Losing Thumbs And Reality Of Reality

I am in love with chimps...a statement that I never thought I would make at a youthful 26, but I wish I was a primate.

I'm not fussy, chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utans, Baboon and I wouldn't say no to a Tamarind. Small, cute and not to dissimilar to the monkey in Friends. A return, to the earliest human form.

I didn't think I would ever want to change my life. I've never been one for an identity crisis, burning my records, shredding my clothes or shopping at militia stores. No. I'm quite a happy chappy. I like all things human, all things male. I like football, alcohol, music, 80s rock, books about football and the summer. I didn't think I was much different to anyone else, apart from I'm not as laddish as some of my peers. I would settle more for a meal in with my friends than stalk round theme pubs in a range of pastel shirts. I suppose I am happy go lucky, Mr nice, Dan the nice bloke. But then it happens, the summer starts. Out comes the sun and the beginning of June, and its starts, the new yearly event, an event that is slowly becoming a bigger annual event than Christmas, big enough to over shadow lent, knocking out Ede and Diwali on the way. Santa who? 

"You are live on channel four please do not swear?"
Does that count for me or just for the twelve fuckwits I'm about to dedicate three months of my life to watching exist? I feel sick in the pit of my stomach that after the last four series I would put my self through it. The first time it was fun, second seemed better, third naughty fourth repulsive and now I face my fifth. Like a heroin addict spending a successful year on methadone and self help programme. I'm back on the brown and feel sick that I'm this weak. After all this time, shouldn't I have learnt by now?

Obviously not. My Friday was huddled on the settee, pizza and beer in hand, like a ritual.  I'm at it again. Shit!!

Its starts with Davina, welcoming all of the twelve new bloods into the over decorated show home. Ergonomic and stylish in design and probably a house that I pay more attention to than my own. One by one I watch them enter the house. I look at each one, cross examining them before they have uttered a single word. I have chosen the winner and selected the loser and the order they will leave. I have created the next day's headlines and written the acceptance speech. I know it all because I've seen it all before... too many times.

As they wave farewell to their loved ones, family and friends, I'm sure they are saying hello to me: "Hi Dan," I hear them whisper as they enter the arena of punters and press. "Are you ready? I've been looking forward to meeting you, I've heard all about you, Dan Edwards the BB super fan."

I turn the volume up and ask my girlfriend if she can hear them, of course she can't she doesn't know them like I do. My relationship with twelve strangers is starting to blossom. After a few days I will be talking about my new found friends, more than I would speak to anyone about my parents, what I did at the weekend, the new book I have read, the state of Iraq and in fact, me, in general.

Like a well timed publicity campaign to push aside the wrong-doings of the government. Big brother comes to rescue us from the art of conversation and talking about what matters. A respite for the senses, a pit stop for culture.

 "Ah Big brother you have saved us". A bit like Spiderman, but without the web and the costume of course, still nevertheless the superhero. I contemplate switching off, I contemplate switching off, and I contemplate switching off. But the programme ends before I do.  

The next day I leave it, I can't understand that I put myself through it again, I'd had a drink, my senses were down, I didn't know it was on, it just happened, please believe me. I end up catching brief clippings on cable channels, I flick through the internet and accidentally stumble on the website, someone must have been using my computer and saved it to my favourites. I sit reading the updates and realise the days going, I stop and after reading the newspapers, ceefax, teletext, BBC and ringing the premium rate update number. I feel that I have done well. Like after giving up twenty a day and pretending those nineteen cigarettes is celebration enough to have that cigar, well at least I didn't have twenty one. I'll give up tomorrow. Michelle's shagging Stuart.
 
The next day I try avoidance tactics. Distraction could work; I go into the garden and sit. The suns out I should be enjoying my precious time off in the sun. I can't though. My head is full of questions, wondering what they are doing. The only thing is, I couldn't care less... I hope I haven't painted a picture of Respect and Love, Oh no, I can't stand my new friends I hate them. I could understand if I found them funny or amusing, likeable and charming. No. These twelve people resemble everything in the world that is wrong. The image of desperation and desire to be better than anyone else, ok nothing wrong with competition, we've all done it and all thought it. But this is worse. The belief that this show will change them for the better. Sorry guys you got on the wrong bus.

I can understand the first twelve contestants, when the Big brother bubble rolled in town that was accidentally. I'm sure Craig didn't realise that him and his other bedfellows would create such a stir when released, but after that day the big brother doors closed for its first year. The premise and contestants motives changed. This show wasn't the post modern social experiment that it was originally sold to us as, but a circus of desperate wannabes, selected because they were a little bit quirky, hot headed, sexual mysterious, politically incorrect, gay, straight, bisexual, promiscuous, jade and all together a bit fucked and disillusioned by what this show was about. Big Brother doesn't create glamour and future Liz Hurley's, if those two words can be used in the same sentence. No. The most you'll get is a weekly spot on a low rated DIY show or a photo shoot for a Lads Mag. It's the truth ask Craig. Did none of the contestants do any research to their predecessor's shelf life or where they to busy to care, practising their pouting and photo shoot stances?

The only thing that I can't understand is why I'm so interested and feel so much hate when I tune in. I'm better than them, all of them. He's a show off, she's a twat and look at her I wouldn't touch her with yours. And I'm not alone, the nation feels the same don't they? But here I am spending time off in the first days of summer sun wondering who is getting off with who and how we; my new found friends, get on with the daily task.

