kart song, now watch, um, whatever this is…

9 - Want to make a cantilever chair out of cardboard? OK! – Instructables

8 - Disgusting food that costs more than your house - Neatorama

7 - The true spirit of Christmas, in charming animated form - Drawn

6 - Use Gmail? Google is giving away FREE STICKERS! – Lifehacker

5 - The internet in action: man takes picture, ends up in Iron Man - Adactio

4 - Disturbing puppets! Yay! – Toplessrobot

3 – 10 ways to waste lots of money - Kontraband

2 - Things we wish we had the time to do: make a giant Mario scene out of drawing pins – Thetanooki

1 – ‘Evander Holyfield Claims His Quest For Severe Brain Damage Keeps Him Fighting’. Oh, The Onion. Marry us - Theonion

10 - Is this genius or utterly punchworthy? We say – both!

9 - Creepy – Davidshrigley

8 – More weird facts than you can count - Bitworks

7 - This is what your desktop does behind your back – Iconwar

6 - What were the 25 most censored stories of 2007? Now you know – Projectcensored

5 - Analyse your handwriting! Do it now! – TUL

4 - Communist Mario will see you now – 88by31

3 - You know what we need? A list of unusual deaths – Wikipedia

2 - Reasons to hate 3M, number 17 – Scottrope

1 – The most head-spinning collection of school textbook disclaimer stickers we’ve ever seen – Swarthmorecollege

Crikey, is Big Brother still on? It is? Why, that must mean we’re being punished for something. Sorry. A million times sorry.

Anyway, what’s happened on Big Brother this weekend? Nicole got evicted which is good, because it means that the most annoying woman on the television has automatically reverted back to Jeremy Kyle; and Lisa got engaged to Mario, which is bad because it meant that Mario was back on TV and we promised ourselves that we’d cut our eyes out if that ever happened again. Thank heavens for braille keyboards, eh?

So who’ll win Big Brother? Here are the Big Brother betting odds for Mohamed, Sara, Rex and Kat, with help from Paddy Power…

Mohamed – The sheer fact alone that Mohamed is still in the Big Brother house is a stone cold testament to what a bundle of wankers the evicted Big Brother housemates were. There can’t be a person on the planet who likes Mohamed – he’s such a monumental bell-end that Rachel even managed to call him a jerk the other day. Since Rachel’s the kind of girl who’d refuse to call the sky blue in case it offended clouds, that’s really something. Surely Mohamed can’t last much longer on Big Brother – if he isn’t evicted soon his constant gluttony will cause him to swell up until his body actually absorbs the house itself. One way or another he goes. Current Big Brother betting odds – 80/1

Sara – OK, we’re officially stunned. Of the three housemates who entered Big Brother late – Belinda, Maysoon and Sara – we were convinced that Sara wouldn’t be the last one standing. Why? Because, although it’s blindingly apparent to everyone with at least one functioning sense that everyone in the Big Brother house is stupider than remedial cheese, they’re all in fact too dim to see what a massive cocktease she really is. Sara flits from boy to boy cooing about what big arms they have as nomination day approaches and none of them have twigged why yet. Maybe we’re wrong – maybe Sara really does fancy everyone – but that’s unlikely because she’s even tried it on with Darnell, and surely her self-esteem can’t be that fucked, can it? Current Big Brother betting odds – 33/1

Rex - Thank Christ Nicole has been evicted from Big Brother – watching her and Rex constantly bicker with each other was like watching an especially harrowing amateur dramatic performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf starring nothing but utter utter wanktards. Still, now that Rex doesn’t have to worry about his girlfriend any more, he can get back to doing what he does best in the Big Brother house – being the world’s gingerest bastard. But maybe the fact that he has a girlfriend who’s obviously a massive twonk will work in Rex’s favour. It probably won’t, though, since Rex is such a titmonkey. Current Big Brother betting odds – 12/1

Kat – Look, it’s been a while since this particular writer has done any Big Brother stuff, but we’re sure that Kat was popular last time we looked. Apparently not, though – she’s now only fifth favourite to win. For the love of God, are you seriously telling us that a one-dimensional little fat woman with a funny accent who only talks about biscuits can get boring? We’ll be blown. Or perhaps we’re wrong. Perhaps Kat did something awful when we weren’t looking. But what could be awful enough to be considered less popular than Lisa? There’s only one thing – Kat must’ve raped a vicar. It’s literally the only option. Literally. Urgh. Current Big Brother betting odds – 8/1

Tomorrow – Big Brother betting odds for Lisa, Darnell, Rachel and Mikey. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

The worst thing an evicted Big Brother housemate can do is quickly realise why the public voted them out and alter their personality accordingly.

