Aside from the twins, if there's one housemate who is largely seem as nice and without any kind of malice to them it is Olawale Mohammed Belo, known to all and sundry as Brian. A manchild who has never heard of Shakespeare and is tired of hearing about museums even when nobody mentions them, Brian craves the love of a "hot girl" despite looking much like a trendy black version of Sloth from The Goonies and having many of the mannerisms of Lennie from Of Mice and Men. My single greatest Big Brother fear is that Brian will make it with one of the Twins and accidentally crush her skull whilst clumsily stroking her hair.
Everyone love Brian, right?
Well... not me.
Firstly, let us consider Brian's continuous nomination of Gerry. Every week it's the same thing "He's always going on about Moooseaums!" Brian moans in that annoying way he does. On one level, Brian is clearly the kind of person who is not just casually stupid. He is aggressively stupid in that he takes other people being intelligent as an affront. So each time the erudite Gerry mentions something from art or history or philosophy, Brian is reminded of how little he knows and feels the need to lash out in the diary room. You'll note that he never actually explains to gerry why this makes him uncomfortable, nor does he ever try to get Gerry to stop; he simply nominates him every week without fault and without saying a word.
Another spin on this anti-intellectualism is that people who talk about art and museums are boring and Brian wants to have fun. Well, this would be fine and logical if Gerry were an intellectual in the mold of someone like John Tickle who droned on and on about SF (*ahem*) and objects from the world of physics with the letter P but Gerry's intellectualism is balanced out by the fact that whenever there's a party, Gerry is the first up and dancing and generally having fun. Just look at the Big Brother birthday task... Gerry danced more than the Twins while Ziggy did that straight man thing of not enjoying dancing unless it is an excuse to grind his nether regions against something female. So the idea that Gerry is boring and always talking about museums is frankly nonsense because he doesn't. Clearly Brian is projecting his own insecurities onto Gerry and I don't think it's fair or a particularly attractive character trait. The fact that he does it in such a two-faced manner, never letting on he has this huge issue with Gerry just makes it worse.
I think that Brian is actually uncomfortable around Gerry because Gerry is gay and Brian is a very young, not particularly bright man from Essex who probably hasn't seen very much of the world. In fact, Gerry is probably the first openly gay and quite camp gay man that Brian has ever spent time with. Gerry's life experience is so completely alien to that of Brian with his creepy talking to fictional girlfriends that Brian feels uncomfortable around him and this manifests itself as mild and probably unconscious homophobia. Well... I say unconscious but Brian has apparently been warned for using homophobic language in the house... funny how that never made it into the highlights show isn't it? Laura wasn't so lucky and Emily... well...
Secondly, let us consider Brian's confrontations with Charley. Over the last few weeks, Brian has slowly acquired a reputation for "standing up" to Charley despite and perhaps because he's the male who tries hardest to get along with her (aside from Ziggy who eerily can't seem to stand being disliked by Charley). Brian's reputation is based largely upon his attempt to calm down the epic argument between Billi and Charley. With his loud voice and imposing physical presence, Brian seemed to be one of the few housemates to stand up to the South London It Girl cum Narcissist. Indeed, last night's highlights featured Brian accusing Charley of being a self-righteous cow (big words indeed for a man who claims to have never heard of Shakespeare despite having a C in GCSE English). However, a closer examination of Brian's arguing technique reveals quite a different picture.
Consider this clip of Brian being caught making fun of Charley during the 7 Deadly Sins task. Brian tries to justify himself but when Charley is having none of it, he stalks down the garden and begins pacing... he might as well scream "Serenity Now!". Brian's usual technique does not involve actually arguing or standing up to Charley but actually shouting something insulting and then retreating to cool down. This is not so much standing up to Charley as it is sniping ineffectually from the sidelines, especially as 10 minutes later Brian will be being nice and friendly to Charley again.
In fact, if you look at the raw footage of the Clown Argument here, here and here you'll see that this is exactly what Brian does. The group discuss Emily and Brian points out that he wouldn't want to live with someone that uses the "N" word. Charley responds by pointing out that this wasn't just an example of racism, it was something a bit more complicated than that and Emily was actually quite nice so Brian shouldn't jump to any conclusions about her. However, Brian is having none of it... he works himself up and up and up, bellows and insult and then retreats, in the process making Charley look like the reasonable and level headed person (this all happens in the second of the three clips by the way). In truth, as the highlight show suggested, the real problem was that Charley was happy to throw down and humiliate Brian despite Brian thinking Charley was his friend. Because no real friends ever disagree with each other, right? In truth, Brian's growing rep for standing up to Charley is entirely undeserved, he's a passive aggressive with anger management issues and the emotional maturity of an eight year old. When smouldering tinderbox Charley can keep her head in an argument longer than you can then you're in trouble. When Charley is the voice of tolerance and foregiveness then you're out of your depth and Brian was both in that argument.
Thirdly, let's consider Brian's creepy sexuality. Brian is a believer in a new age technique called Cosmic Ordering. This is a form of positive thinking that suggests that as long as you fill your mind with positive thoughts, good things will happen to you. One aspect of this catastrophically deranged belief system is, one suspects, Brian's conversations with imaginary hot girls. Hot Girls are very important to Brian and just this week he was in the diary room virtually weeping out of desire for a hot girl to fancy him. This seems very sentimental and sweet doesn't it? well, Brian is no innocent babe.
Within hours of entering the house he was posing for the Twins and then a few days later he was basically waving his cock at the entirely blazeed former pole dancer Charley and trying in the most unsubtle and childish manner possible to get a shag off of her by telling her what he was planning to do to her. Indeed, Brian's seduction techniques compare unfavourably to those of Sezer last year whose creepy behaviour around women earned him 90%+ of the popular vote upon eviction. The only thing that stopped Brian being labeled a sex pest in the early days of his presence in the house was that he's also simple-minded and therefore seen as not in a position to know any better.
These three aspects to Brian's personality make him one of the more disturbing inmates in the Big Brother house. The fact that he might very well be exaggerating him stupidity for comic effect only makes the impression that there's something not quite right there even more pressing. At this point, chances are that Brian will walk this year's Big Brother but I would urge potential viewers to remember, he's no angel.
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