TV REVIEW: The early signs were promising. When Big Brother announced its line-up of housemates for its fourth series on Channel Four we were told that one of the contestants was a woman who was about to divorce her football star husband. Potentially delicious.
Big Brother Channel Four, all week
The Trouble with Sleep BBC1, Tuesday
How to be a Prince BBC1 Wednesday
Eastenders RTÉ1, BBC1, Monday, Tuesday
If she was angry enough and drank enough cider on the show, think of the dressing room secrets she'd reveal.
It got better. When we heard that one of the line-up was a woman by the name of Tania do Nascimento, celebratory fireworks went off in the homes of your average Big Brother/football-loving fan. Tania, surely, must be the ex-wife of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, aka Pelé? Tremendous.
But then we learnt the football "star" in question was, in fact, Stacy Coldicott of Grimsby Town, who is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Steph, his ex, for custody of their mongrel, Ronnie. No offence, of course, to Ronnie or Grimsby Town, whose supporters have "you smell of fish and you know you do" sung at them every week, but it wasn't quite the level of glamour Big Brother viewers had been hoping for.
And, since series four began, it seems quite a few viewers haven't been getting what they were hoping for, including the Sun, whose prize of £50,000 for the first heterosexual couple to, you know, remains unclaimed. It's been just like watching Grimsby Town, in fact, rather than Brazil.
By Channel Four standards, certainly for their 10 p.m. slot, the ratings are still good, but in the past fortnight they've been down one million on last year's figures and the eviction votes cast by the public down 40 per cent. This means considerably less income for the channel and the programme producers, increasing the chance that this is the last time some of us will spend the summer watching people brush their teeth and eat porridge and brush their teeth again, live and uninterrupted, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It may even result in some of us having to leave our homes in search of a life.
In an attempt to boost the ratings and reduce the current series' ability to cure insomnia, Channel Four set up a housemate swap, importing Ugandan Gaetano Juuko Kagwa from the African Big Brother for a few days and exporting Cameron Stout, a native of the Orkney Islands, to Africa. Fellow contestant Jon Tickle claimed that sending Cameron to Africa would do more harm to the Scottish tourist industry than foot-and-mouth. Unkind, but he might have had a point.
Tickle, who was evicted last week, was the star of the series, but we use the word loosely. While in the house he shared with us, at great length, his idea for a new toaster, one with a time delay that wouldn't complete toasting the second slice for a few seconds so that it would be the perfect buttering temperature by the time you finished buttering the first slice. The Sun was so impressed it patented the invention for him, but, generously, he declared: "I don't want to make any money, it is my gift to the world".
The toaster business, then, has probably been the highlight of the series, proving marginally more exciting than watching the contestants sleep. But The Trouble with Sleep is that it's not all that entertaining, unless you're one of the people featured in BBC1's documentary of the same name.
Martin Gillett is obsessed with computer games. "I used to come home and sit down for eight or nine hours and play my games and I'd get so engrossed I'd take them with me to bed," he said. What age is Martin? Nine? Eleven? No, he's in his 30s and is married to Gemma, who hasn't had a night's sleep since she met him because he wakes six, seven times a night and re-enacts a scene from one of his games. In his sleep.
"He'd wake me up and say 'look, look, the Russians are in the cupboard and they're shooting us'," she said. "And I woke up one night and found him at the end of the bed, on his belly, in a sniping position, aiming at something." Martin chuckled, rolled his eyes, his face saying "amn't I gas?". Evidently what Gemma needs is a good night's sleep and a number for a divorce lawyer.
The sooner the better, too. "A few years ago he turned over in his sleep, whacked me and fractured my eye socket," she said. "He said 'I'm sorry, I'll never play computer games again'." But he did. "If it was affecting our relationship I'd probably pack it in," he said, with a straight face.
Then there was Melyvn and Beryl Sharpe. Melyvn started to act out his dreams five years ago, starting with golf - he jumped out of bed one night to avoid a stray ball; his wife found him on the floor bleeding. "It's got worse since then," said Beryl, who is often woken in the night by Melvyn kicking her. "The worst time was when I was just about to score the winning goal at Wembley - and she stopped me, woke me up because I was kicking her," he complained. Beryl smiled. Almost apologetically.
Anita Hutcheson woke one night to discover her husband Stephen, who has suffered from "night terrors" all his life, trying to chuck himself out the window. In his sleep. Luckily he got caught in the curtains and Anita rescued him. Since then she hasn't had a wink of sleep and, although she wouldn't admit it, is probably cursing those curtains. If only.
If only he was Billy Windsor, a run-of-the-mill 21-year-old who could make the kind of mistakes that 21-year-olds do without the world watching. And without two-part BBC documentaries entitled How to be a Prince telling him how to be Prince William.
And historians comparing his life to that of, say, Prince Cecil (1528-1547) and telling him that he can draw valuable lessons from Prince Cecil's mistakes.
One would have thought, however, that Prince Cecil - who didn't actually exist, but we don't want to impugn the reputation of any dead princes - lived a marginally different kind of life to William and was presented with different challenges. Like cannonballs aimed at his head on the battlefield rather than, say, Hello magazine photographers.
Or has the Royal family and its life really not changed that much? Surely if William followed George IV's example and married a Catholic he wouldn't get into trouble? Would he? Hmm, maybe things haven't changed that much after all. Any way, we learnt the press in the old days was just as interested in your average prince's love-life as the current crop. "There was nothing between the Prince of Wales and Lily Langtree, not even a sheet," as one report put it. William, you have been warned.
Speaking of romance. Not since Heathcliff and Cathy eyed each other up have our hearts been so a-flutter. For months now Eastenders' devoted crew of watchers have waited for Alfie Moon and Kat Slater to get it together. Both characters, after all, deserved a little bit of happiness in their lives because the soap's script writers, as is their wont, saw to it that they were jam-packed with misery until now.
Alfie's parents died in a car crash and he spent time in jail; Kat's sister is in fact her daughter, her uncle the father. Leave it, you don't want to know. Since Alfie took over as landlord of the Queen Vic he's been staring dreamily at Kat, who's been staring dreamily at anything in trousers, except Alfie.
It was a complicated plot, not simplified by the fact that every time Alfie was about to reveal his feelings to Kat she had to go down to the cellar because they'd run out of pork scratchings.
Finally on Tuesday, Kat looked at Alfie and thought "hmm, 'e'll do". She went to her sister's and drank several bottles of wine and vodka to summon up the courage to break the good news to Alfie. Off she went. Swaying on her feet, looking like she was about to barf, Kat said it: "Alfie \ I luv \ ya", and then she kind of passed out. It mightn't have been quite how Emily Brontë would have handled the moment, but there wasn't a dry eye in the house. No doubt the scriptwriters will arrange for a meteorite to land on Alfie just as he's about to say "I do", but it was beautiful while it lasted.
Shane Hegarty is on leave