That’s no fun. That’s not what we want at all. So thank heavens for Mario, who was evicted from Big Brother on Friday and steadfastly refused to understand that people dislike him for being a hopeless David Brent clone with zero self-awareness about what a prick he is. Mario, you truly are a hero. Don’t go changing. OK, maybe change a bit…

With Mario gone, who’ll win Big Brother? Here are the Big Brother betting odds to win for Belinda, Mohamed, Maysoon, Sara and Rebecca, with help from Paddy Power…

Belinda – We don’t think Belinda should be evicted from Big Brother, you know. We think someone should build a cannon, stuff Belinda into it, fire her into space and splatter her against the surface of the moon. Because if that’s what it takes to stop her from walking around the Big Brother house going “BYA ZJAH DWOO WHEY SCHWOO” like a sunshine-warped vinyl copy of It Ain’t Necessarily So recorded by a serial killer on death row as his last request, then so be it. But Belinda doesn’t just relentlessly scat – no, there’s much more to her than that. She also only wears black and white to show solidarity to, um, black and white people – cruelly ignoring the browns and the yellows, the bitch – and she snores. Oh, she snores. That’s why everyone will nominate her this week. But please, let’s keep Belinda in for a few more weeks. There’ll be more fights that way. Current Big Brother betting odds – 100/1

Mohamed – For a second a few weeks ago you thought Mohamed was getting exciting, didn’t you? When he inadvertently kickstarted the biggest fight of Big Brother so far and then cried so intensely that you thought he had all kinds of hidden depths to him? Well, you’re wrong. Mohamed has gone back to doing nothing. Literally nothing. He isn’t even eating to excess any more. He isn’t even liked or disliked any more – Mohamed is just there, like dust or that mole you’re thinking about getting removed in case it goes bad. Pfff. Current Big Brother betting odds – 66/1

Maysoon – Where Mohamed needs a personality because he’s essentially just an incredibly mediocre person, Maysoon doesn’t need anything of the sort. Prior to entering the Big Brother house, Maysoon was a model, you see. And, as we all know, models don’t need to have personalities because they look quite nice. That’s why Maysoon vanished into the background from the instant she stepped foot into the Big Brother house – because she doesn’t do anything, apart from glumly smoke all the time. The other Big Brother housemates have said that they admire Maysoon’s self-assurance, but it isn’t self-assurance at all. Maysoon only radiates quiet calm because mentally she’s constantly trying to work out how to spell the word ‘cat’. Current Big Brother betting odds – 66/1

Sara – No no no. There are currently three Big Brother housemates statistically less likely to win Big Brother than Sara. That’s all wrong – Sara should absolutely be the least likely to win. By a mile. By a million miles. It’s her voice. Her voice and her mouth and her brain. Every time we see Sara breathing in to start talking, a little part of us dies. That’s because we know that what’s bound to follow is going to be the most staggering inane, self regarding tosh that a human is capable of saying, delivered in a violently loud whiny monotone. That always goes up at the end. Please evict Sara, someone. Please. Evict her or wire her jaws shut. One or the other. We’re being serious. Current Big Brother betting odds – 40/1

Rebecca – Of all the eviction-surviving strategies we’ve ever seen on Big Brother, Rebecca drunkenly deciding to chew the face off the house’s resident scrawny geek Luke is perhaps the weirdest. Weirder still, it worked. Lulled in by the promise of a new romance to coo over, the short-sighted Big Brother viewers decided to keep Rebecca in. But that’s such a mistake it isn’t funny. Remember that cover of Heat magazine from last year of Ziggy and Chanelle posing naked together? Imagine a repeat of that featuring Luke and Rebecca. Imagine it. Really imagine hard. That nausea you’re currently feeling? That’s a sign for you to evict Rebecca from Big Brother at the next opportunity. Current Big Brother betting odds – 40/1

Tomorrow: Big Brother betting odds for Stuart, Rex, Lisa, Rachel and Mikey. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

Tonight, one more Big Brother housemate will be torn out of their comfortable environment and exposed to a world that now strongly dislikes them.

