Half-shut knife this morning, but patients obligingly cancelling (maybe they've also been up half the night, shouting at the telly and jabbing redial?) so here I am, checking out the various accounts of last night's extraordinary eruption.
As I remember from previous years, reading the official site's recap, after having watched the action live, can be frustrating. In this case, the official account is annoyingly reductive, failing to convey the sheer amount of triangulation involved:
As spirits got higher, so did the levels of cheekiness. The conversation went off on tangents and it was alleged by Mikey that Richard had made a comment about Imogen. When put on the spot an honest Richard laid his feelings out to her face, saying he found her a bit dull. However that did nothing but enflame an already irritated Sezer, leaping to Imogen's defence in what he perceived as a huge insult, Sezer confronted Richard and the row escalated. Before the dust had settled, Richard had a little cry and threatened to leave and Imogen was saying he should stay.
It also fails to make clear that it was actually Pete who hid the alcohol, not Richard, and it was Lisa who subsequently let on to Sezer. It's difficult to see why these two didn't say more when blame was focussed exclusively on Richard.
The official account also paints Imogen as peacemaker (hah!) on the grounds that she told Richard that, if he were anything akin to a "real man", he would stay. It also claims that
Thankfully, it all ended peaceably with Richard and Sezer agreeing to be civil to each other but having no other contact.
which isn't quite how I remember it. Richard went to bed, having composed himself, reiterated that he felt he was being unfairly singled out by a group of people for doing something which he had not been alone in doing - and adding that "on Friday, one of us in this room will be evicted".
The Digital Spy version is slightly more detailed, showing that there was a slightly odd split at the outset, with Team SmugHet retiring to bed unusually early after nominations, leaving everyone else to stay up, drinking. According to this account, it was Pete and Glyn who hid the wine, but blame was targeted at Richard who, on the defensive, alluded to Sezer and Imogen's bedtime bad-mouthing of other Housemates.
(I suspect this has been bothering Richard since Imogen's earlier attempt to 'other' his horseplay with Sezer on the grounds that it went 'beyond a joke' and that her watching parents wouldn't approve. I thought he was incredibly mild in his response at the time, but I wonder if her comments have festered, leading him to mention she and Sezer's nocturnal gossip-sessions.)
Mikey then remembered how to use his vocal chords:
The comments spurned a normally-reserved Mikey into action, claiming that he and Glyn had overheard Richard doing the same thing he was accusing Sezer and Imogen of. "I heard you chatting to Lea about Imogen," he revealed. "Not just chatting a bit of shit, proper shit. You said she's a false bitch."
Richard vehemently denied that he had called Imogen a "bitch" - "I'm very careful with my words" - but was happy to tell her what he really thought of her. "I find you dull and boring," he said, "and I think you are plastic. So I'm getting it out now."
Enraged, Sezer began to bite back, branding Richard "a weasel", "conniving" and "a fucking prick".
Imogen then revealed that she'd not been allowed to nominate - in an attempt to demonstrate to Richard that it was the rest of the House disliking him that had led to his nomination. Later, when Pete asked Imogen and Sezer directly if they'd been barred from nominating for discussing nominations, they both flatly denied this, the lying arseviolins.
Richard claimed that he was feeling "ganged up" on and "attacked", but Sezer felt differently. "You're the bully, not the bullied. You bullied that girl there," he said in reference to Imogen, who was now in the bathroom letting off steam with Grace and Nikki.
"She's a harmless child, you're a big grown-up fucking man. You are scum, you are scum.. you are a lying piece of shit," Sezer continued with increasing anger, until Big Brother ordered him into the diary room.
(As has been pointed out earlier, this is the "harmless child" that Sezer is endeavouring to fuck the brains out of.)
The Digital Spy account also portrays Imogen's "real man" spiel as conciliatory/soothing, which I don't think it was. Imogen has a habit of putting forward a point then slyly retreating from it. She did this earlier, when she suggested that Richard's behaviour with Sezer was inappropriate then, when Richard tried to get her to back this up or be specific, said she just wanted he and Slezer to "be yourselves".
Having taken some time out to calm down in the diary room, Richard eventually returned to the group and announced that he would be seeing things out until Friday.
Asked how he was feeling, he replied: "I've been attacked and I've been bullied and I feel very deflated at the moment. Words were misconstrued, wires were crossed."
Sezer was in no mood to patch things up, however. "We've got nothing to say to each other," he told Richard. "We're not going to get along now. Me and you are just done."
Following Richard's departure, Sezer then did his best to work on the remaining Housemates, repeating his 'straight-talking' version of events like a mantra. Lea sat there like a nodding dog, saying, "I know, I know". Pete was smiley and pleasant but non-committal in the face of Sezer's utterly transparent "I haven't taken enough time to get to know you yet, Pete, but I know you're a lovely guy" smarm offensive.
One thing that's been omitted from both accounts is the fact that, apparently, it was Glyn who told Mikey that Richard had called Imogen a "fake bitch". Bizarre.
What was galling, throughout the whole shebang, was the passivity of non-Team SmugHet members. I'm not sure whether they were cowed in the face of such concentrated venom (which was, I think, itself fuelled by several days' worth of paranoia SmugHet has been generating about "two-faced" Richard, since he dared treat the new Housemates pleasantly) or genuinely wondered whether Richard had bad-mouthed them, I don't know. Perhaps they were afraid of stepping in in case they became targets themselves. In any case, they stood by and let Richard take the full weight of SmugHet's assault.
Gah. Get dialling. |
