Live blogged here last night, the Big Brother 8 final started with the twin threat of Samanda as strong favourites and finished with Essex's village idiot Brian Belo walking off with the gong and the £100,000. The usually reliable internet polls had the twins with a solid lead and we all know how difficult it is for a black contestant on reality TV shows. Yet the crowd at Elstree told a different story with Brian clearly receiving the loudest cheers as the finalists names were read. Davina wore a red ballgown with matching shoes - a bold departure from her trademark black. In the stands, the evicted housemates (minus a former Guardian columnist and indie-loving Aryan ), sat watching the show.
Jonty and Carole were evicted together to a unanimously positive reaction - largely, it has to be said, thanks to Jonty who revisited some of his first night form by cackling madly and talking gibberish. Carole seemed in good humour but nobody seemed to care.
Ian McCulloch once said that one should "never trust a thin-lipped bastard" and it's likely he was thinking of Ziggy at the time. Ziggy has often been dismissed as a vacillating image-obsessed cretin but there's much less to him than that. He exited the house to boos and seemed genuinely upset by them. To be fair, he's probably not a bad person - just utterly spineless and he continued to hedge his bets as Davina probed him about his relationship with Chanelle.
Next out was Liam. He's a tree surgeon and he's OK - he sleeps all and night and he works all day. The laconic alpha male was the shrewdest person in the house and with £100,000 already in the bank and Big Brother groupies waiting for him at PAs around the country life looks even rosier than the day he ambled into the house.
Then came the result. Brian provided the meat in a twin sandwich between Amanda and Sam as they awaited the announcement. "Brian!" came the call and the boy dissolved into tears, swamped by his twin-engine powered pep squad. The twins gave their interview with their signature manic energy. Everything was "woo!" and they were genuinely ecstatic that Brian had won.
In his victory interview Brian was still pretending not to know who Shakespeare was but few watching cared. He gave good housemate and unlike the idiots every year who quit the house saying "it's not what I expected" he was a fan, aficionado and humble servant of the show.
So what did you make of the final? Did the right man win? Were the interviews fair? And did Davina carry off that dress?