And for the first time this season, the Big Brother eviction is a two-horse race. Previously the likes of Sylvia and Jennifer have been so overwhelmingly unpopular that their eviction has been inevitable. But tonight? Nobody knows – both Rebecca and Mario stand an equal chance of being evicted. For once, both nominated housemates are equally knobbish.

So who’ll be evicted tonight? Here are the Big Brother betting odds for Mario, with help from Paddy Power…

Mario – Mario won’t be evicted from the Big Brother house tonight. He won’t. He’s got a fanclub, for christ’s sake. He’s been on the Ant and Dec. He’s been a magistrate. At least we think he said he’s been a magistrate – to be honest we only catch about a fifth of what Mario actually says. The rest of the time we’re crawling around in front of the TV on our knees with our hands clamped over our ears screaming “Stop! Stop talking you unbearable berk!” Anyway, Mario is the favourite to be evicted from Big Brother tonight, and rightly so, since the man’s face alone is so overwhelmingly offensive that we’d like to cut it off and throw it in the river. What’ll the Big Brother house be like without an awful Jabba The Hutt clone plonked on a bed spouting ridiculous self-righteous gossip about everyone? There’s only one way to find out. Current Big Brother betting odds – 1/3

Next week: More Big Brother betting odds to win again. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

As we’ve often said, the best way to judge a Big Brother housemate is to see how they react when they get nominated for eviction.

Take Mario and Rebecca, for example. They’re the Big Brother housemates nominated this week, and they both responded to the news in very different ways – Rebecca immediately thought back to all the bad things she’d done and assumed that she’d be evicted, while Mario passive-aggressively rounded on everyone. The moral of this story, we think, is that Mario is an arsehole.

So who goes tomorrow? Here are the Big Brother betting odds for Rebecca, with help from Paddy Power…

Rebecca – If you ever wanted concrete proof of how much of an arsehole Mario is, it’s this – Rebecca isn’t the favourite to be evicted from Big Brother this week. That’s insane. Ever since the old Big Brother flare-up about Jennifer‘s cack-handed picture of Stuart, Rebecca has been on some sort of berserko terrorstomp that’s involved screeching insults into everyone’s faces, whispering insults at them behind their back, breaking anything she gets within smashing distance of and – most recently, and perhaps most disturbingly – grabbing at Luke‘s cock. Perhaps that’s the real reason why Rebecca’s no longer the favourite to be evicted from Big Brother tomorrow night, her burgeoning romance with Luke. No, no, what are we saying? It’s because Mario’s an arsehole. It’s definitely because Mario’s an arsehole. Current Big Brother betting odds – 2/1

Tomorrow: Big Brother betting odds for Mario‘s eviction. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

On Friday, Big Brother will either lose an odd-faced self-important shrieker with gigantic boobs, or Rebecca.

That’s because Mario is also up for eviction. Ha! Do you see what we did there? We are clever. But anyway, yes, it’s been announced that Mario and Rebecca have been nominated for Big Brother eviction, and for once we’re torn about who we want to go. Oh, can’t we just humanely gas them both?

We’ll come to the Big Brother eviction odds tomorrow, but for now we’d better finish up our weekly look at the Big Brother betting odds to win for Mikey, Rex, Luke, Darnell and Kat, with help from Paddy Power…

Mikey – As a blind man, Mikey naturally has several major advantages over his fellow Big Brother housemates. For starters he never has to see the disgusting spectacle of Lisa and Mario kissing each other with tongues, and also his disability is bound to garner lots of sympathy from the Big Brother viewers. Except it’s not – although Mikey was the early favourite to win Big Brother, now his chances are sinking faster than ever. Mikey seems to recognise this himself, which is why he’s started to do bizarre stunts like shaving his eyebrows off for no reason whatsoever in the hope that people will notice him. One advantage that Mikey does have, however, is that all the housemates are scared shitless of nominating him in case it makes them look like anti-blind bastards. Which they probably are, deep down. The bastards. Current Big Brother betting odds – 14/1