I need time away from my home, time away from the TV and any other on hand media. I've tried cold turkey but my self control is too weak, I've fucked that option right up when I switched the TV on, the first hit is always the one to get you off the wagon. I've even tried other reality shows, Hells kitchen just doesn't cut it, I admire Gordon Ramsey and at least the contestants have or had some self esteem and a reason for being on the show, for the only exception of Abi Titmuss, who, as far as I'm aware is famous for going out with John Leslie. Hardly, anything to be celebrated. This isn't reality TV this is z minus 4 celebrities in a game show. Like a loyal slave to my mistress, I have eyes for only one. And it's not based at Claridges. I think I'm going to cry. 

I get in my car and decide that a trip out is the only answer to escape and clear my head. 

Twycross zoo is not far from where I live and it's a place that I haven't been since I was a child. We weren't surrounded by these kinds of programmes when I was young, I don't want to sound like a war veteran, but TV was simpler and far less stressful. I can't remember getting this excitable over TJ Hooker or it's a Knockout. Ok I did get quite gee'd up over one particular episode of the A-team, but never, never did I feel I needed to leave the house to escape the lure of the screen. Perhaps it's just me getting older; but I don't think it is.

There is a queue at the zoo; after all it is Bank holiday Monday. One great fact about Twycross zoo, not only is it a place where after walking around you don't feel you want to return at the dead of night and free all the inhabitants, but it's the home of the chimps used in the PG tips ad. After walking around I find a small patch of lawn and sit down, open my tube of pork and pickle pork pies and watch my fellow zoo enthusiasts.  I feel in someway a little disappointed that the café wasn't run by the chimps from the advert; there wasn't a question and answer session with them in the small exhibition hall. A small tea bag signing hour just left of the reptile house and behind the tropical aviary. Nothing, yesterday's tea leaf loving monkeys are today's' nobody apes. I wonder if they have chance to see the PG tips ad and how they feel to be replaced by four rather large mutated plastic birds, or whether they just simply find it too hard and just stopped drinking tea and started on frappe latte. I can't help them, I wish I could but I can't. As I sit and watch the rest of Joe public stare at the animals I look again and again, and realise how disgusted I am with my fellow visitors.

Now I'm not the most good looking chap, and yes I have fallen off the diet wagon once or twice, But I try to take pride in my appearance and know when I'm one bag of crisps over the eight and when what needs sucking in gets sucked in .

I'm scared when I see mums younger than me pushing their new born with a cigarette dangling out of their mouths and over young chardonnays, Jordan's, Kylies and callums. This isn't a class thing. This is national; this is Mr and Miss Average. I'm more out of place here, than a penguin with no wings. Men walking around with bottles of beer, staggering and sneering at the animals. To my disgust I hear one young dad shout at an owl "wake up you fucker I've paid to see you ". Oh no please, was this some kind of Dom Jolly antic starting before my eyes, or am I really seeing this. I walk away and continue my jaunt. One of my few pet hates, and yes I only have a few. We live in a country of temperamental climate, we are a country that doesn't bask in heat, we wear jumpers a lot and we can put our hand on a pair of water proof trousers before you can say "spitting", But please men of this land hear my plea when the sun comes out, please leave your shirt on unless and only unless you are on a beach, in your garden or in a swimming pool. You may say that I'm over reacting, we don't get much sun, and we need to make the most of it. But the reason behind my rant is you look fucking stupid and your body is pasty white and flabby, you are not Brad Pitt in fight club, nor Patrick Swazi in dirty dancing, Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Burt Lancaster in the swimmer, no, you are more likely to resemble a nude Steve Davies. There I've said it. No more.

I wander over to the chimp house. The Perspex screen is smeared in bank holiday hand prints. As I look and watch the chimps, I feel relaxed. I find my cure. As I watched their hairy hands throw balls and banana skins around their chimp like bedroom. A smile comes across my face. One of the chimps comes up to the screen and catches my eye, we make contact, only visual but contact. We are only one strand of DNA apart. I wonder who's better off.  Maybe he has problems, he's bound to. Does he wonder when his next car tax due date is, why his mobile phone company has charged him for 10 extra text messages when he believed that using voice mail retrieval was integral to his integrated free minutes, why the bin men have refused to take the pile of mail order catalogue when only last week they took a pile of summer sun brochures. No I think not.

I get in my car and go. As I leave the car park I pass the zoo shop and pass a sea of England shirts under a cloud of blue smoke. I refuse to listen to the radio. When I get home I notice something strange.  I walk past the TV, bypass the papers and straight to my laptop. I've done it. I don't feel the urge to watch. Have I conquered my addiction, have I made it through my dark days? Have I beaten it? Yes I have. I realise that I don't need that show to watch misfits; these aren't misfits or odd bods, their just normal folk. What I thought was a clever marketing and viewer boosting stratergy is just twelve everyday normal Joes. At this point I decide that I will have a cup of tea in celebration of my new chimp mates, when realising I have no tea bags I decide to have coffee and join them in their silent protest.

So now I return to my statement. I wish I was chimp, I do! Get me out of this giant reality TV show I have created for myself, my reality show is real its blooming life itself. So there, if god is watching and, infact if he does exist. A chimp, gorilla or orang-utan, I don't care just do it. Remove the thumbs and let's get primate. I've had enough of my fellow man, I can't stomach anymore. Just do it. But if you could do after eviction night, that would be great...