Its 6:41am (aka rubbish o’clock in the morning). I’ve just got the train to Birmingham and its still bloody dark. On a Saturday morning too! Why am I doing such a thing? To be auditioned for the television phenomenon that is Big Brother.

One the train I meet a couple of fellow auditionees - Ben and James, a gay emo couple - and the first of about a billion psychology students and graduates I’ll meet today. The main thing I have in common with these guys is that none of us really know why we’re going. We just thought it looked like a laugh, thought it be interesting, and a plethora of other such things that you say when you don’t really know why you’re doing something.

I get to Birmingham at about 8:15am and meet up with my mates from back home: psychology student Lawrence, dole-rat Rauol and Rauol’s 50 year-old uncle Wario, who gave Rauol a lift. After about an hour of queuing Wario has a disagreement with the security guard about where he parked his car, initiating a chain of events that include Wario hitting a security guard with his walking stick, Rauol and Wario getting chucked out the queue and me and Lawrence (not for the first time) pretending we don’t know Rauol. Oh well.

In the queue Lawrence and I get talking to Stuart, a thirty year old glazier from Wigan, who’s told all his friends and girlfriend that he’s going for a job interview. He seems to have the same ‘looked like a laugh’ motivations as most other people I’ve met today.

After a couple of hour’s worth of queuing, things start to get interesting. We’re put into groups of ten and lined up against a wall. Put into pairs, you have a minute to find out as much as possible about your partner before you tell the group everything you know about them. My partner was a psychology student who spends an hour every day on his facial hair. I forget everything else he’s told me, including his name, forcing me to fictionalise some details about him like a third nipple and a mysterious pubic bald patch.

Nottingham's own Lea Walker from last year's Big Brother

We’re lined up again and our hands are stamped or we’re through. Out of the ten of us, only Lawrence, Stuart and I get through. We then go up in this glass elevator and are confronted by a mass of channel four staff who take a Polaroid of each of us and attach it a form of all our personal information. Whilst waiting around I meet Ben and James again, as well as brunette bimbo and psychology student Tanya. We all got talking to Claire, who fairly obviously used to be a man. When Claire drops the bombshell that she’s transsexual, there’s an awkward moment when we all silently think “well, duh” followed by an insincere expression of surprise from everyone.

We’re then called one-by-one into the room to be interviewed. I got along well with the person interviewing me, we had a right good chat about theology, music, fiction, allsorts. I gave a bit of Vince Noir-inspired hair chat, played along when she was trying to categorise me as a geek and got through to the next stage. Unfortunately Stuart, Ben, James and Lawrence all fell at this hurdle, but Tanya survived, playing along to the bimbo stereotype.

The next two hours are spent filling out the biggest form I’ve ever seen, with such questions like “In the space below, express your creativity”. By now it’s six in the evening and I want to go home to revise for the exam I’ve got on Monday, but one challenge still awaits- The Diary Room Interview. This is actually a massive anti-climax, being very similar to the previous interview, only with a curtain between me and the interviewer. I even point out that it’s the same person interviewing (I recognise her voice), raising a giggle from the production assistant.

After this I’m chaperoned to the exit by a runner, and I ask when I’ll know or I’m through to the next stage “oh, erm… a week or two, maybe more, maybe months, weeks or months, y’know?”. Oh well. Maybe next year?

Big Brother website

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