And so, the end is near

It's nearly over.

Seventy one days of screeching, fighting, plotting, backbiting and bizarre nudity (remember the cake bras?) are drawing to a close. This has been a fascinating series for me, mostly because of the overt game playing and the diverse set of characters thrown into the melting pot.

In retrospect there were a lot of missed opportunities. Evil Big Brother went soft after the debacle of fight night, and only really reappeared in the last two weeks when the numbers had thinned out somewhat. The bedsit idea was a great one, but sadly underused. Imagine if every evicted housemate had been sent to the bedsit for a week before coming out of the house and given the opportunity to automatically put someone up for eviction - that could have been very interesting ... :-) Playing the nominations back was a similarly good twist, but it should have happened before the final public nomination session this week. The live challenge and the reward room were also absent this year - the saturday show turned into a bit of flop.

So, out of the remaining housemates it seems that Nadia is the favourite to win. Fair play to her really - it was an incredibly gutsy thing to do. Jason has played the game well all the way through, and was lucky not to have been voted out earlier. Dan is a strange character and probably the most guarded of the remaining four - what has happened to his promise to walk out if he got to the last week? Finally, Shell - terribly nice girl is probably all you can say about her.

What now? Well, Jan is busy making a Sims Big Brother house complete with most of the housemates and special guest visitors including Emma Kennedy and Richard Herring ... I'll let you know when she gets it all working.