Maybe it's the tiredness, but I can't concentrate on much this week, except Celebrity Big(ot) Brother... I am obsessed by it this year. Well, obsessed by the issues and debates surrounding Shilpa and her tormentors. Wish I worked as a columnist. Did so once, but that was for a 'serious' publication about health and stuff. I discovered this on my CBB media trawl today:
So, tonight is the big night. Jade (well, it has to be her, surely...) gets to trot off back home with no audience boos in the background (they're scared for her safety). But she won't get to go home straight away - there is talk of a safe house. I'm sure Davina - even Davina - will not be able to call Ms Goody an "awesome housemate" as she gurns at her. Or will she? I wish we could vote for who we want to interview Jade. Davina McCall or Jeremy Paxman - you decide! Or maybe Edwina Currie, who called the trio of troublemakers 'slags' on BBC Question Time last night. I was shocked but I did cackle. I really should have been in bed.
There was a girl in my class at high school called Shilpa. She was targeted by the two class bullies for years, mainly because her family wasn't very well off and she had to make do with the clothes her parents could barely afford, oh and she was a 'skinny Paki'. I remember her running home one lunchtime in the third year (can't be doing with all this 'Year X' nonsense!) and staying there because she was so upset at what Beverley (the bigger bully) had said to her. She was brought back to school by her sister, tears rolling down her face, eyes red, and refused to tell the teachers what was going on. Like they needed telling.
Everyone was scared of Beverley, even the teachers. She was a large, fearsome girl with a voice to rival Jade's and the vocabulary to match. Shilpa was short, skinny, had huge brown eyes and I bet she's a flipping stunner now. I last spoke to her around 10 years ago - she had just got married... but I lost her address and that's that. She is a memory I associate with bunsen burners, school dinners, lonely playgrounds, wooden desks (the smell!), netball, Odyssey's 'Inside Out', eating Diwali sweets at her home and the unforgettable blob of anger that was Beverley... All the girls and boys in our class were picked on by Beverley at some point but Shilpa came off worst. Shilpa had a pair of burgundy shoes that were scuffed and rough (everyone loved anything burgundy, it sounded so sophisticated), and her socks never clung to her birdlike legs properly, giving her a permanent Nora Batty air.
We, however, were better people at 14 than Cleo bloody fence-sitter Rocos, who appears to be reliving moments from 'Cleo and Kenny together forever' in her head instead of trying to stop Shilpa (the Bollywood version) from being picked on. I initially thought Cleo – Cleopatra, for goodness sake! – was somewhat ethereal and interesting but she is quite dull and talks of nothing. You can tell she's thinking about Kenny Everett. Really. That, or she's on drugs.
So, my classmates and I (boys and girls) got together and complained on behalf of Shilpa and ourselves. This resulted in Beverley and her stocky sidekick being suspended from school. Beverley left school before she was 16 and I think she fell pregnant soon afterwards (or maybe she left because she was pregnant?), so that was that. I heard that she had three kids by the time she turned 18. Who were these men that found her attractive? I like to think she grew up mentally as well as physically. One can but hope.
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