Tourette in the 'tub ... Photograph: YouTube
So it's over. After less than three days in the Celebrity Big Brother house, the departure at the weekend of Donny Tourette has left a gaping hole in the middle of Channel 4's annual instalment of car-crash TV.
Whilst the tabloids provided the inevitable knee-jerk reaction to his exit, sniping about his origins in Chalfont St. Peter and the fact that (gasp!) his real name is Patrick (isn't the whole idea of rock'n'roll that you can re-invent yourself?) the rest of us were left to rue the departure of a housemate whose appetite for destruction seemed limitless.
Yet Thursday saw him transform into a cuddly punk-rock puppy, confessing, "I'm not a singer, I'm a shouter", to - of all people - H from Steps, before settling down to a game of I-Spy with Jermaine Jackson.
"He's like a harmless John Lydon!" mused Leo, unaware that (according to yesterday's Sunday Mirror) Donny "bedded" his girlfriend whilst he was away on tour. Frankly, the gonzo thrills ahead seemed endless.
However, following news that evil Channel 4 bosses wanted him to wait on Jade Goody's family dressed as Hudson from Upstairs Downstairs, Donny jumped the fence in the early hours of Saturday morning, bawling: "I'm not being Jade Goody's fucking servant!" before hitching his way back to obscurity.
Don't count on it. Whilst the remaining celebs comply with BB's every demand in a desperate effort to kickstart their ailing careers, the man The Sun dubbed "The Spinal Prat" has escaped with his dignity intact and fifty grand in the bank.
As David St Hubbins once said: "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever".
