BB DAY ONE

Big Brother lumbers on to its ninth series and it's taken the full-on freak show approach. Expect the bearded lady and Siamese twins to arrive in the now-traditional "meet the new random housemates twist" in week 8. This being Big Brother both these fellas have colourful personality quirks. Blind Michael is also a knicker-wearing stand-up comedian while Albino Darnell arrives wearing socks'n'sandals and carrying a rugby ball.

We won't bore you with the whole line-up - there's a whopping 16 housemates in there for launch week - but ones to watch include:

Dale: A better looking version of last year's Liam. He arrived after delightfully informing us, "If there's any fanny in there I'll nail it."

Stephanie: Auditioned to join Girls Aloud at the age of 13 wearing an inflatable bra. As part of the first week's secret mission she must pretend she's dating Mario - a muscley twat whose real name is Sean and who has never been to Italy. This probably isn't going to go down well with Mario's real girlfriend Lisa who also entered the house and "once lied she was in Gladiators". Mario's claims to fame include an appearance on 'Britons Behind Bars', whatever the hell that is.

Dennis: A Scottish Perez Hilton lookalike. Arrived wearing a spangly top hat, pirouetting up the stairs to a well-deserved chorus of boos.

Rebecca: An amalgam of Big Brother 6's Lesley and last year's Welsh woman Laura i.e. she shouts in an impenetrable regional accent that no one can understand and pretends to be 'bubbly' but is actually a squealing idiot and will likely be out by week 3. Has asked housemates to call her 'Ecca'.

Kathreya: Nancy Lam in neon clothing. It's taken nine series for BB to source a comedy eastern-lady stereotype. She arrived carrying a barrel of biscuits, doing Astro Boy poses and immediately claimed to have a bad back in order to nab one of the plusher beds. She's no fool!

The rest of this year's lot are either refugees from war-torn lands or single mothers who have presumably swapped their babies for Westlife CDs.

Oh and there's some tedious rule about housemates having to earn tokens to spend on hot water or hair straighteners, fake tan etc. As this will have to be explained to both housemates and viewers every flippin' day don't expect this brainwave to last longer than a fortnight.

And there we are. Aren't you giddy with excitement already? Only three months of this left!

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