Rex – Look at that again. Rex is one of the favourites to win Big Brother. Arrogant, loaded, reality-deprived Rex. There must be some kind of mistake here. Sure, Rex survived a Big Brother eviction on Friday, but that’s not because he’s popular and charismatic – it’s because he’s not Jennifer. Robert Mugabe would have survived an eviction against Jennifer, for christ’s sake. However, you have to appreciate the irony – Rex seems so desperate to go home that he almost started crying when he wasn’t evicted last week, and the more depressed and frustrated he gets, the more people decide that he might win. Let’s hope that Rex has some kind of violent psychotic meltdown pretty soon, then – he’ll have the show in the bag. Current Big Brother betting odds – 10/1

Luke – How Luke manages to stay in the Big Brother betting odds top three is absolutely beyond us – the poor boy genuinely can’t do a thing right. Politically he’s aligning himself against Rex, Kat and Rachel – the three Big Brother housemates who are popular because they’ve got quite a lot of common sense – and romantically he’s sidling up to Rebecca. Rebecca! It’s just bizarre that someone who bitches and whines so often can still stand a chance of winning Big Brother. Maybe it’s his voice that everyone likes – Luke talks like a permanently startled character in a children’s novel, and they’ve historically always done very well in Big Brother. Current Big Brother betting odds – 15/2

Darnell – For a brief period of time last week Darnell was actually the favourite to win Big Brother. It’s no surprise, really – he’s consistently stood up for the little guy in a number of incidents, seems to have people’s best interests at heart for the most part and is just about disabled enough for it to be endearing. But Darnell needs to look out – lately he’s started to get a bit paranoid about power structures in the house and how well he might be doing with the viewers. Darnell’s easily excited, too, so there’s a very strong possibility that he might start unspooling all over the place in the next couple of weeks. Fingers crossed, anyway. Current Big Brother betting odds – 15/8

Kat – But however popular Darnell is, he’ll have a tough job trying to usurp Kat from her position at the top of the Big Brother betting odds. Her kooky, grinning, rainbow-coloured, cookie-fixated shtick is never going to get old, unless you’re one of the growing swathe of Big Brother housemates who she’s starting to infuriate, of course. Anyway, Kat’s no fool and she knows that she’s going to have to subvert the form a little to maintain her popularity – which is why, for a brief period last week, Kat decided to become a kooky, grinning, rainbow-coloured, cookie-fixated gonk with rubbish hair extensions. Genius. Current Big Brother betting odds – 7/4

Tomorrow – Big Brother betting odds for Friday’s eviction! But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

Time for another look at Big Brother – the show that not even hoax bombers can stop, more’s the pity.

But aside from amateurish attempts to blow everyone up, what’s been going on in the Big Brother house lately? Not a lot, to be honest. There’s been a lot of talk of energy and spiritualism and out of body experiences, which has made Big Brother seem a lot like one of those crappy hippy shops that sells crystals and beads and rubbishy African frogs carved from driftwood. In short, it’s terrible. And now they’ve put an Australian in, which is hardly bloody helping things, is it?

But who’s going to win Big Brother? Here are the Big Brother betting odds for Dale, Sara, Belinda, Mario and Rachel, with help from Paddy Power…

Dale – Poor old Dale. He may have initially wanted to ‘nail’ all the ‘fanny’ in the Big Brother house at the start of the series, but now he’s proved himself to be a big soppy puppydog. Jennifer, the married single mother love of his life, is no longer in the Big Brother house, and all Dale can do is mope about forlornly all the time. Or can he? The arrival of the three new Big Brother girls obviously threw Dale into a spiral of internal confusion, as his primitive fanny-nailing id wrestled with his lovey-dovey Jen-worshiping superego so hard that we thought for a moment that Dale was about to have a stroke. It’ll be interesting to see at which point Dale cracks and leaps on one of the new girls – chances are it’ll be hours rather than days. Current Big Brother betting odds – 25/1

