Ok, ok, I know I'm late writing about the Big Brother final but I was winging my way to London on Friday night and had duly sky plused it for my viewing pleasure last night.
And my, was there a lot of it. 2 hours of pre-show, an hour of Dermot and Davina and then another hour of finale. Nice to see Davina in a red spangly dress for a change, but disappointingly for the finale they put her back into black, sporting a mourning suit for the ‘funeral’ with added brass band who played with inexplicable schizophrenia.
In fact, the band pretty much ruined the mood of the whole last hour. But lo, fave Brian, winner of BB2 was crowned our almighty king of reality TV as Big Brother proudly laid claim to every reality show ever made since it's beginnings in 2000 - from I'm a Celebrity to Strictly.
Did Big Brother open the doors to the Nation's curiosity in watching unknowns become knows (or indeed 'slightly knows' become 'known mostly for's)? Without the likes of Kate Lawler, Jade, Brian, Brian #2, Cameron (remember him?) or Triple J would we be as obsessed with the self-made celebrity as we are now?
What I do know is it's been a decade - the entirety of my 20s - that I've been settling down to the summer night-time tonics of oddballs getting cabin fever in Elstree. Reality has become a business - a licence to print money and keep viewers inexplicably happy for very little work the other end.
And for all the times I slagged it off and dreamed of a better life without it, I'm sure going to miss it.