Sara – Sara is the Big Brother contestant who looks like Angelina Jolie. A bit. If you squint. In the dark. And so far that seems to be her sole personality trait. Honestly, if it wasn’t for her vague resemblance to a famous actress, then Sara would be more vapour cloud than person. Up until now, Sarah’s most interesting story has been about her middle name, which she’s embarrassed about because it’s so horrible. It’s Lorraine, by the way. Which isn’t especially horrible. Fingers crossed that Sara does something interesting soon, because if we’re being forced to listen to her horrific voice bleat on incessantly about nothing at all for no reason then we’re going to lose our temper quicksmart. Current Big Brother betting odds – 25/1

Belinda – Rounding out the three new Big Brother housemates is Belinda, who differs from the other two because she’s not especially pretty and she has a personality. Oh boy, does she have a personality. Basically a walking pair of jazz hands, Belinda’s vocabulary consists of nothing but the lyrics to every piece of musical theatre of the last 100 years and her own name repeated very quickly several times in a row. She’ll either turn out to be wonderfully endearing or a supreme irritant, but in her entrance piece it was revealed that Belinda once spent two years in a wheelchair. That makes her the John Locke of Big Brother, doesn’t it? Maybe that means she’ll end up throwing a knife into Mario‘s back one night. We can but hope. Current Big Brother betting odds – 25/1

Mario – Mario’s inexplicable rise to the top of the Big Brother betting odds continues apace, and we’re terrified. It just defies all logic – even if the Mario appreciation is ironic, which we suspect it is, Mario doesn’t possess anything like the self-awareness needed to understand that. He even brags about his fan club, which we suspect is comprised of two old ladies who started it out of pity because they saw Mario’s face and assumed that Sylvester Stallone‘s face had been attacked by a swarm of jellyfish. Anyway, it’s been business as usual for Mario lately – he’s whined about more or less everyone in the house, spoken condescendingly to more or less everyone in the house and somehow managed to improve his Big Brother betting odds. You people are weird. Current Big Brother betting odds – 25/1

Rachel – Rachel’s had us on the edge of our seats this week – we’ve been anticipating the moment when she’ll finally do something that’s even slightly interesting. She’s still keeping us waiting, the big tease. It’s been a month now – any longer and we’ll have to start assuming that Rachel is just a hopelessly dull human being. Actually, that’s a lie – Rachel does have a handy purpose in the house. She’s the subject of more bafflingly spiteful bitching than anyone else. Although she’s essentially a good-natured girl trying to promote a harmonious atmosphere, Mario, Lisa, Luke and Rebecca just can’t stop giving her verbal thrashings behind her back every day. One day we hope that Rachel manages to show us why she’s so disliked. Or anything. Anything at all would be nice. Current Big Brother betting odds – 20/1

Tomorrow: Big Brother betting odds for Mikey, Rex, Luke, Darnell and Kat. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

This is our fourth year of covering Big Brother, and we’ve come to discover that Big Brother always hits its stride a month in.

And this year is a textbook example of that. Why? Because it usually takes a month to realise that everyone in the Big Brother house is a hugely disagreeable pooflap of the highest order.

Look at what’s going on now, for example. Darnell doesn’t like Rebecca; Rebecca doesn’t like Rachel and Kat; Jennifer doesn’t like Mohamed, Dale doesn’t like Mohamed, Dale doesn’t like Stuart, nobody at all likes Mario. And long may it continue, we say. Until they’re all dead, if that’s possible.

But someone has to win Big Brother, so who’s it going to be? Here are the Big Brother betting odds to win for Rex, Mario, Mohamed and Rebecca, with help from Paddy Power…

Rex – If ever there was an unlikely underdog, it’s Rex. He’s preposterously arrogant, employs servants at his house and owns a watch more expensive than any house you’ve ever lived in. By rights we should be calling for Rex to be strung up by his ankles and beaten. But for the simple fact that he’s getting utterly bullied by the rest of the Big Brother house – either by them voting to keep him in prison for longer than necessary, or by being ignored during the OK Go task, or by the way everyone violently ganged up on him when he barely smudged Jennifer’s piss-poor drawing last week – suddenly we find ourselves rooting for him. This’ll pass soon, obviously – not only because it’s hard for us to like someone so obnoxious for very long, but also because the rest of the Big Brother housemates are going to nominate him time and time and time again until he’s evicted. Current Big Brother betting odds – 25/1

Mario – But worse, far far far worse, than us involuntarily starting to like Rex is the thought that people might not be finding Mario as deeply disagreeable as they should. And, somewhat terrifyingly, it looks like that’s starting to happen. And, yes, it’s true that he was one of the few Big Brother housemates to stand up for Mohamed in the heat of his argument with everyone else, and that he’s starting to develop a clear sense of right and wrong, but come on! It’s still Mario! The same old Mario who struts around in his pants and sees himself as the defacto leader of the Big Brother house, even though he’s essentially a middle-aged bonehead with an opinion of himself that bears no relationship to his actual personality at all. Let’s not forget that, OK? Current Big Brother betting odds – 25/1

Mohamed – It’s clear that Mohamed doesn’t stand a hope in hell of winning Big Brother. Like Rex, all the other housemates are going to nominate him time and time again until he’s forced out of the Big Brother house – and perhaps that’s for the best. It’s becoming clear that Mohamed has alarmingly thin skin, you see, As well as his disturbing breakdown after being spat at by Dennis, Mohamed has also burst into uncontrollable sobbing fits in the Big Brother prison because he doesn’t think anyone likes him. That’s not anyone in the Big Brother house, you understand – he was talking about everyone in the whole world. Mohamed seems to be a little bit psychologically vulnerable, so maybe getting him out of the public eye would be a blessing. Current Big Brother betting odds – 16/1

Rebecca – The best proof that the atmosphere in the Big Brother house is sending everyone doolally isn’t all the fighting and spitting and removals, though. No, the best proof that everyone’s going crazy is that people are starting to fancy Rebecca. That’s terrifying and there should be some sort of medical intervention before things get really out of hand. Darnell’s had a crack at her, Luke‘s making a number of sly advances for her… don’t these people know that token Big Brother fat girl never has a romantic interest? Weren’t they paying attention? By the way, we don’t think that it’s weird that people like Rebecca even though she’s fat. We think it’s weird because Rebecca looks like a fat version of Joss Stone. Current Big Brother betting odds – 16/1

Tomorrow – Big Brother betting odds for Rachel, Mikey, Luke, Darnell and Kat. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

19 days in the Big Brother house and what’s happened so far? God knows, frankly, but at least we’ve got a lovely suntan.

Oh, we’re just kidding – thanks to the delight of catch-up on demand TV we’re all up to date on the Big Brother shenanigans. There was a mouthy woman who got kicked out, a smug orange man who got put in as her replacement and literally nothing else. Simple. But it’s the start of a new week, and that means it’s time for a fresh new batch of Big Brother betting odds.

So who’ll win Big Brother? Here are the Big Brother betting odds for Dennis, Lisa, Sylvia, Mario and Jennifer, with help from Paddy Power …

Dennis – Now this is just a hunch, so don’t quote us on this, but we get the feeling that Dennis might actually be gay. Call us crazy, but for all his steel-jawed masculine silence and almost visible reek of testosterone, we think he’s hiding his true sexuality from us. Anyway, Big Brother usually favours homosexuals – the pink vote traditionally has a huge say in who wins each series – but right now Dennis is the most unpopular Big Brother housemate around. Why? Imagine sitting in a room with him while he belts out Total Eclipse Of The Heart over and over again in his creepily sincere way, interspersing it with weird American-accented spoken-word interludes. How long before you beat him to death with one of his own shoes? That’s right, four seconds. Case closed. Current Big Brother betting odds – 100/1

Lisa – From what we’ve been able to gather, Big Brother has so far been a near-constant parade of clips of that dreadful Alex women starting fights with various inanimate objects, leaving little time for anyone else to get a look-in. So why, then, has Lisa got such horrific Big Brother betting odds at the moment? Well, it might be because she looks like a man, or that she seems fairly happy to let her boyfriend squeeze her spots in front of everyone. Mainly, though, we think that Lisa is getting such short shrift in the Big Brother betting odds because the longer she stays, the more likely it is that she’ll have sex. With Mario. On camera. And the day that happens is the day that our eyes instinctively burst into flames to protect our mind. Current Big Brother betting odds – 100/1

Sylvia – It’s never a good sign when it takes you five minutes of staring blankly into space trying to work out who a Big Brother housemate actually is, but that seems to be everyone’s most common reaction when they hear the name Sylvia. Aside from an early screaming argument with a blind man who happened to be wearing her knickers, Sylvia hasn’t really asserted herself at all in the Big Brother house. Perhaps she’s playing the old ‘play it quiet and end up coming fifth’ game, but it’s certainly no way to win Big Brother. Or maybe she’s got another gameplan up her sleeve. Let’s hope so, because anything that stops her bleating on about the traumatic civil war that forced her out of her own country can only be a good thing, eh? Eh? Current Big Brother betting odds – 80/1

Mario – He might looks like a kebab-meat sculpture of Sylvester Stallone, but Mario is undoubtedly a good person. That’s unquestionably true, because of the way he looks after Mikey. After all, everyone knows that the best way to care for the blind is to constantly patronise them while never letting them forget their own disability, and that’s precisely what Mario’s been doing. Easily one of the most cluelessly narcissistic fartwipes in Big Brother history, Mario’s mission to make sure everyone sees him as a friendly, intrinsically wise scallywag has failed with everyone in the Big Brother house, everyone who watches Big Brother and everyone else on the face of the Earth living or dead. But he still thinks he’s doing OK, so that’s something. Current Big Brother betting odds – 80/1

Jennifer – Things we hate about Big Brother, numbers 44 and 45: when a Big Brother housemate makes an incendiary intro tape and then piffs away into vapour as soon as they enter the house, and when people are so desperate for 30 seconds of recognition that they’ll ditch their own kids to go on Big Brother. Sadly Jennifer is guilty of both of these – on her way into the house, Jennifer came off as a mental right-wing anti-immigrant crackpot but then, faced with some actual immigrants, Jennifer retreated into a cycle of meek household chores and going all moony over Dale at the drop of a hat. Hey, look Jennifer’s 22-month-old daughter – Mummy’s about to kiss a thick stranger with tongues! Yay! Current Big Brother betting odds – 40/1

Tomorrow – Big Brother betting odds for Mohamed, Dale, Rex, Stuart and Rebecca. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds.

Relax, the vile Alex has left the building. She’s gone and better off forgotten, to be honest.

She had been favourite with Paddy Power to go first this Friday, but now there will be no vote eviction at all. But there is a downside to that…

Alex being hauled out for being continually offensive to her fellow housemates means the fake Italian slimeball Mario (really called Shaun) looks safe for another week.

But, hang on, there is hope. Paddy Power are offering odds of 5/4 that Mario is the next to go. And that’s a day I really can’t wait for.

Elsewhere in the house, I’m intrigued by the flowering relationship between Becky and Luke. These two are as mis-matched as a pair could possibly be. But are my eyes deceiving me? Does top-heavy Becky have a bit of a crush on the skinny northerner?

Other housemates are beginning to notice it, too. Oh how cute. It’s like a primary school crush. “Mummy, me and Luke are going to get married one day.”

“Are you Becky, that’s nice dear? Now eat up your cheerios, darling. It’s almost time for school.”

Luke (11-4) is currently second favourite with Paddy Power to win the show, while Becky is sitting rather comfortably at 16-1. If they hook up their status might well rise further and finally that annoying Kat might be knocked off the top spot.

But there is someone else making a stealthy case for outright winner. And that’s Rex, the 24-year-old chef. At 18-1, he has many friends in the house and is unlikely to face eviction until the final weeks of the show.

However, Rex might need some geography lessons when he gets out of there. I did enjoy his remark about the housemates maybe getting Chinese takeaway on hearing the song Turning Japanese… And from a chef, too!

So, two down and 11 weeks to go. Oh, don’t you just love it. Well done BB for getting rid of Evil Edna. Now let’s see everyone else flourish…

By Richard Hughes